Kairos Shen at the BRA’s public hearing last week.
Chinatown residents are charging that Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino broke his longstanding promise for housing on a city-owned parking lot.
Officials from the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) and the Boston School Department are pushing a plan that would move the Boston Arts Academy, a performing arts high school, from the Fenway to a 29,000-square-foot parcel at Tremont and Washington streets near Chinatown. [See related story, page 7]
But the proposal got a frosty reception at a public hearing last week in the Josiah Quincy School where residents expressed anger over what they perceive as another slap at the Chinatown neighborhood.
“Chinatown needs more affordable housing and a public library, and those needs have not been met. Instead the New England Medi-cal Center, Tufts and MIT have come here, and our neighborhood is getting smaller. Now you ask us to give up land for a high school. Where is the space for us?” said Henry Yee of the Chinatown Resident Association to wild applause.
Under the proposal that has been rumored in the neighborhood for a year, Menino wants to build a public arts school on the BRA-owned parking lot, known as Parcel 12, between the Doubletree Hotel and the Tufts Medical Center in the Theatre District.
If approved, the city would sell the high school at 176 Ipswich St., behind Fenway Park, and use the proceeds toward the new $100 million school. The school has received a $400,000 city grant to conduct a feasibility study on relocating the school.
Kairos Shen, the BRA’s chief planner who coordinated the meeting, insisted that the school is not a done deal.
But Scott Butler, the project’s architect, said his Boston-based firm has produced artist renderings of the school to help raise money for the $100 million facility. So far, the school has raised more than $7 million toward the capital project from foundations and private donors. Butler would not provide a copy of the rendering, and referred the request to school officials.
In addition, Harry R. Collings, the BRA’s executive director and Menino confidant, made a rare public appearance at the two-and-a-half hour session. He refused to talk with Banker & Tradesman saying only, “I have no comment.”
Residents reminded the BRA that promises were made by the Menino administration in 2003 to use the surface parking lot for much needed housing; that the Josiah Quincy Upper School remains in temporary quarters in two locations despite assurances that new space would renovated; and that families are awaiting a public library in the neighborhood.
“We have been on the losing end of the stick for a long time,” said Stephanie Fan, a resident and member of the Friends of the China-town Library Committee.
In an interview with Banker & Tradesman, Menino denied that his administration promised housing for Parcel 12. “We have to make this fair for everyone in the city,” he said. “We will create other spaces in Chinatown for housing. There are other locations we are looking at for housing opportunities in Chinatown. Everyone has to be willing to negotiate these issues. We have a great record of providing housing for the Chinatown neighborhood.”
Still, the BRA’s Shen acknowledged the city has made a commitment for affordable housing on Parcel 12.
“We have to figure out how to create an equal or greater number of housing units in Chinatown,” he said. “I would like Parcel 12 to solve all of our problems. If we can find a solution that has a public library, the arts academy and affordable housing, I’d like to see it.”
But Lydia Lowe, president of the Chinese Progressive Association, was skeptical.
“I’d like to see the city and the BRA take the same aggressive approach to getting the community’s priorities moving as they have with getting a new location for the Boston Arts Academy,” she said. “In our experience, its always been other priorities that get pushed.”
