The long-gestating rules outlining what can be built where in the core of downtown Boston will get at least another few weeks of discussion.
The Boston Planning and Development Agency board this week was set to discuss a set of zoning changes that aim to balance historic preservation with denser new development that would add to downtown’s housing — including allowing for 700-foot skyscrapers in certain areas and easing office-to-residential conversions — but at the last minute, the plan was left off the board’s agenda when it was released Tuesday afternoon.
“We want to get the plan right,” said planning chief Kairos Shen on Tuesday evening. “We’re choosing to take a little more time to get this right, rather than just sort of stick to a timeline that was ours in the making anyway.”
Shen said the Planning Department would aim to have the zoning amendment in front of the BPDA board in September.
The zoning changes are part of PLAN: Downtown, which the board adopted about a year and a half ago, but haven’t yet been formalized into city code.
The plan area stretches across the Financial District and Downtown Crossing, from the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway to Tremont Street along the Boston Common and Public Garden, then down to Arlington Street and Tufts Medical Center.
The stretch of downtown includes at least one station for every MBTA subway line and the Silver Line bus, much of the Freedom Trail and the colonial-era Old State House and Old South Meeting House, and effectively encapsulates the core of the economic engine that powers Boston and New England, but which has come under increasing stress since the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, its evolution has been closely watched by city and state officials alike, along with downtown residents, preservationists, and others.
The BPDA board’s eventual vote will be a key step in a planning process that first launched in late 2018, was paused during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and restarted in late 2022. If approved, the amendments would mark the first neighborhood-wide downtown zoning change since the Midtown Cultural District was adopted in the late 1980s.
As with any rezoning process, opinions vary widely. A January proposal that included a specific zone for residential skyscrapers generated outcry from many residents and stakeholders, including more than 800 written comments, prompting Mayor Michelle Wu to hold a Zoom meeting with officials and downtown civic groups to outline the city’s goals for rezoning. It was key, Wu said then, to get the downtown rezoning process right; it could then serve as a model for her administration’s efforts to rezone other city neighborhoods.
Supporters of the zoning changes emphasize they’re needed to tackle Boston’s ongoing housing crisis; at a public meeting held last month, three real estate developers spoke in favor of the changes, along with representatives from the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, the Downtown Boston Alliance, A Better City, and the under-construction Holocaust Museum Boston.
“We’re in a key moment in what is a very real crisis for many of our families and students, in that they deserve to be able to afford to live in Boston,” said Boston Public Schools teacher and city resident Hannah Hooven. “We should be taking every step possible towards making this a reality.”
“The only way to address the housing crisis is by building more housing. The research is really unequivocal in that respect,” said John Perry, a former downtown resident. “Even luxury housing will help.”
But many of the civic groups Wu met with in January said at last month’s meeting that they remain still unsatisfied with the zoning proposal, saying the changes ignore priorities outlined in the PLAN: Downtown approved by BPDA last year — including avoiding so-called “planned development areas,” a zoning tool that allows developers to craft new rules for projects that cover an acre or more.
The PLAN: Downtown zoning amendment would allow for PDAs along the Greenway and Broad Street near the Aquarium T station and between Tremont and Washington streets along the Common and Public Garden. In those zones, buildings could go as high as 700 feet — but only if the areas include one of 17 approved city landmarks, are “predominantly residential, and invest in and preserve Landmark(s) and historic buildings,” according to a recent Planning Department presentation.
Many downtown stakeholders expressed concern that PDAs would allow developers to surgically override the broad-based zoning the city had spent years crafting.
Molly Donahue, the director of advocacy for the Boston Preservation Alliance, said at last month’s public meeting that allowing for PDAs “isn’t ideal.”
“We are concerned that the proposal has been presented without analysis of the potential impacts on some of Boston’s most significant cultural sites and buildings,” Donahue said.
Any zoning rules, the Planning Department said, would be superseded by state shadow law and federal airspace rules that limit building heights in parts of downtown. Those laws, especially the shadow laws, have proven fungible before, particularly amid the development review process for what’s now Winthrop Center.
Former governor Charlie Baker in 2017 changed that shadow law, which limits shadows on the Boston Common and Public Garden, at the behest of former mayor Martin J. Walsh to allow for Winthrop Center’s construction — a process that Wu, then the president of the Boston City Council, staunchly opposed.
Another critic of changing the shadow law for Winthrop Square was the Friends of the Public Garden, a public-private partnership representing the Garden, Common, and Commonwealth Avenue Mall. At the time, the city reassured the Friends that it would commit to clear zoning downtown — but this plan isn’t that, said board chair Leslie Adam. The proposed zoning would allow for incremental shadow impacts that would leave the Common “significantly shadowed” during much of the year, she said.
“We are disappointed that there is no clarity or commitment in the zoning — that they continue to say that they’re going to rely on state shadow laws when we know, in fact, that that has not protected us in the past," Adam said. “The Boston Common is the oldest park in America, and tells the story of our nation and our city.”
Rishi Shukla, cofounder of the Downtown Boston Neighborhood Association, said Tuesday that a downtown coalition has been meeting with city officials in recent weeks to work through differences.
“This is a once in a generation opportunity to shape the heart of Boston,” Shukla said. “We’ve always been committed to working with the administration and other stakeholders to get this right. That remains true.”
Catherine Carlock can be reached at catherine.carlock@globe.com. Follow her @bycathcarlock.