URGENT Charlesview meeting Thursday

Thursday at 6 at the Honan Library is a very important meeting about the new Charlesview and the future of Allston/Brighton. Please join us - we need your presence and voice to convince Mayor Menino that this project needs to be better!

For two years the ABNNF has joined dozens of neighbors to call on Harvard, the BRA, and Charlesview to do everything possible to make this project great. Specifically we suggested:

- a strong percentage of homeownership
- economic integration with housing for everyone
- maximizing the opportunity to begin the transformation of Western Ave
- a great connection from the neighborhood to the River
- family-sized units
- new parks in proportion to the number of housing units
- specific assurances that the new Charlesview will be well-built and maintained
- to include Charlesview in a plan for the redevelopment of the entire Brighton Mills / Holton St Corridor.

All of this is reasonable, possible, and in the best interests of our entire neighborhood.

Unfortunately, it has been incredibly difficult to gain the cooperation of the BRA, Charlesview, and Harvard. The result is the current proposal that has recently gotten WORSE as Charlesview (with the support of City Hall) is REMOVING homeownership and income diversity from the Brighton Mills site and "moving" it across Western Ave to a tower of 1 and 2 bedroom condos that may never be built as currently proposed (the Telford condos are not in phase one of the project and there is no firm date for its construction).

Let's not settle for this proposal that is so much less than it could be. Please join us tomorrow to stand up for excellence in our community!

1 comment:

  1. This is so, so frustrating, and to add to my frustration, I can't make it to this one.

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