Condos not wanted on ex-BELD plant site on Allen Street

By Robert Aicardi
GateHouse News Service

Apr 02, 2010 @ 03:38 PM

Braintree — There may not be a consensus yet about what should be done with the site of the original Braintree Electric Light Department (BELD) plant on Allen Street, but several of those who attended a March 25 meeting at the Watson Building on 85 Quincy Ave. made it clear what they didn’t want to see there: condos.

“I like the idea of a village look,” a woman said.

“We have to live in East Braintree with a lot of things that are extremely unpleasant for us,” said Dorothy-Veronica White, a member of the East Braintree Civic Association. “We’re really congested here.”

“We’re here to listen to you about a very important site in the town,” Boston architect David Gamble, who is working with the Community Design Resource Center of Boston, told the audience at the outset of the meeting. “We’re not going to show you any designs tonight, but in the months ahead, we’ll be getting there.”

Gamble introduced Karen Spence, the center’s director of projects, and said that the shortest project the center has worked on lasted two months while the longest lasted 20 months.

“We kicked off things in January,” he recalled. “The key questions are: how much development should there be and what kind? Tonight we’d like to elicit more feedback on site opportunities so we can create a list of design principles for the site.”

Gamble made it clear that the issue was about Allen Street, not the revitalization of Weymouth Landing that had been discussed two nights earlier at a meeting sponsored by Braintree and Weymouth’s departments of planning and community development.

“That’s not our charge,” he said. “That’s not our scope.”

Gamble advocated moving forward when it comes to determining the fate of the Allen Street area that Mayor Joseph Sullivan referred to as “a special place.”

“What you don’t want to do is create a stalemate situation,” Gamble said. “Now is a great time to plan for redevelopment.”

Sullivan spoke about the importance of making the property productive again.

“It has sat unused for 14 years,” he said.

“What we want to do is explore options,” Gamble said. “We want to show you what actually could happen.”

Among the possibilities mentioned during the discussion were a residential development and a waterfront amphitheater/bandstand.

A follow-up meeting is tentatively set to take place in May.

Anyone who would like to offer suggestions can e-mail Gamble at david@gambleassoc.com or Braintree Planning and Community Development Director Christine Stickney at cstickney@braintreema.gov.

Material from GateHouse News Service was used in this story.

Copyright 2010 Braintree Forum. Some rights reserved


Original article