Latest news with #DowntownBostonNeighborhoodAssociation
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Yahoo
‘Not a good look': Closed-door meeting to address crime-ridden Downtown Crossing, Boston Common
A 7-year high in crime in the Downtown Crossing and Boston Common area is uniting leaders from across the city and state for a closed-door meeting on Thursday night. More than 70 elected leaders, public health officials, law enforcement members, civic leaders, and other active stakeholders are expected to attend. Neighborhood leaders are hopeful that the collective approach will prevent a repeat of the crime pattern the district saw last year. Data from the Boston Police Department shows total crime reached the highest level in least seven years in Downtown Crossing and the Boston Common area in 2024. The 995 crimes reported include shoplifting, petty crime, & drug-dealing. Community members believe the powerful opioid fentanyl and synthetic marijuana, known as K2, is making drug users in the area especially volatile. 'We need people who are pushing fentanyl and K2 off the streets. It's having a debilitating impact on the most vulnerable people in our city,' said Rishi Shukla, co-founder of the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association. Shukla said the neighborhood has 'reached a tipping point.' He said the situation is leaving people who live and work in the area unsettled daily and feels new strategies are necessary. 'While Boston might be one of the safest cities in the country, in terms of violent crime and homicides, we have a lot of work to do in terms of quality-of-life issues,' he said. 'You walk through here at 6 in the morning or 6 at night, you'll see the same things.' Parents whose children attend schools in the area, including the Park Street School, are worried things could get even worse in the warmer months. 'First 45-degree day, there must've been forty plus people doing drug deals out in the open, hanging out, and screaming in front of the school,' said mother Claudia Hankowski. 'It's not a good look for Boston.' An announcement made this week by Mayor Wu's administration addressed a new plan to crack down on congregate drug use in outdoor settings. Some believe that approach should've been taken years ago. 'It is a complete 180 of how she came into office,' said City Councilor Erin Murphy. 'I could only assume that we would change our policies because what we are doing isn't working.' Murphy said she's still waiting for more clarification about the city's shift in its approach. 'Now they say they're going to be arresting and putting more people in front of judges,' she said. '[I asked] is there data that made you change your policies? They didn't have an answer.' Downtown leaders anticipate Mayor Michelle Wu and Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden will be attending the meeting that's scheduled from 5-7pm on Thursday. 320 people recently voted in a Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association poll about safety issues. Approximately 90 percent of participants rated public safety as an urgent issue for the area. 70 percent said they felt less safe in the area in November than they did at the start of 2024. Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts. Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
Boston Globe
23-02-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Downtown safety in Boston remains a big question for workers and residents. A meeting this week aims for answers.
Advertisement Boston Police Department statistics bear this out: Total crime reached the highest level in at least seven years in the Downtown Crossing/Common area last year, with 995 crimes reported, up from 958 in 2023. Shoplifting was a major factor. Those stats probably won't surprise Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association members who voted in a poll about safety issues, but they also don't fully capture quality-of-life concerns like discarded syringes and human feces. Of the 320 respondents (mostly downtown residents), 70 percent said they felt less safe downtown in November than they did at the start of 2024, and around 90 percent rated public safety as an urgent issue for the area. Association cofounder Rishi Shukla said he conducted the email poll in advance of a city council The unusual meeting taking place this week, Shukla said, stems from the concerns raised during that hearing. While Shukla sees recent signs of progress, he still views this upcoming summit as crucial to the neighborhood's future, and hopes the estimated 50 attendees can agree on at least three key points of action. Sure, many of these issues are not new for downtown, or the Common in particular. But they have become more prevalent since two dispersals, in Advertisement After crimes in the area rose in 2023, several business groups swung into action, meeting with the BPD and Suffolk district attorney's office. The result: a 'Safe Shopping Initiative' launched last March to spur collaboration among merchants and law enforcement, not just for downtown but But how effective has it all been? Not effective enough for Flynn, apparently. The city councilor gets frustrated when colleagues in city government deny that downtown has a safety problem. He hears otherwise from residents and workers who don't feel comfortable walking there, especially at night, and regularly fields complaints from businesses, two colleges (Emerson and Suffolk University), a primary school, and a day-care center. He wants zero tolerance for open-air drug dealing, and to allocate more money for police patrols in the area — even though he would prefer that the city's budget writers rein in overall spending growth. Advertisement Leaders at three business groups monitoring the situation — the Downtown Boston Alliance, the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce — seem encouraged by the BPD's and DA's efforts lately. To varying degrees, the business leaders also don't believe the job is done. Michael Nichols at the downtown alliance says he's seen improvements since November. The crime numbers, he noted, could be rising in part because more arrests are being made. Chamber chief executive Jim Rooney, in a video speech to members about chamber priorities last week, praised Cox and District Attorney Kevin Hayden for cracking down on shoplifting after business groups pushed the issue; Rooney cited the fact dozens of repeat offenders have been banned from South Bay, Ryan Kearney at the retailers group also offers kudos to the public safety leaders. Their anti-shoplifting initiative? He says he needs more time before declaring that a success. Problems have persisted downtown, if not increased. He said low-level crimes — or at least the perception that it's unsafe — hurt sales and foot traffic and alarm workers in shops and restaurants. Kirsten Woodruff is among those who still need convincing. She has lived or worked downtown for more than two decades, and says she has never seen the situation this bad. The Charlestown resident regularly takes the T in on weekdays with her son, walks him to school, and then heads to her job at a law firm on Federal Street. Many days, she feels like she's walking a gauntlet, particularly with the drug-dealing she sees en route. Advertisement Back in December, Wu cautioned that city officials were not taking a victory lap with their press conference. While Cox made note of the sharp uptick in shoplifting, he also declared that this city has never been safer in his entire career. With violent crime on the wane, he concluded, the police now have the opportunity to address 'lesser crime' issues. For many people in the heart of the city, that can't happen soon enough. Jon Chesto can be reached at
Boston Globe
07-02-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
Downtown dustup: City plan to allow towers in Downtown Crossing hits the breaks after pushback
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Related : Advertisement But PLAN: Downtown was not accompanied by specific changes to the zoning code, which sets out the fine-grained rules over what can be built where. Those specifics arrived last month as the Planning Department unveiled a new zoning subdistrict that aims to create a more mixed-use downtown with plentiful housing, rather than one primarily centered around businesses. Called SKY-R, the subdistrict stretches down Washington Street from School Street and then wraps around the south side of Boston Common and the Public Garden to Arlington Street. It would allow for 500-foot towers along a stretch of that zone, in the heart of Downtown Crossing, for primarily residential buildings. Non-residential buildings would be capped at 155 feet. The city's chief planner, Kairos Shen, said the plan aims to add much-needed housing downtown and reflects a business district that serves different needs than it did just a few years ago. 'It's really about addressing how we grow the downtown and actually manage change in the downtown,' he said at a public meeting last month. 'The urgency of addressing these changes was even further elevated with the pandemic.' But at that contentious gathering, many members of the committee advising the city on PLAN: Downtown protested that the SKY-R district flew in the face of recommendations they had spent six years crafting. Advertisement 'They're ignoring and discarding the consensus of the community in this particular planning process,' said downtown resident Tony Ursillo, who served on the advisory committee. 'The coalition of people that are pushing back on this latest revision is really broad.' Some stakeholders felt blindsided by zoning that would allow high-rise towers in areas they thought height would be limited to 155 feet. PLAN: Downtown suggests limiting heights in the Ladder Blocks — as the streets off Boston Common between Tremont and Washington are known — and in the Wharf District closer to Boston Harbor, keeping a 'focus on residential development and adaptive reuse' for those more historic areas. While an update issued in April proposed a historic overlay for much of the Ladder Blocks, Related : 'The analysis and rigor is lacking,' said Rishi Shukla, cofounder of the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association and advisory group member. 'I want to see shadow, wind, and infrastructure studies. ... We're not going to give them a blank check.' Of course, much has changed on City Hall's ninth floor since April. The Boston Planning and Development transitioned into the Boston Planning Department. Former BPDA director Arthur Jemison resigned, and a few weeks later was replaced by Shen, who'd previously spent more than two decades in Boston city planning. The pushback was fierce enough that Wu recently convened a Zoom meeting of city officials and downtown civic groups, including Beacon Hill Civic Association, the Friends of the Public Garden, and the Boston Preservation Alliance, to further explain the city's goals with the plan. Advertisement Wu discussed how the city was navigating new realities around growth, development, and housing in the post-pandemic world — and emphasized the need for the city to get its downtown rezoning effort right, said Shukla, who attended the meeting. The PLAN: Downtown effort comes as the Planning Department has launched a series of smaller rezoning efforts, dubbed Squares + Streets, in neighborhood cores across Boston. 'Her words were: 'Let this be a model for how we can move through planning for the whole rest of the city,'' Shukla said of Wu. There has been a years-long process to rezone the neighborhood at the core of downtown Boston. David L. Ryan/Globe Staff She also extended public comment on the plan, which had been set to close this week, for another month through March 7. It's not clear if the Planning Department would then immediately send the zoning update to the BPDA board for approval; Nathaniel Sheidley, CEO of Revolutionary Spaces — a nonprofit that manages the historic Old South Meeting House and Old State House — said much of the downtown community felt 'shut out' of the process by the Planning Department. His organization, for instance, had not had outreach from the city for months before the Planning Department released its new zoning draft in January. 'In my mind, it clearly violated the consensus that had been carefully constructed,' Sheidley said. 'We did adopt a plan, and to adopt a zoning amendment that is at odds in some important ways with that plan seems silly.' Advertisement Not everyone stands in opposition. Michael J. Nichols, president of the Downtown Boston Alliance (formerly the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District), said he saw the plan as 'continued outgrowth' of the original PLAN: Downtown effort — one that factored in the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, Boston faces both a generational lack of demand for office space and a generational need for housing, Nichols said. The new zoning would let the city capitalize on that. 'Every smart city in America knows that this point that the No. 1 factor that drives the health of an office district is the proximity of residents to that office district,' Nichols said. 'There are few places in Boston that could handle density that sits on the intersection of our region's entire transit system.' That, he said, means pursuing thoughtful mixed-use projects — with a healthy dose of affordable housing — that are large enough to make economic sense to build in an expensive market. If that means 500-foot towers along Washington Street, some downtown residents are just fine with that. 'Towers are perfectly appropriate,' said Holly Klose, a downtown resident, in an email to the city. 'I want to live in a vibrant area and that requires more people. Beyond that, increasing the housing supply and giving more people access to housing goes a long way toward positive social change.' Catherine Carlock can be reached at
