The MBTA’s abandoned Bartlett Yard in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood could be redeveloped into a mixed-use project with housing and retail.
A former MBTA bus maintenance facility that spewed fumes into Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood could make way for an urban village with housing, boutique retail and green space.
Developers have until Wednesday, March 28, to bid on Bartlett Yard, an 8.6-acre parcel located at 2565 Washington St. in Roxbury’s Dudley Square area. Since 1888, the property has been used as a repair and transportation center. But the yard was closed in 2005 and the T declared the site as surplus, making it available for sale and redevelopment.
“This is not exactly the most attractive site,” said Evelyn Friedman, executive director of Nuestra Comunidad Development Corp., a Roxbury-based nonprofit developer that intends to bid on the project. “But there’s an opportunity for something really beautiful to happen there and eliminate a blighted section of the city.”
Bartlett Yard is one of seven abandoned Roxbury parcels that the city is seeking to develop. The Boston Redevelopment Authority, the city’s planning agency, is coordinating the effort along with the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee, a 15-member panel appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino. The other lots range in size from 1.2 acres to 2 acres. Decisions on those parcels will not come until next year, a BRA spokeswoman said.
Redevelopment of the former bus facility comes on the heels of a recent Request for Proposals for an 8.3-acre site across from the Boston Police Department headquarters. The BRA received three mixed-use proposals for the long-neglected area. At the Dudley Square Station, the BRA also is planning for the renovation of the vacant Ferdinand Building, which will offer more than 200,000 square feet of office space.
Bartlett Yard is located southwest of Washington Street and Bartlett Avenue. The site is within walking distance of Dudley Station, a bus terminal that connects the Silver Line to all parts of the city.
The BRA and Roxbury activists have completed work on a master plan that envisions a transit-oriented, mixed-use development that will “build wealth” for the neighborhood. The Bartlett Yard RFP calls for mixed-income housing as a key component of the project, as well as small or moderate-sized retail and possibly a cultural facility or social service organization.
Mark Boyle, the T’s real estate director, said the agency has several parcels that could fetch as much as $10 million for the cash-strapped transit authority. In addition to bringing money to the T, the disposition of the parcels will have a huge impact on the city’s finances, he said.
“The sale and development of these parcels will have multiple benefits to the state and city,” Boyle said. “Many of these parcels are located near T stops where hundreds of new housing units will be created, resulting in increased ridership, jobs and tax dollars.”
‘A Fear Factor’
Years after the South End, Charlestown and Jamaica Plain were transformed from gritty neighborhoods to havens for upscale Boston residents, some wonder why Roxbury still has a way to go.
“There’s still a fear factor about Roxbury,” said David Luberoff, executive director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston at Harvard University. “The upsurge in violent crime in the last few years makes that neighborhood a somewhat harder sell.”
Last year, B-2, the district that includes Roxbury, had the city’s highest number of murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults and vehicle theft, according to crime statistics from the Boston Police Department.
“As a result, Roxbury will be the last place to get investment in a market upswing and the first place developers shy away from in a housing market that is hurting,” Luberoff said.
Nuestra Comunidad’s Friedman noted that while crime is a problem that plagues Roxbury, police presence is not greater in the neighborhood than other parts of the city.
“B-2 is the most active police precinct, but we don’t have any more police protection than any neighborhoods,” she said. “There are pockets of crime and some of it is associated with low-income housing, so many people in the community are asking for more market-rate homes.”
Still, parts of Roxbury – such as Fort Hill – have emerged as places where people want to live given the high price of property in the neighborhood. Last week, the MLS Property Information Network listed 22 single-family homes for sale in Roxbury from $199,000 for a nine-room Colonial to $520,000 for a three-bedroom townhouse on Fort Hill’s Juniper Street.
Darnell Williams, chairman of the Roxbury Strategic Master Plan Oversight Committee, said the Bartlett Yard parcel offers the community an opportunity to redesign a major section of Roxbury.
“This is the start of a plan for what this land will look like for the next 30 years,” Williams said. “There has been a continuous disinvestment in Roxbury by the state but this is a great time for Roxbury. There’s lots of potential for what Roxbury can become. I’m very bullish on this community.”
Anthony Proscio, co-author of “Comeback Cities: A Blueprint for Urban Neighborhood Revival,” said there’s no single formula to turn around a neighborhood, but any one of a bunch of powerful resources could help create the next great place.
He cited four major factors as the key to urban revival including a grassroots effort to revitalize neighborhoods, the restoration of private markets, major reductions in crime and public-school reform. By eliminating vacant and abandoned buildings, which activists see as “blighted,” community groups have managed to make neighborhoods more livable.
“In Greater Boston, where demand for housing is strong, all you need is a transformed public housing project, a new or improved rapid transit line, or warehouses that can be converted into loft housing at modest expense to launch the next revival,” Proscio said.
