07-02-2025
Downtown dustup: City plan to allow towers in Downtown Crossing hits the breaks after pushback
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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.
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'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,
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'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.
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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.'
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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
