Historic Hyde Square

JPNC to review SRO project at Blessed Sacrament

According to a flyer circulating around Hyde Square, the JP Neighborhood Council’s Public Service committee will be reviewing an application for a “lodging house license” for 35 Creighton Street.

The lodging house license would allow the applicant, Church Square SRO, LLC (also known as Sister Virginia Mulhern House) to operate the former convent on the Blessed Sacrament campus as SRO (single-room occupancy) housing for the formerly homeless. The Pine Street Inn will manage the facility which includes rooms for 28 residents and one for a live-in house manager. find people on google plus buy google 1 the best twitter accounts to follow

According to the flyer, the Public Service Committee is looking for neighborhood input in order to determine what recommendation to make to the Boston Licensing Board, the Mayor’s office, and City Councillors Felix Arroyo and Matt O’Malley.

The meeting will take place on Tuesday, April 5, 7:00 pm, at the Agassiz School (20 Child Street, Jamaica Plain).

35 Creighton St

Construction underway at 266-270 Centre Street

If you’ve been wondering what’s going on across from the Jackson Square T station at the corner of Lamartine and Wise Streets, it’s new construction by the JPNDC. This project is slated to include approximately 35 units of affordable housing and several thousand square feet of retail space on its ground floor. online cash advance loans

The project combined a long-vacant lot at the corner of Center and Wise streets and the lot where an 1870s apartment building stood (until the JPNDC demolished it for this project). The apartment building was the last of the small scale buildings that had survived the swath of demolition that scarred the neighborhood before the plan for I-95 to pass through the neighborhood was scrapped in the early 1970s. The lot the building sat on ended up being oddly shaped when Lamartine Street was reconfigured for the Southwest Corridor project, and the architectural team for the JPNDC found it too unwieldy to retain the existing building and create new street level uses at the site. cash advance direct lenders only

The Boston Landmarks Commission agreed in a 2007 demolition delay hearing, and the building was swifly demolished. It has taken a number of year to find funding for the new project, but it’s great to see the new building moving forward.

The photos below show the building that was demolished and construction of the new building underway.

Centre Street redesign to enhance Hyde Square rotary

Hyde Square Rotary schematic improvements

Proposed Hyde Square Rotary improvements

At yesterday’s Centre/South Street Corridor Advisory Group meeting, consultants for the city’s transportation department revealed preliminary plans to improve Hyde Square’s iconic rotary.

The proposed improvements reclaim asphalt from the roadway and create two significant plaza areas. One new plaza is in front of 401-403 Centre Street (at the southwest corner) and the second is at the corner of Centre and Day streets (in the northeast corner). Significant sidewalk widening would also happen in front of Sorella’s restaurant.

The wider sidewalks and plaza areas would allow for larger street trees, new street lighting, and additional street furniture. Crosswalks would also be shortened dramatically, creating easier pedestrian crossings at the square.

The thick red lines in the plan indicate dedicated bicycle lanes along Centre Street leading into the rotary — a great improvement for cyclists.

Find out more about the project at the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s web site.

Creating private outdoor spaces

Creating some private outdoor space for the residents of the redeveloped Church is no simple task. One of the developer’s proposals removes the roof from the sacristy (the lowest part of the building in the foreground).

This would allow the developer to create a landscaped private outdoor courtyard overlooking the future green core of the campus.

The big question is whether the Boston Landmarks commission will allow part of the sacristy roof to be removed.

Another proposed outdoor space creates a terrace between the two large smokestacks at the rear of the church.