After nearly two years the long anticipated revival of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council (JPNC) Arborway subcommittee with new chair Eryn Ashlie Bailey convened virtually on Oct. 19 with perhaps one small problem.

No one appeared to have a clear understanding of who the members were. There were seven on the call.

After Bailey nominated Gert Thorn to be on the committee (“this is a big magilla to deal with,” he said accepting the nomination) she paused.

“We should skip the nominations tonight,” Bailey said acknowledging confusion. “I’ll check with Michael [Reiskind] the [JPNC] secretary to see what the by-laws are.”

At the Sept. 22 council meeting Bailey said she had met with Rep Samantha Montano who told Bailey she would set up a meeting with MBTA.

Alan Ihrer who seems to be recognized as the expert on the Arborway bus garage (“I’ve been working on it since 1998”), gave a brief update.

“The T is pretty closed lips,” he said. “They’re circling the wagons, saying as little as possible.”

In an email to the subcommittee list on Oct. 17 Ihrer notified he had submitted a nine-point public record request to the MBTA on Sept. 18, in part asking for:

1.Current plans, renderings and 3-D drawings, elevations and construction details.

2.Communications shared between the City of Boston and the MBTA inclusive of the 8 acres.

The requests were denied by Julie Ciollo, MBTA assistant general counsel, who noted in particular, an “ongoing intra-agency process whereby policy and legal matters are discussed… [information] release will have a negative impact on the process and interfere with the MBTA’s ability to develop policy.”

What followed on Oct. 19 was 90 minutes of criticism and comment of a garage plan no one has seen and a public process that hasn’t begun yet.

“We are the keeper of this process,” announced Gert Thorn. “We want to set the design of this thing. I’m an experienced architect. Fifty years. The people who are involved with this have no experience.”

Michael Epp said he was an architect (“I’m here to help”).

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The architects chosen by the MBTA for the Arborway are Michael Baker International, of which Epp seems to take a dim view.

“They are not experienced architects with this.” he said.” They’re in the midwest somewhere.”

Epp apparently has seen a rendering of the garage.

“It’s an open canopy, it’s not appropriate,” he said. “It looks like a Mobile gas station but not as nice.”

A caller named Evan Foss who admitted he didn’t live in Boston, but “I’m a bus rider and engineer” and criticized the type of battery-powered bus he said the T is buying.

“The type of bus will determine the design of the bus garage,” he said without elaboration.

“Boston is a city that doesn’t work,” Thorn said. “Boston doesn’t want to work with us, the eight acres. They can’t lead on this. We need to be engaged, so we can negotiate.”

The surplus eight acres of the 16-acre bus yard has preoccupied JP Arborway committees for 25 years.

The March 26, 2026 MBTA press release announcing that the Arborway bus maintenance garage would be fully funded clearly, stated that the “current facility at Washington Street will be demolished and made available for development.”

This land will be made available after the new bus maintenance garage is completed in May 2031, according to the MBTA timeline.

The development of surplus MBTA land is exactly what happened with the 8.6 acres of the Bartlett bus yard on the outskirts of Nubian Square.

Closed in 2005 when the buses were transferred to the Arborway, it was sold to Nuestra Communidad in October 2010; Nuestra has spent that past 13 years building six, six-story, residential buildings with four more pending for a total of 333 homes and apartments around a new city street.

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JP housing Arborway advocates have never noticed this obvious paradigm.

After 90 minutes, Bailey adjourned the meeting with assignments: she would communicate with Rep. Montano and MBTA deputy chief Amy Pranger (whom she said she knew) to set up a public meeting; co-chair Sarah Freeman would locate a contact at the Boston Planning Dept. to renew their participation.

Never mentioned during the Arborway subcommittee meeting was the fact that there have been significant modifications to the bus garage plan.

Beginning in 2024 the Arborway subcommittee has vehemently opposed the MBTA plan to accommodate up to 200 MBTA employee spots on “their” land.

The current MBTA preliminary site plan which Ihrer had obtained and circulated to the subcommittee list on Oct. 17, shows that the Forest Hills Street DPW yard is eliminated; in its place are employee parking and two (a one- and a two-story) bus maintenance buildings.

Also overlooked by the subcommittee but communicated by Montano to Bailey, was an item in the supplemental appropriations bill filed over the summer authorizing the DPW yard to take and remove to DCR land on American Legion Hwy. and Canterbury Street.

The new site plan shows an open, surplus eight acres broken only by two new roads.

In other MBTA documents provided to The Bulletin by Ihrer but which he did not mention at the Oct. 19 meeting was a June 26, 2026 site description in an RFP for a construction manager:

“The proposed project includes a new two-story indoor maintenance facility, a new one-story service and washing building as well as a parking canopy covering up to 200 buses for storage area… and on-site 200 employee parking spaces.”

The June 26, 2026 MBTA public meeting at which the construction manager contract was discussed, the project review stated three scopes:

1. Two means of access from Washington Street [one opposite Burnett St to line up with Lotus Street] and a third on Forest Hills Street at Lotus Street.

2. The demolition of 500 Arborway and 327 Forest Hills Street [DPW yard]

3.The designer Michael Baker International contracted to prepare design and construction documents.

4. The construction management team includes Deputy Chief Amy Pranger, Senior Director Jonathan Merin, and Senior Project Manager Steve Balenger.

A 36-point MBTA timeline also provided to The Bulletin by Ihrer but not discussed at the Oct. 19 meeting included these dates:

Update on 15% design: Sept 26-Nov 24, 2026; City of Boston MOU negotiations: Jan 9, 2026- Sept 7, 2026 ( emphasis added); Environmental Review – MEPA: May 12, 2027 (emphasis added); Design 90% /100%: June 19, 2028 / July 18, 2028; Construction / Early package: Jan.27, 2028; Notice to proceed: June 27, 2028; and Construction close out: May 15, 2031.

The JPNC Arborway subcommittee has yet to acknowledge what the MBTA wants to achieve: a new, up-to-date bus garage on a site it has owned as a transit yard since 1922.

A bus garage which serves 16 bus routes covering the southern half of Boston on which thousands travel daily: Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Dorchester, Mattapan, Back Bay, Hyde Park, Roslindale, Dedham and Cleveland Circle, one of the largest surface public transit routes in the City of Boston.

The Arborway subcommittee next meets on Nov. 16