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Cab-company owner seeks to replace his Allston garage with condos with roof-top gardens

Rendering of 120 Braintree Street

Rendering by Neshamkin French Architects.

Felix Shneur, owner of Metro Cab at 120 Braintree Street, has filed plans with the BPDA to get in on the Boston Landing residential development boom - he's proposing to replace his cab garage there with a five-story, 32-unit condo building that would include "garden plots for growing vegetables and flowers" on the roof.

Four of the units would be sold as affordable.

Shneur's plans call for 31 parking spaces in one of those "puzzle" stacker systems and a small ground-floor commercial space in the building, a block away from the Boston Landing commuter-rail stop that New Balance built as part of its massive development, in the middle of an area where old commercial and industrial buildings are being replaced at a rapid clip by new residential buildings.

120 Braintree St. small-project review application (32M PDF).

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Comments

A block away from the train and he wants a 1:1 cars to apartments ratio? Dumb. 25% of those spots will be vacant. Make it 40 apartments and 25 parking.

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UHub is a great exchange of ideas but it is not, to the best of my knowledge, a real estate marketplace.

If you feel like you could do better, make an offer to the owner, have it accepted, and then build your building to your urban design specifications.

Everyone wins.

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Maybe the city should drastically reduce (or eliminate) parking minimums - better yet implement parking maximums - and then we don't have to rely on the whim of a developer deciding what to do with the space.

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I mean have you been to an BAIC meeting? I actually think this is more civil than the comments they would get there.

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I didn't need a car when I moved to Boston. Then I got a job in the burbs. Then I got a roommate, who's job is now in the burbs. And she can't wfh.

Lives change. The T doesn't reach everywhere and I don't really feel like moving every time I get a new job.

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will move there with a car, then get rid of it when they discover they don't need it?

There are other options to store your car if you don't have a parking space at your apartment building, but not many other things you can do with a parking space if no one's storing a car in it. Let's prioritize people over property.

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Renting a space in a garage or a public parking lot is an option, although that can get rather expensive.

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The thing is though, people who don't have access to a dedicated off-street parking space are far less likely to take a job in the burbs in the first place. And for the people that do, we don't want to make it too easy or cheap for them to waste decent, transit-accessible housing when they aren't even using the train.

Last, literally no one "feels like" moving, but they do it anyway when the necessity arises.

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Just curious. Metro is my default cab of choice.

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