#154 Summer 2008 — What Green Means

Home Again

With the help of its local community development corporation, a Boston neighborhood comes to terms with its transformation as a beloved church, long a treasured part of the community is reborn as housing.

During the 1980s and the 1990s, the Archdiocese of Boston looked at consolidating some parishes. Blessed Sacrament, with its surrounding campus was, for some, ripe for redevelopment.

At a series of planning meetings, the developers invited residents to help determine what should be done with the church and adjacent buildings. Meanwhile, JPNDC’s Executive Director Richard Thal, and his staff mobilized to woo the media and city leaders, organizing a petition drive that gathered 1,400 signatures in support of JPNDC’s bid. The major Boston newspapers responded, publishing editorials and columns voicing strong support. The writers reminded church leaders of their social mission, as well as the Archdiocese’s public statements in recent years decrying the affordable-housing crisis in the city. These words surely influenced the Archdiocese’s decision, in September 2005, to sell the church to JPNDC.

But small but vocal minority group came to meetings of the neighborhood council to protest JPNDC’s involvement. This group, made up largely of a number of homeowners from some of the adjacent residential streets, feared a new affordable-housing development on their turf. Given the chance to speak to the council before it voted to support JPNDC’s bid, some of these residents used the forum to claim the community had enough affordable rental housing already.

“They said that affordable housing brings down neighborhoods, that people who live there don’t choose to be actively involved in the community, that owners were the ones who were the backbone of any neighborhood. Some of those inflammatory statements did more to mobilize people than anything we could have said or done,” says Thal.

Neutralizing the Opposition

Once JPNDC had purchased the property, it began an intensive campaign of door-knocking and house meetings, as well as a few community-wide gatherings, to present its proposal to the community. It called for turning the church itself into market-rate condos, The two schools would continue to be used for educational and community programs by local nonprofits, while the convent would become single-room-occupancy housing for people who had been homeless. JPNDC also proposed two new buildings for the site, including one with townhouses for first-time homebuyers. The other was to be built at the corner of Centre Street, the artery on which most of the neighborhood’s retail stores are located. This building would have affordable limited-equity cooperative apartments, with retail stores on the ground floor and an underground parking garage.

JPNDC, and New Atlantic Development Corp., its for-profit development partner, considered the retail component essential to making the project economically feasible. But there was already a building at the corner of Centre Street: the church’s rectory. JPNDC proposed to tear it down.

At this point Historic Hyde Square, one of several historical preservation groups in the area, launched a loud protest to the media and at public hearings for the project, calling for the rectory to be saved. The JPNDC argued that the rectory had been altered so much over the years that its historical value had diminished, but historians disagreed. In March 2006, the Boston Landmarks Commission, which has an advisory role, advised the developers to keep the rectory if they wanted the city board’s support.

Another group, the Sunnyside Neighborhood Association, which represented mostly middle-class homeowners on streets close to the church, emerged to say that the project would add too many people and cars to an already crowded area. It called for reducing the number of housing units from 115 to around 75. Its members also argued that the community needed homeownership more than rental units. These arguments drew angry responses from some residents who were already upset by comments they had heard before JPNDC bought the church.

This appeared to put JPNDC’s plans in some peril. But JPNDC recognized that the majority in the community didn’t care much about the rectory. Nor were most residents particularly worried about the new building’s density. Their real concern was to save the church.

In response to the argument that the project added too much density, JPNDC countered that it had calculated the number of units it would need in order to give residents other things they wanted, including a green space in the middle of the site and room for businesses. As for the rectory, the developers decided to move it down the street, rather than demolish it. The effect was to neutralize much of the opposition, says Harry Smith, who was JPNDC’s director of organizing at the time.

“Some of their leaders came out publicly against the project anyway, but they had to speak directly against affordable housing, rather than talk about historical preservation,” he says.

The Role of the Parishioners

Had JPNDC not succeeded in drawing a significant number of residents and former church parishioners to the public meetings, the outcome might have been different. Initially many people in the neighborhood were so upset by the church’s closing that they showed little enthusiasm to be involved in what would take its place. JPNDC made a point of reaching out to these former churchgoers. “The ones who did get involved were crucial to our ability to win approval for the project,” says Smith. “They were able to speak forcefully about the need to redevelop the property in a way that would continue to benefit the local community.”

OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE

  • Taking the LEED in Your Community

    June 24, 2008

    Through local and regional initiatives, communities are tailoring the eco-revolution for their backyards.

  • The Green New Deal

    June 24, 2008

    Majora Carter saw natural beauty and economic empowerment in her South Bronx neighborhood where others saw only a dumping ground. She's changing the urban landscape in a way that's been an eye-opener to people around the globe.

  • Decoding Housing Finance Agencies

    June 24, 2008

    State housing finance agencies play a pivotal role in affordable-housing development, yet many advocacy organizations don't know how to gain leverage in influencing these increasingly powerful bodies.