While walking along her usual Sunday morning route down Blue Hill Avenue in Mattapan, Fatima Ali-Salaam stopped to watch as a group of Family Dollar employees unloaded a semi-truck full of boxes. “That’s an entire store on that sidewalk,” she remarked to her companion from the Dorchester Reporter, expressing concern for the lack of adequate parking space many businesses in Mattapan have for daily operations.

Ali-Salaam is the chair of the Greater Mattapan Neighborhood Council and six-mile walks every Sunday give her numerous opportunities to talk with residents and owners about what they think their community needs.

Among the issues that those people and the businesses in Mattapan Square have expressed concern about are the needs for increased parking space, security, and commercial diversity that would help improve the economic stability of the area, all of them matters that a city initiative, PLAN: Mattapan, sought to address in a draft released last October.

The 36-page document released by the BPDA outlines recommendations gleaned from community input and offers strategies for implementing change in transportation, mobility, and economic growth. The proposal, which remains under BPDA review, makes note of the income disparities that exist between Mattapan and Boston as a whole, citing especially a $17,700 gap in median family income. In terms of its population, 68 percent of Mattapan residents are Black and/or African American, and 34 percent are “foreign-born or non-US citizens.”

Ali-Salaam, a Mattapan resident herself, hopes that changes in zoning and on other city policy fronts will foster a greater sense of community in a neighborhood that, she says, many in the city see as “transient.”

“If you ask most residents, they don’t know the businesses,” she said. “They don’t know who owns the buildings. They don’t feel any sort of allegiance or loyalty or familiarity with any of them.”

PLAN: Mattapan emphasizes increasing density, and divides proposed changes into near-term, medium, and large-scale solutions. Near-term solutions of zoning and policy change, it says, “will be required to catalyze the medium- and large-scale developments.” They will “drive economic growth” by increasing local business opportunities and attracting different types of commerce to the neighborhood.

Ali-Salaam affirmed the need for a greater variety of businesses in and abutting the Square, where posters plaster the windows of convenience stores with words like “Lottery” “Cigarettes” and “EBT.” The disproportionate number of these, she says, not only present difficulties for higher-level commercial franchises to enter the area, but they also lessen accessibility to healthier foods

“Do we really need another convenience store or hookah shop?” she asked after passing several storefronts on the same block near Mattapan Square. A Google search lists 20 convenience stores on Blue Hill Avenue alone leading up to Grove Hall on the doorstep of Roxbury.

“Quite frankly, a lot of it’s a bunch of junk,” said Denise Fotopoulos, a Mattapan resident and the owner of Simco’s hot dog stand. “And yep, it’s affordable for someone to go get a pack of Sharpies, but I got a pack the other day and they lasted for like an hour. Yeah, like literally like, like they’re not even legit Sharpies like, you know, it’s like a phone charger. They are cheap but they don’t last. It’s not fair.”

Fotopoulos said that outside developers come into the neighborhood with little more than their own economic interests in mind. “I mean, most people are for the best interest of Mattapan,” she said. “But it’s funny because everybody wants to get into Mattapan and buy property and do this and that but nothing seems to happen.”

Still, many small businesses and residents are wary of zoning changes that may spur the sorts of development that foster gentrification and displacement. Ben Echevarria, the executive director of Mattapan Main Streets, has been working to “rebrand” the Square as a way to represent what the community wants. He says that any zoning changes must be made holistically to ensure the current community has better economic flexibility.

“We have to look at economic mobility for all residents, not just businesses,” he said. “And we have to look at helping businesses that are here to be able to survive, or to have the flexibility that if rents get too high, they have enough knowledge, enough money in their pockets, that they can relocate if they want to.”

If done properly, the changes outlined in the draft report could help business owners like Sami Salameh of Salameh Jewelers, who wants more parking for his customers and fewer parking tickets that he says frequently appear on his and other employees’ car windows.

“Let’s say out of ten employees, six of them drive,” he said. “Now you got six parking spaces that you need for employees, before the customers even come to mind. So pretty much if we all came, we would take all the parking spots. And it’s only good for two hours. So, we get hit with a lot of tickets. 40 bucks a whack.”

“We’re business owners,” Salameh said. “I would say, take it easy with us, or maybe have some designated parking.”

Fotopoulos, who owns the building across from Salameh, echoed remarks that tight space around Mattapan Station clogs up the area. But she doesn’t see how zoning could fix the problem. “Where could they put more parking?” she asked.

On her walking tour, Ali-Salaam repeatedly pointed out the clusters of double-parked cars that she says routinely clog bus lanes on Blue Hill Ave. The BPDA’s plan proposes a center bus lane that will separate buses from other traffic and increase reliability. Four out of every five Mattapan transit users, according to the document, use the bus line.

Making local ties a consideration in every part of the plan, Salaam says, is a necessity. More specifically, she noted, ensuring that residents and businesses have equitable access to banking services. Fotopoulos confirmed the lack of bank presence and said that the existing options are sparse and often complicated – again – by parking issues.

Ali-Salaam reports a construction fence near an Exxon Mobile at the corner of Blue Hill Ave. and Morton St. The fence, put up around a building owned by financing institution Norfolk Capital, is blocking a portion of sidewalk along the Ave without visible permits posted. Izzy Bryars photo

Main Street’s Echevarria, although open to the plan’s suggestions, reflected on the history of zoning in Boston and why an area like Mattapan ultimately hesitates to jump on board.

“I’m not even talking about the racial issues of zoning,” he said. “Look at so many communities, like Jackson Square, like Mission Hill, like the South End, where all these promises were made, all the language that the planning departments is using [for PLAN: Mattapan]: If you dig up articles of when they were going through these in the South End when it was mostly Latino in the ‘70s and ‘80s, you’d be hearing basically the same promises from the planning department that this will do this, that this will do that. And you know, what it did was it gentrified the community.”

Echevarria and Salaam say the best way to prevent such an outcome is to require that new developments prioritize current Mattapan residents. “There are a lot of people who don’t want to invest in the people who live here right now,” Salaam said.

As Ali-Salaam headed back down the Avenue toward Mattapan station, with the Blue Hills in the distance, the reporter asked her what the next step is for PLAN: Mattapan. “Money,” she said. “Mattapan needs more money for any of this to work.”