On Monday, April 27, the latest community-led meeting was held in response to City Hall’s plan to rezone Hyde Park’s downtown business district for increased residential density.

If approved and adopted, the Planning Department’s proposed Squares+Streets (S+S) zoning map for the area would allow for the construction of up to seven stories in the Cleary Square section of Hyde Park Avenue and on both sides of the block of River Street between it and Harvard Avenue.

The draft map was released for public review on March 17, and the meeting’s purpose was to inform its 40-50 attendees of what is proposed by it, to present an argument against it, and to mobilize an effective response to it in the form of the submission of individual comments.

It was the first meeting regarding the proposed upzoning for Cleary Square since April 8, when the Planning Department held an in-person meeting to present its S+S plan and zoning map. Attended by more than 80 people, the meeting presented the draft map – which had already been penciled in for its BPDA Board and Zoning Commission dates and which drew heavy criticism.

The official S+S interactive planning process for Cleary Square began in early 2024, and was marked by the Planning Department’s outreach, which emphasized pop-up events, office hours, open houses, and virtual meetings, while apparently avoiding anything revealing any specifics of how and where the S+S zoning districts – with their relaxed land use and building requirements – would be applied and mapped.

Early in that official planning process, an ad hoc community group independently formed for three main purposes: to force some sort of meaningful discussion with City Hall regarding the proposed rezoning, to educate the neighborhood regarding how the S+S zoning districts may look in Cleary Square when applied, and to offer its interpretation of their potential impacts.

It coordinated community meetings and mapping/blocking sessions that have been held since the summer of 2024. During that time, private interaction also took place between the ad hoc group – which had prepared a citizens petition to address its S+S concerns – and the Planning Department, and two new S+S zoning districts were adopted into the code based on its proposals.

Beyond that – according to members of the ad hoc group – a de facto agreement had also been reached regarding what the S+S zoning map for Cleary Square would look like, and a community consensus vote was then taken on a similar map to submit to City Hall.

Consequently, when the Planning Department’s official draft S+S zoning map for Cleary Square was finally released for public review on March 17 – looking considerably more dense and expansive than what the ad hoc group had expected – it was met with stunned shock and dismay at the first and less well-attended virtual meeting on March 18, followed by more entrenched pushback – voiced with some bitterness – at the second in-person meeting on April 8.

That cup spilled over into Monday’s meeting.

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Although similar in content (the background of S+S, the summarization of its zoning districts, residential and BIPOC business displacement, traffic congestion, tree canopy) to those meetings that had been held over the nearly two years prior to it, with the Planning Department’s map having been released and the clock ticking – in terms of it actually going into effect by mid-summer – the undertone of everything was ratcheted up, and the frustration long simmering among those engaged in what has been a difficult process bubbled up a little more intense.

“We have done so much communication in the last two-and-a-half years,” Marlon Solomon said of the ad hoc group’s interaction with City Hall regarding its proposed S+S changes. “As far as I’m concerned, they want to ram it down our throats. We have worked with them so closely that they adopted two zones based on the work that some of my colleagues have done so very well, and we didn’t get paid for it. Instead, we pay our taxes for them to give us displacement.”

Aside from that, the main difference in Monday’s meeting was its provision for attendees to submit their comments to the Planning Department. A tableful of laptops was brought in and set up in the back of the community room of The Pryde (55 Harvard Ave.) for just that purpose and, over the second half of the two-hour session, approximately 20-30 people took turns condensing their thoughts on Squares+Streets in Cleary Square into a thousand characters or less.

Prior to that, the issue was also raised – and unresolved – regarding letters apparently submitted to City Hall that do not appear in the official public comments portal or anywhere else – calling yet one more thing into question in a two-and-a-half-year process that has had its fair share of them.

Two of the commenters were sisters Wanda and Patrice McPherson, who live in the Hyde Park Avenue/West Street section that is also proposed for higher density zoning. Taking a moment to talk as they were leaving, they said that they hadn’t known anything about S+S until they were informed about Monday’s meeting and realized – as they both said in unison – its “magnitude.”

Plans were also being finalized to arrange an S+S commenting session – much like the one they had just taken part in – for their church congregation. “We’re going to ask them to bring it to our church because there are a lot of people there that live in Hyde Park that didn’t know anything about it either,” Wanda McPherson said. “So it’s kind of scary – the things that can happen behind your back and you don’t know exactly what’s going on in your own neighborhood.”

The comment period for the S+S draft plan and zoning map for Cleary Square has been extended from May 1 to May 15. To access the draft plan and zoning map and to submit comments, visit https://gvimes.link/hpsquaresmap