They laughed when we sat down to plan an urban village.
Nearly 20 years ago, Fenway Community Development Corp. (CDC) led a community planning process that produced a heretical vision for the three blocks of Boylston Street near Fenway Park, a depressing string of gas stations, fast-food establishments and parking lots. The Fenway Urban Village Plan envisioned a pedestrian- and transit-oriented Main Street lined with handsome buildings that combined 3,000 units of mixed-income housing with ground-floor stores, a new elementary school, and a community center. In 1999, after slight revision, the vision became our best argument against a Red Sox plan to build a new stadium on that same stretch of Boylston.
Skeptics—and there were many—dismissed our vision as a pipe dream and ridiculed the effort to protect Fenway Park. Happily, history has vindicated us on both counts. More important, the first pieces of the urban village have fallen into place:
Key developers have embraced the Urban Village vision, incorporating it into mixed-use projects that already provide 700 new apartments, a state-of-the-art health center, and an array of new stores.
New Fenway zoning that emerged from a City-led process largely conforms to the vision laid out in the Urban Village Plan.
The Red Sox have settled into a much-improved Fenway Park, adopting ideas hatched by Fenway CDC in collaboration with the preservation group Save Fenway Park!.
The state has allocated funds for a full-time Yawkey Station on the Worcester commuter-rail line. The new station will get LMA employees, Sox fans, and other visitors into the neighborhood and out of their cars.
Upping The Ante
As our 20-year-old vision has evolved from heretical to mainstream, we believe it’s time to raise the bar again. Rather than simply settle for redevelopment of these three blocks, we see a rare opportunity to develop a nationally-recognized model for urban neighborhoods that achieves the highest standards in environmental sustainability, economic diversity, and synergies between residents and their world-class institutional neighbors. As unwelcome as the economic recession is, it provides breathing space for updating our neighborhood vision and creating Urban Village 3.0.
In the tradition of our original plan, Urban Village 3.0 is ambitious yet practical.
The region needs to adopt a housing affordability standard for new projects that exceeds Mayor Menino’s inclusionary housing requirement, and develop a plan to preserve all existing affordable apartments in the neighborhood, about 400 of which are at-risk of market conversion.
Local institutions should be encouraged—or required—to invest in neighborhood housing, with units set aside for their employees, and support programs that link local residents with jobs at these institutions.
We need to develop the new Yawkey Station and commit to a light rail or bus rapid transit Urban Ring plan that runs through the LMA. As an interim measure, give local residents and visitors access to the existing “shadow” transit system: the LMA’s shuttle buses.
Car use—both a local and a global imperative—should be reduced even further. Fenway residents already get this; the neighborhood boasts one of the state’s lowest car-ownership rates. Better transit service and a cap on public parking in the area will help LMA employees, Red Sox fans, and other visitors “get it” as well.
We need to impose a new requirement that future projects meet 25 percent of their energy needs through renewable sources. Train local residents for green jobs and create a city fund, similar to those that support housing and jobs training, for adding energy-efficiency and renewable-energy features to existing properties.
Link To The Future
The resulting community—sustainable, diverse, and vibrant—will benefit local residents, of course, but it promises to pay bigger dividends to developers by creating a community that tenants, homebuyers, retailers, shoppers, and employees will all flock to. Much of this new vision could be funded through flexible use of the linkage and inclusionary housing funds that future development will generate under current city regulations.
The interests of developers, residents, City Hall, and nearby institutions all align within this updated vision of the Fenway as a model for modern urban neighborhoods. Urban Village 3.0: Why should we settle for less? Why should Boston?
Carl Nagy-Koechlin has served as Fenway CDC’s Executive Director since 1997. He will leave that position in July to become Executive Director at South Shore Housing Development Corp. Steve Wolf is a Fenway CDC board member.
