Dainty Dot = "Too Tall"

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Design panel approves plan for Dainty Dot site
Commissioners still harbor reservations
By Thomas C. Palmer Jr.
Globe Staff / February 7, 2008

The Boston Civic Design Commission this week reluctantly approved a developer's controversial proposal for a 27-story residential tower over the old Dainty Dot building on the edge of Chinatown.

At the urging of the city's new director of planning, Kairos Shen, the five commissioners present at a meeting Tuesday night gave "conditional approval" to the condo project at Essex Street and the Surface Artery. Shen had argued the project needed the commission's approval before it could move forward in the permitting process and further improvements could be made.

No further vote by the commission is required, but changes made by the developer, Ori Ron, in collaboration with Boston Redevelopment Authority planners, will be shown to the commission. Now, building plans call for about 180 units and some ground-floor retail space at the former Dainty Dot hosiery company site.

Many in the Chinatown and Leather District neighborhoods support the project, while some neighbors and other critics say it is too tall for the relatively low-rise Chinatown community and would impose too much on the adjacent Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway park. They also worry the new building would set a precedent for more towers in the area.

While voting as Shen recommended, some commissioners expressed reservations about aspects of the project, including its height, as well as the predicament they said the BRA put them in by pushing for their approval at this incomplete stage of development.

Appointed by the mayor, the 11 professionals on the commission assess the design quality of new developments and whether they fit well into existing neighborhoods. With the Dainty Dot proposal, the BRA was asking the commission - over strong objections from some neighbors - to approve a building that is three times the height allowed under the current 100-foot zoning.

"The present proposal is a series of compromises with a lot of pressures," said commission member Andrea Leers. "It should be a better project."

Critics say the Dainty Dot process epitomizes the problem with the approval process in Boston, where zoning regulations have built-in flexibility and where the BRA has discretion to determine height on a proposal-by-proposal basis.

"It's a sham," said Lawrence Rosenblum, a Leather District resident and critic of the project. "The BCDC has abdicated its responsibility to be a design reviewer for the city."

"The project . . . was basically recommended by the BRA," he said. With its vote, the commission "put it back in the hands of the very people who approved it in the first place, completely contrary to zoning."

On Jan. 8, following an emotional discussion of the project, the commission postponed its vote for a month. Member David Hacin said on Tuesday he remains concerned about the building's height, floors of above-ground parking, and the manner in which the 119-year-old building's facades would be incorporated into the base of a modern glass tower.

"For me, there are a couple of strikes against the project," he said, adding: "This is a very difficult position we're in."

Shen said the BRA would seek to eliminate some of the above-ground parking and reduce the proposed 150 parking spaces.

But Shen made no suggestion that the proposed glass tower would be reduced in height - the primary objection of opponents.

He defended the building's height, calling the site a "transitional" location between the Financial District, with its taller buildings, and Chinatown, where buildings are more modest in scale. Currently, the building is proposed to be 299 feet high, plus one level of rooftop mechanical equipment. It would be located across Essex Street from 37-floor State Street Financial Center, which is about 500 feet high.

Shen, Ron, and many in the Chinatown community argue that the project's advantages far outweigh its drawbacks. Those advantages include 47 affordable housing units on a nearby Chinatown site that Ron, of Hudson Group North America LLC, is subsidizing.

"We have been viewing those two projects in combination," Shen said. Some design commission members observed that that approach forced members to consider issues like economic feasibility and size - which are outside their normal design considerations.

Based on community comments, Ron has already reduced the building's footprint and height by two floors, removed most of the traffic from busy Essex Street, and added about 2,000 square feet to the adjacent Greenway park.

Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.