MORE GREEN SPACE FOR HEIGHT IS A FAIR – EVEN VERY BENEFICIAL – TRADE-OFF
Dear Editor:
I’d like to respond to better balance some of the resident views expressed in “New Hood Park Plan Gets Rough Outing at CNC over Building Height” (Oct. 4).
As someone who sees Hood Park every day from my window and passes through it every weekday as part of my commute, the prospect of greening some of this bleak space is the best possible outcome for the Charlestown community. I had been happy to see it proposed in the most recent of the Hood Park meetings.
Last month, the City of Boston clearcut Nanny Goat Hill, wiping out a significant part of the last forest in the Town, situated like Hood Park at the northerly end. Offered a choice between tall buildings that will enhance the skyline of dreary Sullivan Square with attendant green space, some of the resident voices quoted in CP-B’s piece claim to prefer a sprawl of low-rise office buildings, separated by asphalt. Hood Park is going to be developed to the permitted density with or without community objections. To find anything beneficial to the quality of in the Town in forcing the future development to be corner-to-corner, low-rise concrete jungle, instead of the parks and water features on offer by Trademark Partners, defies common sense.
The proposed building heights are going to be equalled or surpassed by adjacent buildings in North Point/Somerville, nullifying any argument that the view – largely of Route 93 upper and lower deck – would suffer. No one would dispute Charlestown received an enormous benefit from the creation of Paul Revere Park at the southerly end of Rutherford Avenue. The mid-section folks around Austin Street have some greenery thanks to the BHCC playing fields. Meantime, the northerly section by Sullivan Square is a post-Industrial wasteland, ugly by daylight and frightening at night. Trademark’s offer is the best and perhaps final chance to re-green any significant stretch near Sullivan Square. Our children would condemn as foolish our wasting this opportunity based on some abstract fear of tall buildings abutting the highway.
Bill McCallum