It’s September. You’ve moved in either over the weekend or sometime this summer. You’ve not met many of your neighbors because long-time residents try to get out of town on moving days, since it can be hectic, noisy and hard to negotiate the sidewalks because they contain so much debris.
No matter what ethnic group, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or even whether you are a legal immigrant or not, you’ll be welcome in downtown Boston. Those things don’t matter here. You’ll be accepted happily as long as you put out your trash properly on the right day and keep your dog on a leash, pick up after him and dispose of the bag in that rare city trash barrel or your own residence.
If you have a car, you’ll be frustrated, since there will be no place to park. You might consider ditching it and using Zipcar, taxis, Uber, Lyft and the T.
You’ve probably already figured out that downtown living is easy. You don’t have to walk far to get everything you need. You’re probably paying a great deal of your income to live here so you’ll want to make the most of it.
The first thing you can do to ensure success is to adopt a downtown attitude. More than anything, that means you must learn to share. You’ll be sharing walls, ceilings, rooftops, floors, sidewalks, streets, shade, sun and noise. Be patient. The guy blocking traffic on your street that is lined with parking on both sides has no place to go if he has to unload a big bag or if he’s in a cab paying for his ride. You will be blocked many times if you are driving. Accept it happily.
Your neighbors will hear you if you play music too loudly. You’ll hear them too if they dance on your rooftop or walk heavily on the floor above you. You can let it annoy you. Or you can relish the thought that you are safe, with people around you making it that way. Isolation is one of the ways people get depressed, and if you take advantage of crowded downtown, there’s little chance you’ll be isolated.
Every neighborhood has all kinds of groups to join and you should do so to get to know people. Try the neighborhood associations first. They’re affordable and often sponsor social get-togethers. You should go to the zoning and licensing meetings they hold. You’ll get acquainted quickly with the people who style themselves as the movers and shakers. You’ll learn who is trustworthy, who is a crank, who wants advantages only for themselves and who is truly neighborly. Join the book clubs, churches and synagogues, dog groups, clean-up efforts, and decorating days during the holidays. Make use of the calendars in the neighborhood newspapers and local web sites to find out what organizations are doing. Drop in at your branch library. Get out into the shops for your supplies rather than ordering online because you’ll find the local shopkeepers will become good friends and can give you all kinds of tips.
You’re sharing more than space in downtown Boston. You’re also sharing time. And it’s not all about you. Unless you are in one of those new buildings with tiny spaces and big amenities, you’re living where people have lived for hundreds of years. You may have bought a house or a condo and think it’s yours, but think again. Someone will have come before you and someone will come after you. Respect that history and the future when you remodel. (One celebrity bought a house in my neighborhood and applied to the architecture commission to turn its front into a design with a southwest theme. What kind of a mind moves into a historic New England home and wants to pretend its New Mexico? The change was not allowed.
The restaurants are great downtown, and I’m always amused when people say they want to move here because the restaurants would be so convenient.
The restaurants are good, and, newcomers, please take advantage of them. But downtown living is not about the restaurants.
The great aspect of downtown Boston is that these are real neighborhoods, vibrant with people who know one another, who care for their communities, who enjoy the diversity of ages, groups, just people. If you’re up for that kind of life, you’ll love living here. You might even stay.
Tag Archives: downtown Boston
Your house? Think again.
It is September so my thoughts naturally turn to property rights.
It’s not so outlandish. In September, downtown Boston has many new permanent residents—new owners of houses, condominiums, lofts. Those new to downtown Boston may have to learn new attitudes toward their property.
You may be one of these new owners. You may have a deed to your property now. But it is likely that there have been many owners before you. And there will be many owners after you. You’re a part of a continuum. Your property is not all about you.
This is especially true if you live in one of Boston’s historic districts. If you want to change anything that can be seen from a public way, including new paint in the same color, you have to get permission from your neighborhood’s architectural commission at City Hall.
Small changes are easy. You submit an application and a staff member okays it if it is in keeping with the history of your building. If not, or if you are applying for more extensive changes, you have to appear before the architectural commission overseeing your neighborhood and gain their approval before the city will issue you a construction permit.
Novices complain about this. People whose mindset is “it’s my property, and I can do what I want,” will also complain. You wonder—why did people buy property in a historic district if they didn’t want a home that fits in and enjoys the historic district’s protections?
Because that is what these rules are about—protecting the historic nature of the environment. It keeps neighbors from erecting a huge television dish next to your house, as one of ours did in New Hampshire long ago. It keeps neighbors from building a monstrosity next to you. It keeps the value of your property from eroding.
A good example of the protections in action was the matter of a once-popular singer who bought a house in a 19th-century historic district in downtown Boston and proceeded to remove the original interior, replacing it with a southwestern theme.
Nothing could be done about the inside, which is not protected, but when she applied for a permit to change the entryway into something vaguely southwestern, the architectural commission said no. You might wonder why someone would buy property in a 19th-century New England neighborhood and want a southwestern theme, but then you would also remember that some people are crazy.
In any case, the singer departed, sold her house, and the new owners promptly restored all that she had destroyed inside. Even better, the value of the neighbors’ houses were not eroded by interrupting the pattern of entryways on the block. These things are important when houses are so close together.
Several historic neighborhoods in Boston have no protection against weirdnesses like this. The North End and Charlestown, the oldest neighborhoods in Boston, have no architectural protection for their buildings. On Soley Street in Charlestown a new owner tore down an old house. Maybe the replacement will fit in with the neighborhood. Maybe not.
Even the neighborhoods who do have protection sometimes lose. On Beacon Hill, a Chestnut Street owner got permission over neighbors’ objections to tear down a house he claimed was unstable, even though several other houses about to fall down have been saved. Years ago in the same neighborhood, the architectural commission denied permission for an owner to change the façade of his house. Mysteriously, one night the façade fell down. Hmm.
After living in a historic district for many years, I would have reservations about owning property in a place without those protections. Nearby owners with little knowledge about architecture or peculiar taste could affect my property’s value if they decided to “remuddle” their house, as an old house magazine used to call it.
Studies show that property in historic districts tends to be more desirable, to keep its value better than property elsewhere, and to provide a more pleasant environment in general. Giving up the chance to choose a favorite paint color seems a small price to pay for keeping a historic property appropriate for owners 100 years from now.
Recycle City
We can get pretty depressed at the precarious state of the environment and the steps public officials are not taking to remedy the problem. Even more depressing are the climate change deniers, the clean coal boosters, the natural gas pipeline aficionados and the people who lack concern about fossil fuels damaging our air and water. Not even several toxic spills into rivers and the oceans have been able to move Congress to face facts and the future.
So it is nice to know that Boston has a tiny bit of good news on the environmental front. The city has increased its recycle rate. It is transforming the sticks in your garden into compost. The city is a wee bit cleaner.
Hey. Let’s take what we can get.
Downtown Boston’s recycling rate has increased by almost 12 percent since last July, Boston Public Works Commissioner Michael Dennehy reported. Several factors went into this good news. The city has placed recycle receptacles beside most trash bins along such major streets as Boylston, Beacon, Newbury and Cambridge, so that items formerly thrown in the trash are now being recycled.
In all the downtown neighborhoods except Charlestown, the city now collects trash only two days a week. But it has increased its collection of recyclables to two days a week also, up from one day a year ago. Some residents, whose neighborhoods formerly experienced trash pickup three days a week, complained bitterly that neighbors living in small apartments couldn’t store their trash for the extra days between pickups, and the streets would be even trashier than before.
But that hasn’t happened. Reducing the number of hours trash sits on the sidewalk each week has made the neighborhoods cleaner. “I was pleasantly surprised,” said Paula Della Russo of the North End. “There is less litter in the streets, and I haven’t seen as many rodents.”
More recycling has also saved the city money. It costs $74 a ton to get rid of trash, but only $5 a ton to deposit the recyclables at the Casella recycling plant in Charlestown, said Dennehy. So every ton of recyclable material the trucks pick up saves the city’s taxpayers $69.
When the market for plastics was better, the city was actually paid for such material.
The material that does not go into the trash contributes to the city’s diversion rate. That amount has been growing too. In April of this year in the whole city it was up 27 percent over April, 2014. The material diverted is not only recyclables. It also includes yard waste, which the city this year picks up every two weeks in the spring, once a month in the summer, and every week from the last week in October through the first week in December. Dennehy said if people put out their yard waste on the wrong day the trash haulers will not put it in the trash, but instead will leave it on the sidewalk until the yard waste truck comes on the right day for pickup.
Yard waste goes to City Soil, which for about two years has composted, screened and sifted the organic material (including Christmas trees) at its site along the American Legion Highway and delivered the compost to Boston’s community gardens. Residents can pick up compost there for their own gardens in City Soil’s retail shop.
We still have trash, however. The downtown trash goes to the Wheelabrator waste-to-energy power plant in Saugus. It can burn 1,500 tons per day and delivers electricity to 30,000 households. Trash from the outer neighborhoods—Hyde Park, JP, West Roxbury, for example—gets trucked to the SEMASS facility in Rochester, Massachusetts just south of I-495 near Route 28. SEMASS burns the trash at a rate of 3,000 tons per day, also producing energy. This facility charges the city $60 per ton of trash.
This year the city added a fifth hazardous waste drop-off day.
There are still problems that need to be solved. Although converting waste to energy sounds like a good idea, the plants have their own problems, so much so that the state has imposed a moratorium on building new ones, said George Bachrach, president of the Environmental League of Massachusetts. He said the only effective way to deal with trash is to drastically reduce it, and increase recycling. Some cities and towns have tried such financial incentives as charging for trash or allowing residents a limited amount of trash after which they would be charged. Boston has not gone that route yet.
In January and February, the recycle rate was considerably down. Apparently deep snow affects residents’ tendency to recycle. The outlying neighborhoods’ recycling rate is not as good as the downtown’s, and that’s another place for improvement. Although in April 2015 more than one ton of disposables out of five was being recycled or repurposed, Dennehy would like to see it improve to one out of four or 25 percent.
So it is little by little. That’s better than nothing.
Old, white and rich?
The reporting is breathless: Millennium Tower penthouse goes on sale for $37.5 million. A condo in a 19th-century Commonwealth Avenue townhouse sells for $7 million. Luxury apartments, rentable or buyable, going up in the Fenway and in the Seaport.
These new projects add expensive housing to the already-pricey neighborhoods in downtown Boston.
The buyers differ only a little. They are empty nesters realizing that city life is more interesting than that in the suburbs or dot-com youths spending their high salaries or bonuses or foreign billionaires parking their money in safe North American investments.
Which leaves us with a question for the center city’s residents: Do you really want to live with only mostly old, mostly white, but always rich people?
Long ago, residents of Beacon Hill, as one example, decided they did not want to do so.
They believed income, age and racial diversity would enhance that neighborhood’s quality of life. (And it has.) So methodically and purposefully they teamed with developers and institutions. They raised money from the neighborhood to transform an MGH parking garage, a fire-damaged single-room occupancy building for men, and abandoned city property—schools, a police station, a firehouse. Two buildings became community centers. The rest became affordable housing. One of these buildings, Beacon House, is in the spotlight this week, as supporters honor Meredith and Gene Clapp, who spearheaded the effort to help Rogerson Communities buy the building and keep it affordable.
But the city’s downtown surplus properties are running low. One of the few remaining such buildings became the new North Bennet Street School in a swap that expands the popular Eliot public school in the North End.
Beacon Hill is an example of what is happening now throughout the city. Large institutional buildings are becoming luxury housing. Three buildings owned by Suffolk University, the former St. John the Evangelist church property and the former Beacon Press building—all near the State House—are either on the market or have recently been bought by developers.
Now the question is: Is there any hope for more affordable housing in the downtown’s pricey neighborhoods?
Yes, say housing advocates. But the circumstances have changed.
It is no longer the city selling property at affordable prices. Instead it is non-profits who understandably want to reap big rewards from their buildings in pricey neighborhoods. A buyer usually must build luxury housing to cover costs and generate a profit. Sometimes, though, a large institutional building presents problems for luxury conversions, and that creates an opportunity.
There are other ways also to manage the situation, said Sheila Dillon, chief of housing for the City of Boston.
Dillon said several Beacon Hill residents have contacted her, urging the city to require affordable housing as part of the neighborhood’s new developments. The approval process takes the community’s wishes into account.
If a project contains 10 or more units and also needs zoning relief, which most projects do, the city requires that 15 percent of the units be affordable. Moreover, there can be no “poor door,” as there was recently in a New York City project. The affordable units must be constructed and outfitted at the same level of finish as the luxury units.
The city prefers that such units be included in the main project, although developers can make a case for building a separate project or paying into a fund to satisfy the affordability requirement. While the Beacon Hill residents Dillon has heard from prefer to see affordable units incorporated into the neighborhood project, there is an argument for building off site.
“The highest and best use happens to be luxury condos,” said broker Jason Weissman, head of Boston Realty Advisors, about downtown residential buildings.
In a 20-unit development, three would be affordable. For the same price as constructing those three units in a downtown neighborhood, many more could be built in outlying, less expensive districts, he pointed out.
Dillon is aware of that conundrum and said that in many cases a developer will do both—construct some units on site and also contribute to the fund.
There are many ways to bring affordable housing into the downtown neighborhoods, said Robert Beal, president of the real estate development firm, Related Beal.
He ought to know. Using imagination and experience, his company has proposed a 239-unit rental apartment building for low and moderate-income residents who will enjoy benefits usually reserved for high-priced spreads. Located in the fast-growing Bulfinch Triangle near luxury buildings, its northern side overlooks the Bunker Hill Zakim Bridge while southern views incorporate the Greenway.
In smaller projects such as Beacon Hill’s buildings, affordable units are important but their numbers are insignificant unless a special situation arises, which some neighborhood leaders are hopeful, but mum about. Much of the land in downtown Boston neighborhoods is already taken up. Remarkably, though, because of the Big Dig, the freed-up Seaport District and a parking lot here and there, other projects like Related Beal’s could help us get to that juicy mix of ages, ethnicities, incomes and lifestyles that attracted us to the city in the first place.
Red Sox downtown nation
Here’s how most of us did Saturday.
We watched on television the rolling rally as it headed toward our neck of the woods. Then, about 10 minutes or so before it was near us we left our houses, apartments and condominiums and streamed with dozens of neighbors toward Boylston or Tremont or Cambridge streets or over to the river to see the Red Sox in all their glory.
It was quite a scene. Everyone had on Red Sox gear. A few fans held signs: “Papi for Mayor.” Guys held their girls on their shoulders so the ladies could see over the crowd. Pieces of red, white and blue paper, designed to float as long as possible in the air, poured from confetti cannons. Near us a man, apparently having fled from Mass General in time to see the team creep by, was decked out in his hospital johnny, which was flapping over his bare backside.
Helicopters buzzed, whirred, throbbed and chopped overhead, and at least two airplanes pulled banners. The crowd blew horns, clapped and cheered. We’re in this together in our joy at our team’s success, even if we aren’t die-hard fans. Our city is cool. Our city is a winner.
And all we had to do in the area of this newspaper’s readership was to walk out the door and over a few blocks. When we live downtown, coming together is easy. Continue reading
The challenges of housing
Mayor Menino has set a goal of building 30,000 more units of housing by 2020, even though he won’t be mayor for most of that time. Governor Patrick set a goal last year of building 10,000 new units of multi-family housing during the same time period.
So Suffolk University’s Sawyer Business School and the Greater Boston Real Estate Board sponsored a forum last week to discuss the problems and possibilities for achieving such goals. Panelists were attorney, author and former city councilor Larry DiCara, Massachusetts Secretary of Transportation Richard Davey, journalist Paul McMorrow, and real estate developer Ted Tye of National Development.
They were in awe of how Boston had changed since 1959 when writer Elizabeth Hardwick described Boston as an old lady—“wrinkled, spindly-legged, depleted of nearly all her spiritual and cutaneous oils, provincial, self-esteeming.” Hardwick wasn’t finished with her diatribe. She went on to declare that the city was exhausted under “the weight of the Boston legend, the tedium of its largely fraudulent poster of traditionalism,” and that its was a “culture that hasn’t been alive for a long time.”
Boston is no longer exhausted or depleted. It now has new legends—it still claims to be the hub of the universe, but its expertise now is in education, health, science, technology and finance, not in railroads and textiles. History is still a source of pride but it no longer triumphs over contemporary life. The city’s culture has been reinvigorated. People young and old want to live in Boston. Continue reading
Convenient schools make for a green city
Recently I attended a meeting focused on how Americans could reduce their carbon footprint by re-arranging their neighborhoods. (And it’s not only I who am drawn to such nerdy topics—the room was full.)
The speaker talked about sufficient density, public transportation, sidewalks, intersections, easy access between home and work—in other words, all the advantages we enjoy in downtown Boston. We don’t have to remake our neighborhoods like some cities do.
During the question and answer period, one member of the audience spoke up. “You’re forgetting one important factor,” he said. “Schools are an important vehicle for reducing your carbon footprint.”
Then he told his story. He and his family were living in the Back Bay long before the phrase “carbon footprint” had been invented. They wanted to stay there and not depend on a car. But they couldn’t. There was no public school they could walk to. So they left.
I talked with the man later. His name is Neal Glick. His story, not surprisingly, is similar to many who have left Boston.
Glick is a lawyer who worked downtown for decades and whose firm is now located in the Seaport District. When he lived downtown he could walk to work or take the subway. “It was appealing and tremendously rewarding to live in the Back Bay,” he said, “and not just for environmental reasons.” Continue reading
Rattus norvegicus and us
Consider the rat—specifically the Norway rat, which doesn’t come from Norway. It is brownish gray and as long as 16 inches. During its year-long lifespan a female can produce up to five litters of seven babies, although litters can be as large as 14. It has excellent sight and hearing and an acute sense of smell. It can swim across the Charles River.
It thrives in cities all over the world. Here it lives in burrows in the Boston Common or wherever it can find suitable soil near people. Some of Boston’s best addresses are the most infested. Rats carry salmonella and rabies. About 50,000 Americans are bitten yearly by rats.
Rats can live in your house, as several did recently on Hancock and Myrtle streets on Beacon Hill. Andrew Christoffels, who works at Charles St. Supply, heard from the residents that the rats were in the toilet.
I’m betting you don’t want them in your house. The city helped the Beacon Hill residents with their problems, said John Meaney, director of the city’s Environmental Services.
Many Boston residents, however, are at risk from rats moving in. We live in old buildings with holes in the foundations and improperly sealed pipes. Continue reading
40 years of no schools
The Boston Public Schools have an illustrious history. In 1635, Boston Latin became the first public school in America. The Abiel Smith School on Beacon Hill was the first public school building in the nation built for African American children.
The Boston Public Schools also have an embarrassing history. The lowest point was in 1974. You know what happened.
Things are better. Turnaround schools, a longer school day for some kids, better scores, charter schools—all these and more have inspired a new confidence that public education in Boston can flourish and attract.
Unfortunately, though, central Boston is without adequate seats for all the kids who want to attend public schools. In fact, Beacon Hill, the Back Bay, the West End and the downtown have no schools at all.
How did this situation get so bad? Continue reading