The Commons at Forest Hills Station in Jamaica Plain.

Jamaica Plain’s Washington Street corridor has been mostly untouched by the building booms that are rendering unrecognizable many Boston neighborhoods. Three-deckers and brick apartment buildings sit side-by-side with body shops, beauty salons and bodegas just as they did in past decades.
But Boston’s real estate bull market has few boundaries, and Jamaica Plain is starting to change. A 280-unit apartment complex with two-bedroom rents projected at $2,650 is under construction a short walk from the Forest Hills MBTA station. Close to 400 additional housing units are in permitting or recently approved on vacant lots and parcels currently occupied by warehouses and repair garages.
The mayor says he’s encouraged by the neighborhood’s vitality. The city councilor says the wave of private investment is “exciting” but the city needs to plan better. Neighborhood activists are leery, mentioning a recent spike in rents for longtime residents and displacement of commercial tenants.
Against this backdrop, a group of outside experts thinks Jamaica Plain is the perfect place for Boston to think bigger about housing, given Boston Mayor Martin Walsh’s goal of encouraging 53,000 new residential units citywide by 2030. As the city prepares to update its zoning along “transit nodes,” it should encourage thousands of high-rise units in a half-mile radius surrounding the Forest Hills MBTA station, a panel of Urban Land Institute experts recommended.
“While a lot of people may not appreciate high-rise product, if there is an opportunity for that, this is the place for that to occur,” said Rick Dishnica, a Port Washington, Calif. developer and member of the ULI group.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority – which controls zoning changes – will hold the first public meetings on the topic this summer, spokesman Nick Martin said.
City officials asked the ULI’s Rose Center For Public Leadership to study Washington Street from Egleston Square to Forest Hills because of the volume of development proposals in the pipeline, said John Fitzgerald, a BRA senior project manager.
“It’s certainly a section that has been calling out for planning for quite some time,” Fitzgerald said. “There’s a lot of action and investment coming to this area and we need to have a good plan.”

‘Dysfunctional’ Review Process
At a presentation to discuss impressions taken from a week-long visit to Boston, members of the ULI group alluded to a “dysfunctional” development review process.
“Every city has its problems, but it seems there’s a lack of communication. We need the city departments to talk to one another,” said Peter Cavaluzzi, the group’s co-chair and a principal at New York-based planners EE&K.
Part of the problem, BRA officials acknowledge, is long-deferred citywide planning. The BRA is preparing to begin its first citywide master plan in a half-century. In the absence of a long-term plan, the agency reviews applications for commercial and residential projects without considering the cumulative impacts on development-heavy neighborhoods.

Luis Cotto, executive director of Egleston Square Main Streets, is concerned about long-time residents being priced out of Jamaica Plain.

Article 80, the city’s review process for all major large-scale projects since 1996, also came in for scrutiny. Architectural reviews of major projects should occur earlier in the BRA’s review, said Calvin Gladney, a managing partner at Mosiac Urban Partners in Washington, D.C.  Divisive issues such as density and affordable housing requirements should be addressed earlier in the approval process.
City Councilor Matt O’Malley, whose District 7 includes all of Jamaica Plain, has been calling for a comprehensive planning study of the Washington Street corridor for a year.
“It’s exciting to see it affecting the more outerlying neighborhoods like JP, but affordability remains an important piece,” O’Malley said. “One of the issues you’re running into is you’ve got so many projects. We need to have a study looking at a 50,000-foot view of everything.”
The MBTA will be a major part of the discussion, O’Malley predicts. In the wake of the past winter’s historic service disruptions, any development will have to take into account whether the Orange Line can handle additional capacity from thousands of new residents.
And then there’s the question of a key MBTA-owned parcel’s role in future development. The agency’s 18-acre bus yard just north of the Forest Hills station has been nominated as a natural candidate for relocation and redevelopment, although an informal proposal last year drew heated opposition from officials and residents in Roslindale where an alternate site was proposed.
The largest project to break ground so far is The Commons At Forest Hills, a joint venture of Braintree-based John Corcoran & Co. and The Brennan Group of Boston. Built at the former Hughes Oil heating oil depot property just north of the Monsignor William J. Casey Overpass, the 280-unit complex contains 37 affordable units.
Developers declined to be interviewed for this story but furnished a fact sheet comparing projected rents at The Commons – $2,650 per month for a two-bedroom – to rents ranging from $3,300 to $8,000 at recent luxury complexes completed in the city such as Waterside Seaport and Ink Block South End.

‘There Are People Who Want To TakeAdvantage’
Nonprofit community group Egleston Square Main Streets wants the BRA to impose higher affordable housing requirements from developers than its typical 15 percent citywide threshold of a project’s total units. It favors a 25 percent threshold, with developers allowed to satisfy the requirement partly through payments to a city affordable housing fund.
Long considered the affordable side of Jamaica Plain, with a substantial immigrant population, the neighborhood has seen an influx of new residents and landlords sensing a changing multifamily market. Rents have spiked in the last 18 months, he said.
“Egleston Square always suffered from a perception problem,” said Luis Cotto, executive director of Egleston Square Main Streets. “With the realization that this is not this violent place that everybody thought it was, you’re seeing more young couples moving in. You’re seeing more students.”
Some of the new landlords prefer to rent apartments to college students rather than families, seeking higher rents, Cotto said.
“More and more, there are people who want to take advantage of the market,” Cotto said. “You’ll have people who’ve been paying $1,500 (in rent) for many years, and they’re given double the rent on their new lease and if you can’t afford it, you’ve got to go. They’re going through the eviction process. That is very much a concern of ours.”