Scott Roche
I think this plan looks great. I really like that you're prioritizing density and affordability over things like parking. It will be good have the retail space this building will provide and I think it would make a *major* aesthetic improvement to the Forest Hills neighborhood.

Jennifer Uhrhane
With the massive surge in residential units on Washington Street, the retail needs for all these future residents will not be met unless a grocery store and other basic retail amenities are provided on Washington in the Plan: JP/Rox area. Within less than a mile from this project 1300 housing units are in the pipeline (proposed/approved/under construction) with Plan JP/Rox accommodating for another 1100 in the near future. I urge this developer to reduce the number of units in order to add enough first floor retail space for a grocery store. the harvest co-op nearby, though an admirable organization, is not affordable for most people and does not have a wide enough range of products to support this new population. of the 1300 pipeline units, their related retail components (if they exist at all) are not planning for a grocery store. PLEASE bring this desperately needed service to lower Washington Street. all these transit oriented developments will backfire if their tenants have to drive elsewhere to go the the grocery store.

Eric Herot
As a general rule I think all of the buildings on Washington St should have first floor retail. And I think the neighborhood could certainly benefit from a lower cost grocer.

Eric Herot
Please do not reduce the height. JP (and Boston) are in a housing crisis. Shortening buildings, when doing so requires the removal of bedrooms, will only make the situation worse. Additionally, more units means more money left over to subsidize affordable units. If you truly care about alleviating JP's affordable housing crisis, you will need to squeeze every possible unit out of this parcel.

Eric Herot
Susan, the problem with the approach you're suggesting here is that it essentially amounts to "I got mine." Unfortunately this attitude makes it almost impossible for us to add enough housing to this neighborhood to put a real dent in prices, and even if we were to add it with all of the parking that would be required to make sure that not a single new car was parked on your road (which would be a LOT), the additional traffic it would bring would present its own problems. The only way we're going to successfully address this housing crisis is if we can build in a way that encourages more people to give up their cars.

There is a solution to this: We need to start charging enough for resident parking permits so that people are discouraged from owning and storing cars on the street that they rarely use. Street parking is a scarce and valuable resource and giving it away for free causes all sorts of unwanted side effects (like the debate we're having right now). Several of us showed up at City Hall last week to discuss this idea, and councilors seemed receptive to it. If you need the parking space on the street in front of your house AND you want to see housing prices come down, consider writing to your councilor in support of this measure. I know they would love to hear support for a new approach to solving this (one that actually works).

Eric Herot
The parking situation in this neighborhood is only bad during the day when commuters come here to park for less than what it costs to park in an MBTA lot. The number of people that choose to park here is limited only by the availability of spaces. No amount of parking provided by this development (which people would obviously need to pay to use) is going to fix the on-street parking situation because the supply of people looking to park is practically infinite. This development should avoid adding to pollution and congestion in the area by *minimizing* the amount of parking and thus discouraging people from trying to find a space here in the first place.

Eric Herot
And what of the elderly and disabled people that are no longer able to drive a car? For those people apartments like these (near the T) are really the only option. Some number of them are going to be displaced so that we can provide these parking spaces, all so that the people who are already driving can avoid the expense and inconvenience of having to park downtown or take the bus.

It is a bit perverse to say that we need to build parking spaces here (thus pushing up the price of housing) so that people can drive from where the housing is less expensive. Lets fix the housing shortage HERE and dispense with the need to drive to the train entirely.

Eric Herot
1. The supply of commuters looking for cheap parking is nearly infinite. What difference is building another few parking spaces here really going to make?
2. The community already struggles from a lack of housing. Building more parking spaces means building less housing. Should we not also worry about the burden that not building enough housing places on the community?

No, Susan. The point of a transit station isn't only to get people to drive there — that's what buses, local shuttles, bikes, and taxis are for. The alternative is to move those people driving to Forest Hills onto the network of buses that feed into Forest Hills that currently jockey for room on the roads with those same people trying to drive to the T. I think you're overestimating the number of people who need to drive to Forest Hills out of necessity and over-valuing their inconvenience as compared to the need for homes and the desire for walkable communities. We shouldn't be bending over backwards to accommodate people commuting to Forest Hills. The loss of 300 commuter parking spaces is an acceptable push away from that suburban development mindset. We can and should be doing everything to improve our bus network so those displaced commuters have better connecting options from their home to the subway. And to take your concern about people being 'on the road polluting and causing more traffic': people will do what you give them the option to do. In this case, if we require Criterion to build commuter parking, we're reinviting those people to continue driving to the T, 'on the road polluting and causing more traffic'.

Sonja Vitow
The parking situation is already so bad around there. And new condos are going up around the corner — the community is not prepared to accommodate this increase in population.

Reducing commuter parking will not suddenly force all of those people to drive. If parking is more difficult for them at Forest Hills, so be it. That changes the calculus of their commuting decisions and effectively makes it more difficult for them to drive in the first place. Forest Hills can and should be a living, breathing, walkable neighbourhood, not a drive-to-transit commuter lot like what Salem has done next to its downtown.

If those people end up parking illegally in the surrounding community, you should take that issue up with BTD, not burden this development with that concern. By all means, we should be asking BTD for properly-enforced resident parking programs across the city and especially near transit where we should be building our most dense, low-parking housing and offices.

I want to underscore Mark's comments about car sharing access on this site. It is **critical** that car sharing companies have access to the same number of spaces currently available today, especially as concerns about parking 'shortage' are heightened with the number of units being built at Forest Hills. Because this is in a transit-rich and transit-accessible neighbourhood, each one of those shared cars is enabling upward of 7 households who would otherwise have a car to not own a car.

I appreciate you reducing the number of spaces on this lot (though I'd love to see it go down to ZERO) and adding much-needed housing to an exploding market, but car sharing is a major part of the equation to enabling people to live car-free. Bike parking and bike share are not interchangeable parts of the car-free, transit-oriented equation.

Mark Tedrow

I believe that you (Criterion Development Partners) are underestimating the need for car share both in the community and at your proposed development.  Currently there appear to be 10 carshare spaces at the LAZ lot that the community uses (6 zipcars and 4 enterprise).  While some may move to the Forest Hills MBTA Employee lot, it's likely that the area will be undeserved in the very near future as more TOD developments get built - there are 700 dwelling units in construction or in design at Forest Hills - unless appropriate levels of car share is made available at each development.  On-site car share is an amenity that you can use to promote your development.  Since your design is still in a very preliminary phase, I suggest that you look at reworking the garage to allow a portion to be open to the public to be used for car share and perhaps visitors.  After all, just because 120 of your units will not have a car, it doesn't mean that they won't occasionally need one.  The area is transit rich, but not every trip can be made on mass transit.

Mark Tedrow

Eric Herot
Requiring developers to build parking inevitably forces them to reduce the number of units of housing that can be built. We may have a parking "shortage" (debatable since most of the parking in JP is still free) but we have a housing *crisis*. Not a single additional parking space should be constructed near a train station in Boston until the housing situation has been brought under control.

Eric Herot
Underground parking is hugely expensive (costing between $90-120k per space) and is not worth anywhere close to that amount on the open market (in JP a space goes for about $30k, or $125-150/month). To make up for the expense, developers are forced to build units catering to wealthier buyers, and they are not able to build as many affordable units. It also means many projects do not even become viable until real estate prices rise high enough to cover the cost of building the garage. Prices are not (yet) at that level here, so it's very unlikely the developer would be able to accommodate a request to put the parking underground. This means we would almost certainly get fewer units.

Eric Herot
It's not the job of developers in JP to worry about where commuters FROM outside the neighborhood going TO somewhere outside the neighborhood are going to store their cars in the process. They can use one of the many underutilized parking lots elsewhere on the T that they have to pay for, or they can rent a unit in this building so that they don't need to drive to Forest Hills in the first place.

brian murray.

http://www.parkandpedalmap.org/#/map/

Dane Smith

i just wanted to say that I think that this is truly brilliant urban planning and a great reuse of a derelict, polluted site.  I wish that this city would use this mixed use/mixed income development as a model for the rest of the city.  This will create opportunities for low income people to work their way up the ladder into the middle class and create a great quality of life for all the residents.  Thumbs up!