Real Estate

The battle between preserving the past and affordable housing

Can development and caring for our past coexist? What is “anti-growth liberalism”?

By Cameron Sperance -- Boston.com correspondent

November 15, 2023

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There’s red tape, and then there’s the Hotel Alexandra.

If you missed one community meeting during the planning and approvals process for the planned refurbishment of the South End eyesore at Massachusetts Avenue and Washington Street, fear not: There were more than 40 others, according to records kept by those trying to develop the project.

The revitalization, initially pitched as a hotel, cleared its lengthy approval process just in time for a global pandemic to throw a giant question mark over the long-term vitality of the hospitality sector. Developers decided to shift gears and pursue market-rate residences at the property instead. That opened another round of meetings before shovels could hit the ground.

By the time that approval was secured, interest rates were on the rise — making any kind of development harder to pencil out and starving Boston of 70 units of housing, including 10 income-restricted units.

“Everyone wonders why the cost of housing in Boston is so expensive,” said Marc LaCasse, the lawyer representing the Hotel Alexandra developers. “Where do you think the carrying costs for a two- or three-year delay get tacked on?”

Some roll their eyes. Does Boston really need more pricey South End condos when what it’s really lacking are less expensive ones? But it’s more than just the Hotel Alexandra getting held up in planning and approvals.

“What we continue to hear over and over again is that it’s almost like an endless process where once you think you’re done, then another department will pop up and have a request for something, and then another department pops up, and then [there are] requests in the meeting and another meeting,” said Tamara Small, CEO of the Commercial Real Estate Development Association, more commonly known as NAIOP Massachusetts.

A proposed residential project in Melrose garnered support from the mayor and various city organizations, but the city’s Historic District Commission held it up, the Melrose Free-Press reported in 2021. The developers then made it a 40B project, which took away the commission’s ability to block it, the paper wrote. “The process is available to developments that devote at least 20 to 25 percent of their units to low- and moderate-income families.”

Demolition delays can pump the breaks on a project while a town determines its historic significance. Watertown adopted a demolition delay ordinance this year in which a large number of homes would be exempt from the process, but a project that does go under review could face a demolition delay as long as two years.

“You just have endless meetings with no real end point. That of course takes time, and in development, time is money,” Small said. “You could actually miss a market cycle, and we’ve heard from developers that that’s happened. Sometimes a delay kills a project.”

Reform — not eliminate — the process

Nobody interviewed is suggesting that communities gut their historic preservation committees and end demolition delays for the sake of dense housing projects, but there are calls for clarity in the review process.

“Some of the things that we see, especially in a lot of our smaller communities that have less capacity to carry out historic preservation or undergo those historical commission processes, is that often it’s lacking clarity of what is deemed historic,” said Andrea Harris-Long, the manager of housing and neighborhood development at the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. “Whenever you have ambiguity within those regulating documents, then that makes it even more challenging to develop.”

Historic preservation committees aren’t necessarily helmed by members with extensive backgrounds in preservation. That’s not a knock on volunteers, but it does present an opportunity to bring in outside consultants to review and streamline the process.

“If you don’t have a plan, you try and save everything, and then you probably save nothing because you’re spread too thin,” said Lindsay Randall, a regional humanities specialist at the council.

A political conundrum on housing

The review process is extremely important, especially after urban renewal efforts in the 1950s, ′60s, and ′70s leveled historic neighborhoods like Boston’s West End. But experts say the process and historic preservation can be weaponized to impede the development of much-needed housing.

When you examine why cities like Boston slowed their housing production from the 1960s into the 21st century, “you have to look beyond the idea of the NIMBY to this broader question of why do so many ostensibly liberal people believe that it’s consistent with their values,” said Jacob Anbinder, a Klarman postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University whose doctoral dissertation at Harvard University tracked metropolitan “growth revolt” and its impact on the Democratic Party.

In his dissertation, Anbinder refers to it as “anti-growth liberalism.”

“The idea that preserving old buildings and old neighborhoods has a kind of progressive connotation to it is part of why they’re able to justify that position,” Anbinder said. “When it starts to become apparent that historic preservation is functioning as a roadblock, then it’s important to revise your views and maybe moderate them in some circumstances or find ways to reconcile them.”

Change agents in housing

Those interviewed remain optimistic that an appreciation for history and development can coexist. The Housing Choice law by former governor Charlie Baker put the onus on MBTA municipalities and enables multifamily projects to pass with a simple majority — though, that measure faces significant pushback.

The Hotel Alexandra team is seeing increasing acknowledgment by the city Zoning Board that more supply is needed.

“The board members are saying things when they cast their vote like: ‘We need more housing. We understand the concerns of the community, but we need more housing. We need more affordable units,’” LaCasse said. “Nobody’s advocating for cutting out the community, but we need to streamline the process.”

Historic preservation doesn’t have to be an either-or binary, those interviewed for this story said.

“While our job, of course, is to protect the structures, there’s no point in protecting the structures if we’re left with a town that’s essentially a string of uninhabited museums,” said Michela Murphy, a member of Provincetown’s Historic District Commission. “We have the largest continuous historic district in the state, but that doesn’t mean anything if there’s nobody who can afford to be here.”

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