Thirteen Villages & One Goal... Newtonville
Newtonville is a vibrant, walkable village with a thriving restaurant scene, great little shops and two large supermarkets. The arts are important to Newtonville, which is home to the school of the Boston Ballet Company, the New Art Center and screenings and events at the Senior Center (the former Newtonville branch library).
Newtonville is more diverse than some other Newton villages in terms of population, income levels and varieties of housing stock, and part of the village is eligible for federal Community Development Block Grant funding. The village has an Area Council, and a number of community organizations including Beautiful Newtonville, the Newton Neighborhood Association and the Newtonville Trust.
Challenges Facing Newtonville
Challenges to Newtonville's character and scale include an old wound: Newtonville's village center was split in two in the 1960's by the construction of the Mass Pike Extension. Restoring Newtonville's village green and reuniting the village is a goal of many in Newtonville. Other challenges include the construction of the new Newton North High School without sufficient on-site parking, which has led to student cars parked on residential streets, and the City's unwelcome solution - a parking plan requiring residents to obtain permits to park in front of their own homes. In the past two years, developers have proposed over-sized high-density housing projects for Court Street and Austin Street, against the wishes of Newtonville residents and business owners.
Challenges to Newtonville's character and scale include an old wound: Newtonville's village center was split in two in the 1960's by the construction of the Mass Pike Extension. Restoring Newtonville's village green and reuniting the village is a goal of many in Newtonville. Other challenges include the construction of the new Newton North High School without sufficient on-site parking, which has led to student cars parked on residential streets, and the City's unwelcome solution - a parking plan requiring residents to obtain permits to park in front of their own homes. In the past two years, developers have proposed over-sized high-density housing projects for Court Street and Austin Street, against the wishes of Newtonville residents and business owners.
A Greenway to Reunite the Village
Railroad tracks have bisected Newtonville's village center since the mid-19th century, but the Massachusetts Turnpike extension construction, which began in 1962, split the village in two like an open wound. Many Newtonville residents want to see the village reunified and beautified. The time is right to deck over the Mass Pike and train tracks to create a "Senator Ted Kennedy Greenway", restoring Newtonville's village green, re-building an accessible rail station, and creating new "land" for in-scale, in-character space for public, commercial and affordable/senior residential use, and the tree-lined parking to support those uses. Read more here. |
Washington Place
Developer Robert Korff of Mark Investments purchased the historic buildings collectively known as the "Orr Block" at the corner of Walnut and Washington, and purchased most of the buildings along Washington Street from Walnut Street to Lowell Avenue. He demolished his purchases, and his Washington Place high-density, luxury rental housing development Public in now under construction. Reaction in Newtonville has been overwhelmingly negative. |
Austin Street
The City decided to declare surplus, spot re-zone for higher density, and make available to developers at below market-rate prices, the publicly owned Austin Street Parking Lot, in a process that lacked transparency and community input in the crucial early stages. When renderings of developers' proposals for massive housing projects for the site were published in 2013, Newtonville residents and business owners mobilized to stop the giveaway of a needed community resource. Most supported the idea of beautifying the lot with trees, and a small park. |
After a long battle, in December 2015, just before the final vote, one key member of the Board of Alderman was persuaded to flip, another followed, and the project (rendering above, right) was granted a Special Permit to proceed, despite the overwhelming opposition of the residents and business owners of Newtonville.
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Court Street
A cautionary tale on the dangers of downsizing seniors selling their property to a developer: A developer who has a history of using the State's 40B law to enable high-density housing projects in Newton's neighborhoods purchased two adjacent houses on narrow Court Street. The houses contained rental units that housed tenants of modest means, but those units didn't count under the State's definition of "affordable housing". The tenants were evicted, so the developer could build an oversized "luxury" condo complex that contains 75% very expensive, market rate condos, and burdens the neighborhood with parking, traffic and school overcrowding impacts. The Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) approved a 40B permit for the project in October 2014. The developer, who had professed his deep commitment to Newtonville and affordable housing, then sold the properties and the permit to another developer. Abutters went to court to challenge the 40B permit, but could not afford to carry the case through to a victory. The new developer, who had purchased the project, demolished both historic houses early in 2016. Read more here. |
Traffic and Parking Impacts of NNHS
Although neighbors pleaded with City planners and the School Committee to think about the parking impacts during the long years of planning the new Newton North High School, those pleas were ignored, and NNHS was constructed without sufficient on-site parking for students with cars. As student cars quickly clogged neighboring residential streets, the City's Planning Department decided to profit from earlier mistakes by selling parking permits to |
the students authorizing them to park on residential streets, and requiring residents to purchase permits to park on their own streets. Neighborhood parking plans are in the works for other villages in Newton too. It's since been tweaked a tiny bit, but here's the original Newton North Neighborhood Parking Plan. As for the traffic, anyone who needs to drive on Walnut Street around the time that the school day starts or ends at NNHS knows about the traffic impacts of the school's current site plan. It can take 30 minutes to traverse the road from Austin Street to Commonwealth Avenue.
Cabot School Overcrowding & Rebuilding
Cabot School was overcrowded and in terrible condition. In 2013, Newton voters approved overrides to pay for the rebuilding of Angier school in Waban and Cabot School in Newtonville, and to address overcrowding at Zervas School. See a video of the conditions here. The renovated and expanded Cabot School is great news for the teachers and children who teach and learn there. But if the construction of high-density housing projects at Austin Street, Court Street, the Orr Block, and elsewhere in Newtonville goes ahead, the new Cabot School will likely face over-crowding issues again. |
Possible Improvements to Walnut Street
Newton's Planning Department in 2013 sponsored a visioning session at which Newtonville residents and business owners were invited to brainstorm improvements and beautification measures for Walnut Street, inspired by Beautiful Newtonville survey results, and in anticipation of a scheduled re-paving in 2014. They asked for wider sidewalks, trees, benches and vintage-style lighting. Community opposition to the proposed development of the Austin Street parking lot may have played a role in City Hall's decision to postpone the improvements to Walnut Street, first to 2015, and then again, to after construction of the Austin Street project . Walnut Street re-paving and sidewalk improvements, therefore, won't happen until 2020. Possible Improvements to Washington Street In 2014, the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC), a regional growth-promotion agency that also does consulting work-for-hire for municipalities, initiated a study of the Washington Street corridor in Newton, with the stated objective of studying safety issues there, but there is not yet funding available to implement the MAPC's recommendations. |