Brighton Allston Community Coalition Opposes Whole Foods Project

Under the City of Boston's 1965/1975 General Plan, the Washington St.-Corey Rd. neighborhood around a commercially-zoned grocery store was designated to be an appropriate area to construct low-income rental housing for Boston's senior citizens. Yet, without first consulting neighborhood tenants and homeowners, the NY-based Kimco Realty Corporation, that currently owns the land on which this Whole Foods store (as well as a branch of Citizens Bank) is located, is proposing to construct a high-rise apartment complex of 270 (mostly market-rate) units, on top of a new Whole Foods store/café at 15-35 Washington Street.

But, not surprisingly, at least one community group, the Brighton Allston Community Coalition [BACC], stated in a Feb. 23, 2019, letter from Steering Committee Chair Kevin Carragee to Casey Hines of the Boston Planning and Development Agency [BPDA], that “Until the developer addresses our significant concerns, we do not support the present proposal.”

Most of the predominantly elderly Brighton residents living nearest to Kimco’s proposed construction project site are opposed to the commercial real estate firm’s plan to further gentrify and “Manhattanize” their neighborhood by constructing an apartment complex that would be unaffordable to Boston’s low- and moderate-income tenants, would exceed the 35-foot zoning restriction limit on building height in the neighborhood and would fail to provide any actual community benefits for the majority of neighborhood residents.

Yet despite its opposition to Kimco’s current plan, the BACC’s Feb. 23, 2019, letter includes a recommendation, if the project is built, that 50 percent of the 270 residential units be condominium units, 70 percent of which would be deed-restricted and require owner occupancy. The BACC letter also recommends that the percentage of "affordable" units be increased to 20 percent.

But even if the City of Boston and Kimco agree to accept the BACC’s recommended changes to the Whole Foods apartment complex plan, most units would be sold or rented at market-rate prices, that would be unaffordable to most low-income Boston tenants.

So whether Kimco’s proposed complex is constructed--either as originally planned or in accordance with the plan changes recommended by the BACC--it will end up further gentrifying the Washington Street-Corey Road neighborhood. And it will also further over-develop Allston-Brighton with high-rise buildings and likely create more of a traffic-gridlocked wind tunnel when completed.

Although the BACC’s letter fails to specifically mention the special housing need that elderly tenants in Boston currently have for more low-income rental units in neighborhoods like Allston-Brighton, its letter does include one curious recommendation: “The developer should supply residents with free T passes…” for the gentrifiers most likely to be able to afford to live in the proposed project. A great benefit that the low-income senior tenants currently living across the street from Whole Foods probably need more than new market-rate residents will!