Apartments on the Bunker Hill Community College parking? Supportive housing within the previous police station? Shops rather than a paid lot in Chinatown?
Mayor Michelle Wu rolled out her audit of city-owned land, saying now’s the time for the federal government to get the method transferring on underused tons round Boston.
“Empty parking lots, crumbling buildings — spaces that are ready for transformative community led public development to deliver services for our residents,” Wu instructed reporters throughout a Wednesday-morning press convention.
Wu mentioned town had recognized 1,238 parcels completely 9.5 million ft as vacant or “underutilized.” That’s about 5.4% of town’s land portfolio, which additionally consists of parks, faculties, graveyards and municipal buildings.
That’s per Wu’s “Public Land for Public Good: Citywide Land Audit” that the mayor’s workplace dropped on Wednesday in step with a marketing campaign promise to catalogue town’s numerous real-estate holdings in hopes of discovering spots that town — with the additional management granted from its possession stake — may leverage into developments to assist with, amongst different issues, sky-high rents and low-threshold housing for the homeless.
The audit pointed to 11 “high-opportunity sites” that the administration significantly touted, usually bigger websites that might help denser improvement. On the housing-the-homeless entrance, one of many bigger spots was the soon-to-be-former A-7 police precinct in East Boston as soon as the cops transfer out to their new digs on the opposite aspect of the neighborhood.
And then there’s the large one — the collection of parking tons subsequent to Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown between Rutherfoird Avenue and the freeway the place Wu instructed denser improvement may work, although metropolis officers mentioned they might see what the locals needed.
Asked about what may go there, Planning Chief Arthur Jemison acknowledged that whereas he “probably” has “some ideas,” he’d “like to talk to Charlestowners about that.”
Among the opposite “high-opportunity” locales are the sprawling River Street Boston Public Health Commission campus, a constellation of parking tons simply north of the Mass and Cass space, an previous public-works lot at 327 Forest Hills St. in Jamaica Plain, a car parking zone at 290 Tremont St. in Chinatown, the strip of parking tons at 95-133 Magazine Street within the South End, BPS Central Kitchen in Dorchester and the parking tons in the course of Sullivan Square in Charlestown.
The metropolis floats the thought of housing — both inexpensive or supportive, usually — for many of these, however notes that combined use may very well be doable in some spots just like the Chinatown one.
The myriad different websites, a lot of that are smaller, may both be infill housing or parks.
Wu declined to place a timeline on the work to redevelop these websites generally, however she and her cupboard members mentioned they need to get transferring with some bigger plans sooner moderately than later.
Wu initially pledged to have this audit performed in her first 100 days, which was in February. She claimed they did get the audit performed by then, however needed to work up an interactive and clear approach of exhibiting it on-line — so now there’s a portion of town’s web site that hosts maps exhibiting information about city-owned land and the audit.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”