Nicolás Medina Mora Pérez Photo
Farwell with fellow critics Olivia Martson and Chris Schweitzer.
After a watchdog stalled its new zoning proposal for a major downtown development project on the grounds of a “defective” legal notice, the city issued a new notice and sent it for a second hearing at the City Plan Commission — which voted again to pass it.
The second hearing took place Wednesday evening at City Hall.
As expected, the commissioners voted for a second time at the meeting to change zoning rules in the area in and around the downtown Route 34 Connector “mini-highway to nowhere” so the city and a private developer can fill in the road and start putting up new buildings.
The $140 million project is called “Downtown Crossing.” It features at first a 10-story medical-related office tower called 100 College St. to be built by developer Carter Winstanley.
The months of proceedings surrounding Downtown Crossing have featured debates about big issues facing city development: Traffic, parking, jobs, public health, and “veto power” given to a private developer over public decisions. (Read about some of that here and here.)
Wednesday night the debate at the City Plan Commission was more about process, for the most part: how to notice a city meeting.
The proceeding, which tired-looking City Plan commissioners called “nearly identical to the first,” was necessary because the Urban Design League, one of Downtown Crossing’s most vocal critics, argued that the city failed to publish a legal notice clearly explaining the consequences of the new zoning laws.
The city responded that the notice published was more than sufficient, but agreed to revise the matter after developer Winstanley expressed concern about possible difficulties in getting loans from the bank if the noticing later became the basis for a legal challenge. (Read about that here).
Anstress Farwell, an art historian who leads the Urban Design League, explained the reasons her group argued that the notice was defective.
“What was wrong with the notice was that it did not make clear that the new zoning laws will allow work/live units [buildings with both businesses and apartments] as well as laboratories to be built in other parts of the city, and not just in the Downtown Crossing area,” she said.
Farwell added that she does not have a problem with the construction of labs and mixed used buildings. Rather, her group wanted to make sure that “everything was made clear to the public.” She emphasized that she does not want to assume any kind of intention on the part of the city, and explicitly avoided the term “transparency.”
“We are just for good public proceeding,” she said.
The new notice (which you can read here) is significantly longer than the older one (which you can read here). It explicitly states that the new zoning ordinances will “permit Live-Work Conversions by special permit in all districts.”
City officials still maintain that there was nothing wrong with the original notice.
“I want to make it very clear that the city doesn’t think that the notice was defective,” said Karyn Gilvarg, who serves as executive director for the City Plan Department. “It was written just like every other notice we’ve written for decades. In my opinion, people were trying to delay the procedures, and used any excuse they could find.”
Gilvarg, who is a licensed architect and has worked for the city for over 17 years, added that the only reason the city published a new notice was out of consideration for the developer, “who has a lot at stake here.”
She said that the construction of laboratories and work/live units in other parts of the city is nothing new. As examples she cited Science Hill — the Yale lab complex which contains buildings from the early 20th century — and the many conversion of historic manufacturing buildings into lofts and retail space, some of which are decades old.
“Miss Farwell is entitled to her opinion, but she is a lay person,” said Gilvarg.
The new zoning proposal will come before the Board of Aldermen on June 14.
Given disastrous DeStefano projects such as FBI Building, Pfizer, and Rt34 Flyover, which have permanenly destroyed the potential of hundreds of acres of land and squelched our City's ability to complete in the global economy as a walkable, healthy city, I would hope that the opinions of neighborhood residents and activists who have lives here for decades are given equal weight to the opinions of "experts."
Few of the world's most famous city builders had formal training in city design.