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By Joe Creason

The Land Use Committee and the Planning Board held a joint public hearing on June 17 to hear the perspective of residents on several zoning ordinance amendments.

The public hearing began with a conversation regarding a petition requesting an amendment to the zoning ordinance in the Boynton Yards sub-overlay district submitted by 13 registered voters living in a condominium building at 80 Webster which abuts the Boynton Yards project.

“The 80 Webster Community is a pro-development community and one moves to 80 Webster for the appeal of what the neighborhood will be like in the future with the prospect of community friendly developments being built,” said Roger Levy, a petition signatory presenting on behalf of the 13 registered voters requesting the adoption of an amendment to the zoning the ordinance.

Levy’s presentation contained a slide with an artist’s rendition of the proposed Boynton Yards development, which he says first appeared in the 2016 Union Square Neighborhood Plan and again in the July 2020 Boynton Yards Urban Design Framework, as well as in numerous public documents.

The artist rendition in discussion depicted new high-rise developments protruding up from the Union Square area with the surrounding buildings gradually decreasing in height from mid-rise developments to residential houses. The rendition shows the 80 Webster condominium building admits several other mid-rise buildings on that same block between Columbia Street and Webster Avenue

“If you ask members of our building community but also neighbors in the area, this is the kind of development that was expected for this block. That it would be a gate-way, a gradual transition from the largely residential neighborhood to the west of 80 Webster to the high-rises more at the heart of the Boynton Yards district,” Levy said.

Levy says what the 80 Webster community was expecting for years based on the artist rendition, was very different from what they recently realized they would be getting. An illustration from the Feb 1, 2021 neighborhood meeting of the Boynton Gateway Project, shows a 230-foot commercial high-rise standing within 20 feet of the 80 Webster condominium building.

“This was completely unexpected and the project was presented whole cloth without any input from us,” Levy said.

Levy says the 80 Webster community was completely unaware of these plans until Oct. 5, 2020, when the pre-neighborhood meeting occurred for this project. Though a draft ordinance of the Boynton Yards Overlay District in August 2019 shows half of the Webster block zoned for high-rises, Levy says that residents were not made widely aware of this draft.

“Previously in January 2019, the ordinance was zoned for mid-rise on the entire block and only months before the ordinance was passed there was a change for high-rise buildings on our block,” Levy said.

Levy says that the petitioners have not been able to find a record of this change being mentioned at any meetings between August 2019 and December 2019, when the ordinance was passed. Levy says there was no explicit notification to affected members of the community and they could not find anyone in their neighborhood who was aware of the change.

“We have had conversations with CV Properties which have led us nowhere and that is why we are here today. Our zoning amendment petition proses to make the 80 Webster block a mixture of urban residential, mid-rise 5 and high rise, and we suggest moving that the high-rise portion to the northern part of the block,” Levy said, “Though we don’t want a high rise within 20 feet of our building, we want development and we want to see our neighborhood grow.”

The zoning amendment petition also asks for 20 and 30-foot setbacks for buildings around the 80 Webster urban residential lot, citing that there are only two instances of high-rise buildings directly abutting residential property in Somerville as well as the fact that final Environmental Impact Report for Union Square shows the high-rise buildings with a setback of approximately 90 feet.

“We believe our amendments are grounded in the precedents of how high-rise zoning is handled elsewhere in Somerville,” Levy said.

Executive Director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development George Proakis, spoke as representative of the City Administration during the public hearing.

“I know it’s sometimes unpopular to try and defend where developers are coming from,” Proakis said, “I’m comfortable working on the economic development side of this business if we are going to change zoning on a whim to the great effect of our development partners.”

Proakis says that since the Boynton Yards plan was created, commercial interests have emphasized the development of life sciences buildings and of the life sciences industry in the area, stating that life science buildings have certain expectations in terms of shape and structure.

“If you narrow the high-rise buildings, then you take life science tenants and life science financing off the table,” Proakis said.