Liberty Plaza Developer Will Change Plan

by Lydia Lowe
2/5/01

This past spring, developer Kevin Fitzgerald submitted a proposal to build a 26-story hotel and office tower on the block where CPA is located, bound by Washington, Essex, and Beach Streets. The proposed plan included 274 hotel rooms, groundfloor retail space, commercial office space, and over 400 parking spaces.

The Liberty Plaza Proposal and Chinatown
CPA, along with leaders of the Chinatown Resident Association, the Campaign to Protect Chinatown, and the Asian Community Development Corporation expressed concerns with the oversized scale of the development, the potential impact on traffic, the threat of gentrification from overdevelopment of the area, and its violation of the Chinatown Community Plan of 1990.

The Chinatown Community Plan was a community-centered vision of Chinatown's development which was adopted and published by the Boston Redevelopment Authority in 1990. One of its five policy recommendations was to "preserve Chinatown as a working class, family neighborhood." Other policies focused on preserving the cultural and historical character of Chinatown, diversifying its economic base, containing institutional expansion such as that of Tufts and New England Medical Center, and expanding Chinatown through building "land bridges" over the highways. For the first time, Chinatown was recognized as a residential community as well as a commercial district, and rezoned accordingly. Goals were set for the development of new housing.

The Liberty Plaza proposal is in clear violation of the Chinatown Community Plan. While the plan set a height limit of eight stories, or 100 feet, for this area, Liberty Plaza would be 26 stories, or 3 10 feet-over three times the limit! Building density is also in violation of zoning limits under the Chinatown Community Plan. Traffic along Essex Street, already estimated by the Boston Transportation Department to increase by 30 percent from the impact of slated developments, will only get worse. Yet in compensation for this negative impact on the community, the developer had promised only some second-floor community space to the neighboring Hong Lok House and below-commercial lease rates to Chinatown businesses at the groundfloor level.

Fighting the Plan
Last month, expecting the Liberty Plaza proposal to proceed through City review processes, interns and volunteers from CPA's Chinese Youth Initiative program helped knock on residents' doors throughout central Chinatown to talk to them about Liberty Plaza. Most residents had heard nothing about the proposal, but were concerned about its impact on traffic, as well as rising rents, and believed that the community should demand respect for our concerns. The youth developed draft letters in English and Chinese and then collected over 200 letters in opposition to the Liberty Plaza proposal!

Then, unexpectedly, at an August 28 meeting of the Chinatown Neighborhood Council, Co-Moderator Bill Moy announced that the developer has changed plans for the Liberty Plaza development. Under the new proposal, apparently, the height and scale would remain unchanged but the building would instead become a 400-some unit housing development, of which 10 percent would be set aside for low-income renters under new City guidelines. No further details were available about the changed proposal as our newsletter goes to press. If you are interested in learning about Liberty Plaza and in voicing your concerns, please call CPA at 357-4499.