BC Institutional Plan: Comment Period Extended

Allston Brighton TAB
Neighbors get more time to react to BC plans
By Richard Cherecwich/Staff Writer
Brighton -
Boston College has granted the community an additional 10 days to comment on its institutional master plan, responding to requests from both the BC Task Force and a grassroots neighbors group. The community will now have until Feb. 5 to submit public comments to the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

BC filed its 10-year institutional master plan with the BRA on Dec. 5, and the required 30-day public comment period was extended to 45 days because of the holidays. The task force and a group of neighbors felt that still wasn’t enough to process the school’s $800 million construction plans and provide informed feedback.

On Monday night, the BC Neighbor’s Forum, a grassroots community group that aims to build consensus on BC issues, almost unanimously decided to ask for an extension at a meeting. Michael Pahre, the group’s facilitator, presented a letter to BC officials on Tuesday night, formally asking the college to extend the deadline.

“Unveiling this plan in mid-December is an outrage and we need more time,” resident Sandy Furman said on Monday. “We need at least until the end of January, if not February.”
At the end of the comment period, the BRA will take input from city agencies and public comments to issue a scoping determination, requesting more information from BC and/or that the school change some items in the master plan. Once the scoping document is issued, another 60-day public comment period begins.

Pahre also presented a letter to the mayor-appointed Boston College Task Force requesting they schedule more meetings before the comment period ends on Jan. 19. There is one task force meeting scheduled before then, on Jan. 15, but the group plans to meet on a weekly basis beginning in January. Dates have not been set for the additional task force meetings, chairwoman Jean Woods said on Wednesday.

The neighbor’s meeting on Monday also discussed the college’s plans for new housing and new athletic facilities on the former Archdiocese of Boston property.

The consensus at the meeting, and also at the Dec. 4 task force meeting when BC presented the master plan, was for the school to build higher dormitories in order to house more students, therefore decreasing the number of undergraduates living in residential neighborhoods. Some current dormitories will be demolished as part of the 10-year plan, but new housing will replace the demolished buildings whiled adding 610 new beds, including 500 beds on the Brighton campus.

The proposed new buildings will be four stories tall, and college officials have said they are opposed to building seven- or eight-story buildings. General consensus at the forum was that neighbors didn’t want the school to construct massive towers, but rather add just a few floors.
“If they go from four to six stories, they increase the beds by 50 percent. It’s not that hard,” Shelby Marshall said.

The forum also discussed BC’s proposed athletic center on the northern edge of the Brighton campus, which includes a 1,500-seat baseball stadium, softball stadium and two multipurpose fields, all of which will be lit for nighttime use.

The group tossed around the idea of restricting BC to a certain number of night games per year and limiting public address system use, but several neighbors were undecided on how they felt. The group will continue to discuss the issue.