Leaders within the Columbia-Savin Hill Civic Association intend to mount and fund their own planning initiative aimed at the Dorchester Avenue-Hancock Street-Freeport Street section known as Glover’s Corner. The group, which has been promised $750,000 over the next three years from a Morrissey Boulevard developer, intends to use some of that mitigation funding to pay a consultant to help engineer the plan. The idea was discussed at the civic group’s general membership meeting on Jan. 6.

The goal, according to Jake Wachman, who leads the association’s Government Affairs Committee, is to produce a comprehensive plan for a large swath of land— much of it zoned for industrial use— north of Freeport Street and east of Dorchester Avenue.

The former Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA) mounted its own planning effort for the same area in 2017. However, after two years of meetings, the effort — dubbed PLAN: Glovers Corner— was paused during the Covid pandemic and its recommendations were never finalized or approved by the BPDA board.

In retrospective, some civic leaders say, that might be a blessing, since they were not supportive of that plan’s direction.
“It’s an enormous amount of developable land,” said Bill Walczak, the president of Columbia-Savin Hill Civic. “We’re talking about 10-plus acres that includes the old Dorchester Tire shop and Russell Engineering. That will be developed, but if the city continues the way they do things, it will be piece by piece in a way that doesn’t make sense on the whole. We need to stop that and get this plan started before allowing developers to determine what happens.”

Wachman, who is taking a leadership role in the reboot, said the city’s earlier planning initiative would have resulted in a plan that “didn’t feel like Dorchester, Boston, or even Massachusetts. It was very generic.”

He added: “We want to look at other ways to do it better, maybe we build three-deckers and maybe we build a park. We want to look at what we would like to propose for Glover’s Corner instead of just build, build, build and not pay attention to the long-term.”

The city’s Planning Department had not heard of the still-emerging Columbia-Savin Hill effort until The Reporter contacted the agency last month.

“Boston residents have the right to petition the Zoning Commission for changes to the code,” said Brittan Comak, a spokesperson for the Planning Department. “We aren’t familiar with [this] private plan, but any new plans or zoning would need to be approved by the BPDA Board and Zoning Commission. We are happy to work with this civic association and community on future city planning efforts in this area.”

The previous plan by the city featured the beginnings of a very densely developed network of streets abutting Dorchester Avenue with high-rise residential buildings, very little green space, and ‘linear parks,’ which residents complained were just tree-lined streets.

Wachman says the planning may weigh on whether a new Red Line station might be considered for the Freeport area at the edge of any new development, between Fields Corner and Savin Hill Stations.

“If it wasn’t in the previous plan; it should be in the future,” said Wachman.

Meetings are continuing throughout the coming months, and Wachman said his group plans to engage the neighboring Fields Corner Civic Association and Meetinghouse Hill Civic Association to join in. A full update is expected at the CSHCA’s next meeting on Mon., March 3.