CAPTION: Gordon Richard of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay directs a question to MBTA representatives at a public workshop held this week. In the center of the back row is Back Bay resident Elliot Laffer, executive director of the Boston Groundwater Trust.


CREDIT: Suzanne Besser




Two Back Bay residents who have spearheaded efforts to solve city groundwater water problems will serve on an Action Plan team established to advise the MBTA on ways to increase groundwater levels along the Southwest Corridor near Back Bay Station.

To do so, Elliot Laffer, executive director of the Boston Groundwater Trust, and Gordon Richardson of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay will help the team evaluate the results of a short-term plan the MBTA will implement next month when it installs two new recharge wells.

One well will be located on Cazenove Street near the MBTA right-of-way and the other on Berkeley Street near the MBTA overpass, said consultant Steve J. Poulos at a public meeting held Wednesday night at the Renaissance Charter School. The potential impact of this recharge system on groundwater levels will be studied before any long-term solution is put into place.

The current depletion of groundwater in the filled land presents a hazard for buildings constructed on wooden pilings, which are subject to rot and deterioration when exposed to air. Many homes in the area of the Back Bay Station have timber pilings.

Poulos said that lowering groundwater levels are now caused by the loss of infiltration due to roads and other impervious surface covers, leakage into sewers below groundwater levels, construction dewatering, sump pumping from deep basements and pumping for transportation corridors.

Pumps beneath the MBTA train tunnels were originally installed to keep the water levels low and the tracks dry. It is unclear how much water is being pumped at this time, said Poulos, who thinks one long-term solution would be for the MBTA to let the water raise higher under the tracks.

In addition to installing the two recharge wells, the MBTA will collect data from 30 existing monitoring wells so that it can estimate how much the flow rate can be increased without flooding basements in the area. Poulos said residents in the neighborhood would be notified when recharging begins.

The team plans to present a recommendation of what the MBTA must do to lessen its impact on groundwater levels by March 2007.

credit: Courtesy photo



Commonwealth Avenue resident Ashley Jacobs and her sons Gordon (left) and Dietrich enjoyed “Kids’ Happy Hour” at Clarendon Street Playground on October 5. Festivities included snacks, juice boxes, balloon animals, and karaoke.

Citing the recent proliferation of pedicabs trawling Boston’s streets, the police and transportation departments are developing an ordinance to regulate them.

The ordinance would go into effect next spring and outline provisions for the zones and routes pedicabs may take, the days and hours during which they may operate, a licensing and insuring process, training and background checks for drivers, and the number of licenses that may be awarded.

“Pedicabs are a relatively new phenomenon in Boston,” said Mark Cohen, director of the police department’s Licensing Division, which oversees the Hackney Division. “People have begun to ask questions.”

Boston Pedicabs, which Cohen said is the only pedicab business currently operating in Boston, began offering rides in March, 2005. Cohen said that a “buzz started” when police officers began asking how to enforce traffic regulations on the bicycles. Although there are no regulations governing pedicabs in Boston, drivers still must abide by normal traffic rules.

“It’s a little unique. We’re starting from scratch and looking into all aspects of the business,” Cohen said. “The initial response to something new in this city is to eliminate it. That’s not the approach we want to take.”

Cohen said that he has received input from Boston Pedicabs’ founder Ben Morris, who was been “enlightening in giving his perspective on what’s important.”

“I’ve been very impressed that Mr. Morris is trying to run a company by rules in a time and place where there are no rules,” he said.

Morris confirmed in a telephone conversation that he is working with the police and transportation departments towards creating an ordinance but would not comment on the draft’s content.

“The sooner the better,” Morris said about implementing an ordinance. He said that he approached the city before he started Boston Pedicabs about developing guidelines to regulate his business.

“I wanted to be regulated from the get-go. Regulation promotes safety and is a vital part of the business,” he said.

There have been no documented injuries or violations arising from the use of pedicabs in Boston, according to Cohen. “We want to answer the question before the problem arises,” he said.

Cohen is working with the Boston Transportation Department to examine how pedicabs are regulated in other cities such as San Francisco and New York. He said he was not sure if the City Council would have to approve the ordinance.

The ordinance would also govern where pedicabs may park. With meters, loading zones, and valet parking, “most curb space is spoken for,” Cohen said. He noted that curb space is especially limited on Beacon Hill and in the Back Bay.

One of the most complicated aspects of creating the ordinance is determining how many licenses to allow, according to Cohen. He said that he has been approached by other pedicab companies who want to operate in Boston.

“We want fair play, not a monopoly,” he said. “We’re a city that likes opportunity for the little guy, but we all know that we don’t want 200 of these.”

Cohen said that the city plans to “start small” and “probably limit the number [of licenses] to what we already have.” Boston Pedicabs operates about 14 pedicabs in Boston, he said.

CAPTION: Some partial demolition is underway at Zero Marlborough Street to help the design team better understand the engineering needed to begin the renovation.
CREDIT: Suzanne Besser

Developer Jean Abouhamad wants the future owners of the luxurious condominiums he plans to build at Zero Marlborough Street to be able to park their cars in a garage within the building. His neighbors aren’t sure this is a good idea. The Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay is sure that it is not a good idea.

On November 8, they’ll come together to talk about Abouhamad’s application to have an onsite garage at the monthly hearing of the Back Bay Architectural Commission — the body that will have the final word on the subject.

Abouhamad is president of Sea-Dar Construction and has renovated townhouses on Beacon, Commonwealth, Exeter and Marlborough streets. He heads a group of investors that bought Zero Marlborough Street (also known as 6 Arlington Street) from Emerson College on August 23 for $12.8 million. Built as floor-through apartments in 1929, the 12-story, 40,000 square-foot art deco building was used as a dormitory for the Katherine Gibbs School in 1953 to 1988, and as an Emerson dorm from 1988 to 2006.

The plan is to convert the building back to its original use, said Abouhamad, by restoring the building and creating up to 17 residential condominiums. Because of its prime location and scenic views, the building is well suited for high-end living, and Abouhamad’s dream is to create luxurious floor-through units on the upper levels, multi-million dollar condos each measuring more than 3,000 square feet — with the exception of the multi-tiered penthouse, which would be around 4,700 square feet with two levels of roof decks.

According to Abouhamad, potential buyers of such luxury living expect onsite parking, so he wants to create 15 parking spaces in the former auditorium space of the building. Cars would enter from a curb cut on Marlborough Street onto a 22-foot driveway which would slope down into a below grade entrance where two windows now exist. The building’s concierge would park the cars by stacking them two or three high.

But the idea of a curb cut and change to the building’s façade to include a garage door means just one thing: a date with the Back Bay Architectural Commission.

Abouhamad has been meeting with neighbors who seem divided on the issue. Some, he said, support the idea of onsite parking because it would lessen the demand for residential street parking. Others want the condos to be as luxurious as possible because they would positively impact property values.

But, some, like the Neighborhood Association, are concerned about breaking into the façade of an historic building and about safety and traffic issues caused by cars entering and exiting across the sidewalk from a gated driveway.

“We are opposed,” said Susan Prindle, chair of the association’s architectural committee. “There are safety issues with the curb cuts. And, if those are addressed with alarms or flashing lights when the gate is opened, it heightens our architectural concerns.” Her committee also opposes changes to exteriors of buildings.

State Representative and Back Bay resident Marty Walz opposes the conversion of what could be living space into parking space. “There is a housing shortage,” she said. “Why use housing space for parking? The condos will be saleable without parking.”

Walz, too, is concerned about the precedent. “There is parking congestion on every block. If we let this building have on-site parking, we should do it for every block.”

Abouhamad doesn’t think a precedent would be set. “This building is one of the few in the Back Bay that is landlocked from the public alley that runs behind Marlborough Street residences. There are very few residences in the Back Bay that don’t have access to alley parking,” he said.

The Back Bay Architectural Commission has not yet reviewed the request nor has staff member William Young seen an application. “However, I tend to recommend that builders pursue alternatives to the curb cut and garage door,” said Young. “It strikes me that there are numerous considerations here and that this is a doomed exercise from the start.”

A memo to Mr. Dennis Royer
From: The Back Bay Sun, on behalf of Back Bay residents
Re: Welcome to Boston

You’ve moved here from Denver to Boston and have been in your new job for over a month. As the city’s first Chief of Public Works and Transportation, you will oversee two large departments that affect our daily lives probably more than other city entities. It makes us hopeful that you’re from someplace other than Boston. Perhaps you’ll have new ideas, and we could certainly use some. We’d like to describe to you two constant frustrations that characterize our city. Then we respectfully offer recommendations gleaned from listening to residents and business owners at countless meetings on these topics about how you might address these frustrations.

You will have noticed that Boston is a filthy city. We acknowledge that we’re slobs. We litter. We don’t properly dispose of our dog’s doo. We leave our trash bags out at all times of the day. We don’t sweep our sidewalks or, as you will notice this winter, neither do most of us shovel the snow off them, as we are supposed to do.

But there are reasons for our behavior that go beyond poor citizenship, and you can do something about this.

We litter because we find so few trash receptacles on our sidewalks. Those that do exist overflow and create more trash because they are not emptied often enough. You’ll litter too when you get tired of carrying your styrofoam cup, lottery ticket or dog doo for blocks and blocks.

Another contributing factor to Boston’s filth is that cars have not historically been towed on street cleaning days. Just after you arrived, this changed.

Those who are towed will complain, but make no mistake, those of us who have a stake in this city want this practice to continue regularly and frequently. So often in Boston a good practice like this is started with much fanfare, but withers. Keep it up.

Another frustration peculiar to this city is its unfriendliness to pedestrians. This may surprise you since the downtown is small and dense, making it easy to get from place to place by foot. The tourist bureau even bills Boston as “The Walking City.’

City officials, however, have long favored moving automobile traffic at the expense of pedestrian traffic. Here’s an example. At intersections, city officials seem surprised that pedestrians will appear and want to cross the street. So they have denied pedestrians a walk light unless they push a button.

Naturally, because Boston is famous for its poor maintenance, pedestrians don’t believe the walk light will work. Or they notice that at a time when traffic is going in the same direction and in any other American city it would perfectly fine to cross the street, a big red hand say they can’t walk. Moreover, the walk lights are shorter here than in other cities. Since the whole situation makes no sense to them, and they predict they’ll never get a chance to cross legally, real Bostonians jaywalk.

You can help out. Get rid of those buttons. Lengthen the walk light cycle.

Then make pedestrian crossing concurrent with the traffic traveling in the same direction. Boston’s traffic officials have said this puts pedestrians in jeopardy from turning cars. It may, except for the fact that pedestrians elsewhere seem to do just fine with such a system, and automobile drivers seem to be used to waiting for pedestrians to cross.

Finally, there is actually something you can do to help traffic move. Crack down on drivers that block intersections. Twenty years ago, after New York City tied itself up in gridlock, that city posted signs that said “Don’t block the box” and enforced the rules. New York is now 90 percent free of that frustration.

Boston needs to post signs and vigorously enforce that rule too. Right now there are no consequences for surging into the intersection as the light turns red so that you’ll be ahead of the pack — which, of course, intends to do the same to you.

You’ll probably find many more problems to tackle than these two. But solving them would reduce great frustrations for Boston residents.