When it comes to development, Boston has a reputation as a city that can’t get out of its own way.
A thicket of zoning regulations, “overlay plans,” and community process seemingly without end has often meant delays measured not in months but years — even as financing windows that were wide open one year shut down tighter than a drum the next. (Just for fun, Google Fan Pier and Pritzker.)
A little over a year ago, Mayor Michelle Wu brought the city’s planning process under the direct control of City Hall for the first time in decades.
Now, at a time when Downtown Boston still has too many empty office buildings, too many vacant storefronts, and not nearly enough housing, those city planners have — well, a plan — a Big Picture plan for jumpstarting development. It may not be perfect, and it’s still riling lots of folk who do live downtown, but it starts with the premise that big isn’t necessarily bad, especially downtown.
“This is about the larger future of what downtown can be,” Boston’s Chief of Planning Kairos Shen told the editorial board. “Already there are more people moving downtown. It has grown from a strictly 9-to-5 district to a more livable place.”
Advancing that process is what the downtown plan Shen’s office released last week is all about.
“Downtown has a very diverse collection of buildings, but the zoning we had in place made [redeveloping them] all but impossible,” Shen said. “We needed a zoning plan … that allows owners to reinvest in their buildings and build new ones.”
Raising height limits in sections of the Financial District to 700 feet — as of right, without the need for zoning variances — has also raised some hackles among those who live in parts of the zone. But buildings aiming for those heights will still be subject to height restrictions mandated by the FAA for Logan Airport traffic and state laws regulating shadows cast on Boston Common and the Public Garden that date back to the 1990s.
There is nothing to mandate more residential construction in those new buildings, but Shen insists “the market will help us reach that residential mark.”
After all, the market is sending pretty dire warnings against adding even more downtown office space.
A new report by the Boston Policy Institute and Tufts University’s Center for State Policy Analysis estimates that the assessed value of office space in the city could drop between 35 percent and 45 percent from their 2024 values. That, of course, has implications for the city’s tax structure but also for market outlook on new construction.
“We expect the projects we will be seeing will be primarily residential projects,” Shen said. “These zoning regulations will make renovation and upgrading much less arduous. And it will allow owners to be more creative.”
The downtown planning zone runs roughly from the Government Center MBTA stop, along Tremont and Boylston streets to Arlington Street, and through the Financial District, along the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway to the Aquarium T stop. But that territory is bifurcated, mostly along Washington Street, between a “sky” zone and a “sky-low” zone. The sky-low zone, which includes the so-called Ladder District between Washington Street and Tremont Street, borders large sections of the Common and Public Garden and aims to keep buildings in that area at around 155 feet or lower.
It’s that section that has caused the most controversy, which resulted in the current redraft — a similar plan released in January generated more than 800 public comments, largely of the negative variety.
Opponents still charge the map is “gerrymandered” to allow for higher development in that otherwise low-rise district.
Well, one man’s “gerrymanders” are another’s “opportunity sites,” as Shen called them. Yes, there’s a carve-out for a higher building along Bromfield Street that includes a long-vacant City Sports building because, he acknowledged, the agency has had some interest expressed in that site and “residential would be very appropriate.”
There is also a good deal of neighborhood fear and loathing around the possibility of so-called Planned Development Areas in the sky-low zone, because generally once granted, those designations are the ultimate zoning streamlining tool. They are much coveted by developers for that very reason. But they won’t be handed out indiscriminately. To qualify for one, an area must include a landmark (which the developer would have to invest in and preserve) and be 60 percent residential. It also must be at least an acre.
As Globe reporter Catherine Carlock pointed out, the likeliest spot for such a designation is the Downtown Crossing building that currently houses the Corner Mall at Winter and Washington streets and several connected parcels currently owned by developer Ron Druker, but neither he nor his company has committed to any plan for the area.
Perhaps a look at the sorry collection of still-vacant spaces in the area, including the newly acquired Barnes & Noble site (whose ground floor has been vacant since 2006), might put some of the pearl clutching from opponents in perspective.
The current planning process, which opponents have called “a sham,” has been going on since at least 2023. The plan is scheduled for a final hearing June 16 and a vote by the Boston Planning and Development Agency Board in July and then a final vote by the Zoning Commission.
There is such a thing — especially in this city — as too much “process” and not nearly enough action. In a downtown that cries out for attention and a new burst of energy, the new plan for downtown is a good start.
Editor’s note: This editorial has been updated to include the one-acre requirement for Planned Development Areas.
Editorials represent the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Follow us @GlobeOpinion.