Neighborly squabbling between Boston and Dedham has scuttled two significant developments in recent years. Now, as the MBTA sinks millions into cleaning up pollution on a prime parcel on the Dedham-Boston border, observers wonder whether the two municipalities can learn to build in each other’s back yards – or whether cross-town politics will leave the cash-strapped T saddled with a multi-million dollar dirt pit.
The Readville 5-Yard is a 42-acre plot on Industrial Drive, straddling Boston and Dedham. Twenty-one acres sit in each town. Dedham has its half zoned for single-family residential use. Boston’s half is commercial and industrial. Those two uses aren’t easily reconciled – especially given Dedham’s deeply-held opposition to development that will put cars on its roads or stress its overtaxed school system.
That’s a problem for the T. The agency has already tried, and failed, to spur development at the site. Now it’s proceeding with a costly environmental cleanup effort at the yard – and hoping to sell off the parcel for development.
Until recently, signs emblazoned with skulls and crossbones circled the yard. That’s because the property, which is owned by the T, is absolutely rotten with pollutants. Railroads first started running through the neighborhood in 1834. They’d use the yard as a maintenance and storage facility, scraping and painting cars, and burning waste materials. In 1985, it was the site of a massive sulfuric acid spill. The railroads also used the site as a dumping ground for rotting railroad ties; following that lead, individuals took to littering the grounds with automotive parts. The result: A plot of land permeated by arsenic, lead and petroleum-based pollutants
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection ruled the site posed an imminent health hazard in 1999, and in 2001, then-Attorney General Tom Reilly extracted a commitment from the T to clean the rail yard up. The agency has spent $2.3 million on cleanup efforts since that date. It is now finalizing plans to spend another $5.75 million carting 11,550 cubic yards of contaminated soil off-site. Politicians on both sides of the border expect the T to sell the yard once that work is done.
I’ve Got A Bridge To Sell You
“Clearly, it’s a great piece of property,” said Dedham selectman James MacDonald. “The T is looking for revenue. They’re not going to give the land away.”
That is, of course, part of the problem. The costs of environmental cleanup will be passed on to any future developer – who will then, in turn, have to squeeze profit out of the site. A developer’s margins will become more difficult to negotiate, depending on site use. The soil excavation the T is planning is the least costly of four mitigation alternatives it considered, and only gets the site to baseline contaminant levels for commercial and industrial use. The most intensive cleanup option, believed to be necessary for residential development, involves trucking away 37,000 more cubic yards of soil, at an additional cost of $17 million. And any significantly-sized development certainly wouldn’t have neighborhood momentum on its side.
The T last tried designating a developer for the yard in 2003. It tapped the Baran Companies to build out the yard’s residential end, and First Highland Management and Development to handle commercial and industrial development. First Highland never got a serious proposal on the table, while Baran’s pitch went from 570 units of housing, to 264, to 83, to 71. At one point, Boston’s flustered mayor, Tom Menino, exclaimed, “If this proposal goes forward, I would put a wall up” along the Boston-Dedham border. Menino lives just blocks away from the yard. The T eventually de-designated the developer in September 2007.
Dedham responded to the experience by re-zoning its half of the yard last May. That change severely restricts what any developer can build on the yard by right – and certainly doesn’t envision the types of intensive uses Boston’s side is zoned for.
“We had no choice,” said MacDonald, who painted the change as Dedham’s “best protection” against construction that doesn’t “fit the character” of the surrounding residential neighborhood.
Density concerns also helped sink the planned redevelopment of a Stop & Shop warehouse along the Boston-Dedham border. The Campanelli Companies tried to build 1,850 residential units on that site, but Dedham didn’t want to absorb waves of children into its school system. Boston then tried to annex Dedham’s portion of the site, but, MacDonald said, Dedham couldn’t justify losing property tax dollars.
“Our schools are at peak capacity,” MacDonald said. “Development brings in additional funds, but it also drains services. Sometimes that money offsets the drain, sometimes it doesn’t.”
Who Knows When
Boston City Councilor Rob Consalvo noted that a recently announced neighborhood-wide rezoning effort “will be looking at these super-large parcels,” saying, “I remain very hopeful and optimistic that this parcel will be developed at some point.” Consalvo also added, “Whatever happens, both sides should equally share traffic burdens.”
Can they? MacDonald hopes so, but adds that it’s not inconceivable that the two towns won’t be able to make a project work.
“Sometimes we can do things together, other times, it just won’t work. With all respect to the other side, it’s what works for you. In the end, you have to do what’s in the best interests of your taxpayers.”
