On April 8, the Boston Planning Department held its only scheduled in-person public meeting regarding its proposed Squares+Streets (S+S) small area plan and zoning map for Hyde Park’s Cleary Square. With the release of details on March 17, the community finally learned more about City Hall’s rezoning plans for Hyde Park’s business district and its surrounding residential blocks – after more than two years since the process started.

This detailed zoning map discussion had been clamored for in vain since early December 2023, when the Boston Planning and Development Agency (the Planning Department’s previous incarnation) released Article 26 and its six original S+S zoning districts for public review.

They were codified by the Boston Zoning Commission (BZC) in April 2024.

Those zones were designed to be mapped in neighborhood business districts selected by City Hall to ease the approval process for developers proposing taller and denser residential buildings. As part of that, about half of the S+S districts allow for buildings with no ground-floor commercial space, endangering commercial districts.

The proposed Cleary Square zoning map allows for up to seven stories along the downtown portion of Hyde Park Avenue and on both sides of the block of River Street between it and Logan Square. The Planning Department describes that commercial block – both sides of which are owned by one landlord looking to sell – as a “catalytic site” likely to be redeveloped.

The meeting itself – held in the main hall of the Municipal Building/BCYF – resembled a pre-pandemic planning meeting regarding a controversial large project proposal, during which residents would line up to ask questions and voice their concerns, and the development team would have to face them and respond, while also offering community benefits.

This time, however, it was Planning Department specialists who were facing the community after giving their presentation with proposed (and indefinite) S+S improvements to local transportation, open space, small business, arts & culture, and housing.

More than 80 residents filled the hall, and 22 of them took turns speaking.

Almost all of what they had to say was critical: of the zones’ height and scale and of their mapping expanding into residential areas around the commercial district, of the lack of detailed contingency plans (particularly regarding parking, traffic, and the displacement of minority-owned businesses), of the negative impact that the rezoning will have on the quality of life in Cleary Square, and of the Planning Department’s overall disconnect with the neighborhood.

The speakers formed a multi-cultural, multi-demographic cross-section of Cleary Square life. In addition to community activists, there were – among others – concerned residents, shopkeepers, a Logan Square restauranteur, and the longtime owner of a Hyde Park Avenue medical building.

The Planning Department’s responses were taken with some skepticism due, in part, to their tendency to refer to other City Hall devices for solutions. Of those, the Article 80 Large Project Review (for development proposals of more than 50,000 square feet), and the new and untested Anti-Displacement Action Plan (created in response to S+S concerns) were frequently cited.

One such Q&A exchange got at the source of what has – after two years – become a deep-seated wariness toward the Planning Department and City Hall regarding S+S in Cleary Square.

Asking about the lack of any parking requirement in S+S zoning districts, Helga Burre focused on the negative impact it could have on local business, due to cars visiting those seven-story developments clogging up the commercial district’s limited on-street and municipal lot parking.

In response, Deputy Director of Zoning Kathleen Onufer outlined S+S’s legalization of shared parking spaces and, when pressed, added that “in any neighborhood of the city right now, any project going through the Article 80 Large Project process doesn’t have a parking requirement.”

“How can that be?!?” Burre asked in exasperation.

“The vast majority of those projects… build parking onsite,” Onufer said in conclusion.

Any (non-S+S) zoning district in which an Article 80 project is located has separate zoning regulations – tantamount to laws – that include parking requirements. Projects violating those regulations require variances from the Zoning Board of Appeal (ZBA). This, in turn, requires a public hearing that offers the impacted community legal ground to stand on.

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Therefore, once an S+S zoning district has been mapped over an existing one, not only will Article 80 not have parking requirements, that district’s zoning code won't have them either.

Onufer left that out of her response. Beyond that, what remained unsaid got at the basic strategy behind S+S rezoning: to remove more restrictive land and building use regulations.

District 5 City Councilor Enrique Pepén attended the meeting with City Councilor, At-Large Ruthzee Louijeune. Near its end, he stated that they had called Mayor Michelle Wu that morning and had told her that “We cannot screw up Squares+Streets in Cleary Square. We cannot simply bulldoze this over the people. We need to make sure we’re doing it with the residents.” He went on, advocating for compromise. “What I’m hearing and I’m realizing is that the job’s not done. People are unhappy with seven stories. We’ve got to talk about: if not seven stories, then what.”

Wu did, in fact, make an appearance at the beginning of the meeting and fielded a few questions.

The first had to do with concerns regarding the proposed zoning map.

“None of that is final. This very much is an opportunity for comment and feedback,” she said in response to the upset caused by the proposed map in relation to another that had been worked out between a neighborhood S+S committee and Chief of Planning Kairos Shen, in which the River Street block proposed for seven stories had been marked for four and six. “The return to six and four, or whatever – better heights – is exactly what we need in terms of comments on this draft.”

Yet City Hall’s signals were mixed.

While it was stated that this was only the beginning of the mapping process, the Planning Department also repeatedly stated that the comment period would end on May 1 – meaning, in effect, that its interactive portion is winding down fast.

As scheduled, there will be a meeting in May, during which comments will be addressed and any updates to the plan and map will be presented. The finalized drafts are penciled to go to the BPDA Board for approval in June, after which the map will go to the BZC for adoption in July.

There will also be in-person S+S office hours from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. on Friday, April 24 at the Hyde Park Library, and virtual office hours from 4 p.m.-6 p.m. on Monday, April 27.

To access the Cleary Square area plan and zoning map, to comment, or to register for the virtual office hours, visit https://gvimes.link/clearysquares

A neighborhood-coordinated S+S community meeting will take place on Monday, April 27 at 6 p.m. at The Pryde (55 Harvard Ave., Webster Street entrance).