A few short years ago, Jamaica Plain’s Jackson Square was a wasteland. Now, after a decade of planning and preparation, a new vision for the neighborhood is finally taking flight.
The redevelopment of the square has been a decades-long dream. Back in the 1970s, the proposed Southeast Expressway extension cut a swath through the neighborhood, with state transport officials bulldozing dozens of homes and businesses along the proposed highway route until neighborhood protestors successfully derailed the project.
But even as Jamaica Plain overall began to recover – and gentrify – in the 1990s and 2000s, the scars left by the failed proposal remained, including the gutted Jackson Square, whose T stop was surrounded by vacant lots and rundown industrial properties. The Boston Redevelopment Authority finally called for proposals to revitalize the neighborhood in 2004, and in 2005, a coalition led by the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corp., Urban Edge and the Hyde Square Task Force, along with private developers, was awarded the $250 million job.
But when the recession hit in 2008, funding dried up, temporarily putting much of the project in abeyance. Now it’s back on track, with three new buildings of mixed-income and affordable units already rented, including 225 Centre St., which opened across from the Jackson Square T stop this fall. Currently under construction is 1542 Columbus Ave., which will include 37 units with a range of affordability, along with 12,000 square feet of commercial and community space.
Chrystal Kornegay, when she looks around the neighborhood, said she now thinks, “I went to the department of urban studies and planning at MIT … and [then] I built a neighborhood. It’s kind of cool!” Kornegay is president and CEO of Urban Edge and co-head of Jackson Square Partners, the master developer for the project.
Still Facing Challenges
The overall plan has undergone some recent revisions. A large plot in the center of the square that had been under option, intended as parking for the new residential buildings, was recently sold to a private developer. That means sacrificing some of the green space called for in the original plan to accommodate the necessary parking spaces.
Other eyesores remain. An MBTA salt barn used by road-cleaning crews looms over the planned site for the 38,000-square-foot combined indoor soccer facility and ice skating rink, and a NSTAR transformer station currently sits smack dab across from the site for the next planned residential development.
“Our dream of dreams, we would relocate it,” sighed Kornegay, but she’s not confident she’ll be able to get it done. “We had big dreams in 2006, and now we’re just having little dreams, a series of little dreams.”
For now, she’s concentrating on the next phase of development: The completion of 1542 Columbus and the transformation of the adjacent lot into the soccer and rink facility.
Bringing a dedicated facility for winter recreation to the area has been a long-held community desire. The neighborhood is currently served by the Kelly Rink, run by the Department of Parks and Recreation.
“It’s an outdoor rink, uncovered. Four years ago, when we had that really warm winter, it almost never opened,” said Kornegay. “If you go there, there’s a lot of young people from the neighborhood; it’s very diverse, very inexpensive. So the idea was, how do we carry that theme over to a bigger facility?”
The rink project is expected to cost between $18 and $19 million; the group has so far secured approximately $5.7 million in state funding and intends to apply for an additional $5.5 million in New Markets Tax Credits to help fund the project. The remainder will have to come from private donations; the partnership is in the midst of a capital campaign to raise the final third, and hopes to break ground in 2016.
Looking Ahead
The last remaining major piece will be three buildings along Jackson Street, across from an MBTA greenway, with a planned-for total of 134 housing units. The group hopes to include a mix of affordable and market-rate housing, possibly including ownership units.
“The market has come back strong. People believe in this market – well, the market believes in this market, based on rents that we’re getting at 225 [Centre St.],” which are 20 percent over projections, said Kornegay. The Jackson Square project should be fully built out by 2018, she said.
Finally being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel – for the project and for the neighborhood – has been immensely gratifying. “Because I do this work every day, I can be a bit of a cynic about it,” she said. “I talk to a lot of students about [urban planning], and most of them say, ‘I want to change the built environment.’ And I say, you know that happens once every five years, right? The rest of the time is just slogging through. It’s really nice to see the changes – not only physically, but the change in the way people feel about their neighborhood. And how other people feel about the neighborhood now, too.”
Email: csullivan@thewarrengroup.com
