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Washington-Beech redevelopment gets closer
By adamg on Wed, 10/08/2008 - 5:36pm
Daniel Mitchell, 7, a second-grader at the Bates School, shows Gov. Patrick and Mayor Menino where his apartment is.
Gov. Patrick came to the Washington-Beech housing project in Roslindale today to sign legislation that will result in the 1952 project replaced by a series of low- and moderate-income townhomes and apartments by 2012.
Trinity Boston, a private developer, will replace the current dormitory-style buildings on the 7.6-acre project with townhomes and a 72-unit apartment building at the corner of Washington and Beech streets, which will mainly house elderly residents. The project will cost $90 million; earlier this year the Boston Housing Authority won a $20-million federal grant to help pay for the work.
Artist's rendering of the new Washington-Beech. You're looking south on Washington, past Beech.
At today's signing in the middle of the current complex, Menino and Patrick both pointed to the way residents will have their own front-and back doors of their own and even their own patches of green space:
"It's about your dream," Menino said. "It's about your having a great place to live."
Menino pledged to bring back the Washington-Beech pre-school, which he said was once the best pre-school in the world.
City Councilor Rob Consalvo said it's only fair that Washington-Beech residents share in the revitalization that has brought Roslindale new restaurants and shops.
Meena Carr, head of a Washington-Beech tenants' group, said she can't wait for the new development, but added that she understands why residents, some of whom have lived their entire lives there, are sad because the work will require them to relocate until the new homes are ready. The Boston Housing Authority has already started relocating residents to other units across the city.
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Comments
Kickoff?
So when is this breaking ground? Is there a schedule somewhere? The BRA page on
this didn't look exactly up-to-date.
Preschool hey? I have a rugrat.
They've already started moving people out
According to this article from July.
But yes, Jimmy Olsen here should've actually asked that question ...
Demolition begins in March
The Metro reports.
Do the buildings need replacing?
Just curious, because by Boston-area standards, 1952 isn't an old building. I'm living in a 1929 brick apartment building in Somerville, and it's one of the newer residences on my block.
Quality of Construction, Lack of Maintenence
A lot of the housing projects were built crappy pretty much on purpose. They were minimal and bare-bones to begin with, and the construction phase underwent a bit of modification in many cases - low quality materials substituted for high quality materials, cut corners, etc.
They were also far more poorly maintained and neglected in the City of Boston. Things simply were not fixed for a very long while in most projects because, well, the people who lived in certain projects were not considered to be worthy. This was one reason why there was court-ordered desegregation of the assignment system in the late 1980s ... another was the wait times for certain people and not for others.
The plan
Swirly's paragraph 1 pretty much summarizes why it would be handy to have the complete Hope VI plan publicly available now.
If I'm not mistaken, when I was living in Newport, the Tonomy Hill development went through changes. For example, there is now a college campus there as well. But I might be wrong, that might have been part of the plan from the start.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/realestate/26nat...
The difference between apartment buildings and housing projects
I don't know what they're like on the inside, but from the outside, they look like your basic post-war dormitory-style brick warehouses - surrounded by concrete and asphalt - not like your basic plenty-of-charm pre-war apartment buildings.
It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn they've suffered decades of deferred maintenance. And why shouldn't the folks who live there have decent housing?
Oh, definitely
Everyone deserves decent housing. But I hope more attention is paid to durability this time around, so that the new buildings last a lot longer than 56 years.
My Grandparents
My grandparents lived at Beech Street, in three different apartments at different times, until 1978, by which time they had both died. With that timeline, there's certainly been a lot of time for things to fall apart. However, I remember the apartments as being rather nice, overall. They weren't as hideous inside as they appeared from the outside.
(My great uncle was commissioner of public buildings under Curley and Dever, so had some pull even after retiring. In the mid 60's, he pulled strings to get my grandparents into Beech Street. He wouldn't have had to do that if it wasn't considered a damned nice place then.)
The poorly-lit stairwells, steel doors, and other usual project accoutrements were there, and scary, but once you got inside? Not bad. It definitely wasn't someplace you'd be ashamed to invite people.
Since I love going to The Pleasant, which is nearby, I've had occasion to drive through the complex a few times since then. It doesn't look one heck of a lot worse than it did. A bit dirtier, but that's just cosmetic. I haven't been inside any of the apartments, though, so have no idea what shape they're in. The buildings look sound, but who knows how the wiring, pipes, etc., are holding up.
Suldog
http://jimsuldog.blogspot.com
Wash Beech redevelopment
They never built them for the long term. We lived there from 1978 - 2000 and the heat never worked properly, they always had waterbugs and vermin running around and the sewer system continually backed up into any basement apartment.
Yeah they need to tear them down and salt the earth. BHA should be ashamed for even taking this long to raze that place. PS Archdale needs to go too.
I love artist's renderings of upcoming construction projects
Everything looks so ideal. Ahhhhh!
Questions about the restaurant in the picture. I see they specialize in Spanish food. Serving Tapas maybe or a good paella? Is this place currently in business? Do the project managers plan to find some people from Spain to feed the local Hispanic population, 90%? of whom don't come from Spain? Does the artist think all Hispanics come from Spain? What's the deal? The sign seems a bit out of place.
I can't read the sign
You can? What does it say?
Also, it looks to me like the restaurant is across from the project, not part of the project. Maybe it already exists? Sure looks like it, from the Google Street View of that intersection.
It's actually a reflection of reality for a change
It shows Bani Restaurant, which is right at the corner of Washington, Beech and the other street whose name I can never remember even though I've been driving on it for 15 years now.
It's basically a Dominican seafood place.
The drawing does pretty up and lower their sign a bit, though. The current sign looks like it was done by hand and includes some simple grinning chefs that were left over from the Dominican restaurant that was there before Bani.
What I'm curious about is how the laundromat and the convenience store (no longer romantically named Dajajo's) will survive over the next few years with a giant hole across the street instead of an apartment complex.
For that matter, I wonder how Nick's Pizza will fare. Fortunately, Nick was smart and bought the liquor store next door a few years ago, so he should, hopefully, make out OK (since he's a nice guy).
I take back what I said about pretty
Here's the view from the artist's rendering:
Darn it, now I'll have to go down there and take a photo from the same vantage point!
But, yes, the current sign is up on stilts or something.
Re Bani
Bani (pronounced bah-NEE> is on the southwest coast of the DR, between the capital Santo Domingo and the more arid region of Azua. It's fairly green around Bani and up into the mountains to the north, and it's a productive agricultural region, famous for its mangoes. The touristy regions of the DR are in the East and North, and the southwest is relatively poor and arid, so a lot of people immigrate from that area.
You may have noticed that there are a many Dominicans in Boston. Quite a lot of them are from Bani.
Have you eaten at Bani?
If so, what was the food like?
Ditto for the pizza at Nick's Pizza.
Never eaten at Bani
Nick's is your basic Greek pizza/sub shop. Not really worth a trip from outside the immediate area, except to see the Phaeton mural.
This whole attempt
I would like to state for the record that I believe this whole "renovation" is an attempt to make Beech St. better fit into the idea everyone has about Roslindale. I lived there for about 12 years or so, and everytime I told friends that I lived in Roslindale, they said something to the effect of...oh You live in the White neighborhood. Which was the furthest thing from the truth. There were maybe a couple dozen white families that I can recall, and they were all pretty much related. My point is this. Everybody thinks Roslindale should be predominantly white and so that's what this whole renovation deal is about. I mean let's get real, as kids we couldn't even go into Pleasant Cafe without feeling like we were going to be lynched. We were not welcome there. Beech St. was never bad until from what I hear the city began moving people from Franklin field or hill or whatever the hell it is.
Actual rendering of Bani restaurant
I might be wrong, but I think I smell a rat here.
This whole thing sounds like it's another excuse to drive poor people from their homes, which has happened in the past.