May 18 - 25, 2000
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Cleaning up
After years of neglect, the city is redeveloping one of Roxbury's most polluted sites. Does it symbolize a rebirth for the neighborhood?
by Ben Geman
Dean Tagliaferro has seen contaminated industrial sites, but not many like Dudley Square's Modern Electroplating and Enameling company. "It was certainly one of the most dangerous sites I have been at in 14 years," recalls the Environmental Protection Agency's Tagliaferro, a coordinator of the waste removal that began in 1995 after numerous violations had prompted the state to shut the business down the year before.
When federal officials went in to inspect the site, what they found was an environmental disaster in the making. The company's operations -- which included metal-plating furniture, silk-screening, and spray painting -- had generated thousands of pounds of wastes, such as hydrochloric acid and potassium cyanide, that were improperly stored. Even worse, recalls Tagliaferro, "incompatible" chemicals were stored close together. Had the chemicals combined, the worst-case scenario was almost too awful to comprehend: escape of a cyanide-gas cloud.
Now, five years later, even though much of the waste has been removed, the Modern Electroplating site remains a mess. The building still stands -- padlocked shut, boarded up, some of its windows broken -- in the middle of the lot. In a neighborhood fouled by smog and pollutants from diesel buses and the waste-handling stations that dot Roxbury, the 100,000-square-foot site is the area's most powerful symbol of environmental distress. And, in the middle of a once-depressed commercial center that is coming back to life after a long struggle, it's an unusable void.
But that's about to change. In a striking example of new economic development slated for a once-neglected neighborhood, the city is moving ahead with plans that would bring a $20 million metamorphosis to the site. Last month, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) -- which is working with the city's Department of Neighborhood Development to revitalize the site -- received proposals for cleaning up Modern Electroplating and remaking it into something that will add to, not detract from, Dudley Square. By July, the BRA hopes to select a developer to clean up the site and design and construct a replacement building that will contain office and retail space. The developer will also build a parking garage on the site for the Department of Public Health (DPH); the state agreed to build the garage as part of its deal to move the DPH to Dudley Square in 2003 (see "Growing Pains," below right).
A public hearing on the site's development will be held May 22 at 5:30 p.m. at Morgan Memorial Goodwill Industries on Harrison Avenue.
"From a public-health and environmental point of view, it's our top priority," says BRA project co-manager Tom Ahern. "It allows us to remove an eyesore, a blight . . . and redevelop it into a vibrant commercial and retail center in the heart of Dudley Square."
Modern electroplating and the damage it wrought are not remnants of a long-departed urban industrial age. Instead, the contamination built up, largely unchecked, within the past 40 years. So severe was this contamination that every effort to clean up the site has brought it light-years from where it was when the state shut it down in 1994.
After the closing, the EPA removed tons of waste and contaminated materials -- 800,000 pounds' worth. Even with the most severe risks gone, much contamination remains -- including oils and asbestos, and residual contamination in storage vats. Worse still, ground water in Dudley Square has been polluted by the business. Among abandoned contaminated industrial sites, or brownfields, Modern Electroplating is one of Boston's worst.
Anything that goes "Boom!" runs the risk of wreaking havoc, and an economy is no exception. Outrageous housing prices are driving people out of the city, and some fear that rising commercial-property values will squeeze out independent businesses (see "Reviving Roxbury"). Growing pains
But the environment can also be at risk when development picks up. Nowhere is this more apparent than in Roxbury, where private and government investment is spurring the development of new projects that will likely draw thousands of additional cars to the area. A planned new parking garage in Dudley Square to accommodate employees of the state Department of Public Health -- which is scheduled to relocate to Dudley Square in 2003 -- and other new parking facilities are causing concern among urban environmental activists.
The Roxbury group Alternatives for Community and Environment (ACE) is especially wary of development that brings new cars and exhaust to a neighborhood with the city's worst asthma problem. According to the city's public-health commission, Roxbury's asthma hospitalization rate is 7.4 per 1000 people. That's well above North Dorchester, which holds the number-two position with an asthma rate of 5.3 hospitalizations per thousand. And although the Dudley Square garage is part of a project that will clean the horribly contaminated home of the former Modern Electroplating and Enameling, activists aren't ready to call the project a slam-dunk yet. "Let's not trade ground-water pollution for air pollution," warns ACE attorney John Rumpler.
"We believe and our partners believe we need to take advantage . . . of new development, and at the same time make sure that we are preventing, to the extent possible, the environmental and health and quality-of-life impacts that may be associated with it," adds Penn Loh, the group's executive director. Loh says the city should have conducted a promised Dudley Square-area air-quality and transportation study before committing to build a parking garage for the Department of Public Health.
All told, developments in and just next to Roxbury call for parking spaces for more than 4000 new cars, according to ACE. Among them, the Crosstown theater-hotel-retail-office project provides for at least 1200 spots, a new Northeastern University garage will hold 900-plus cars, and the DPH garage in Dudley Square will hold 500 cars. Although ACE was gearing up to fight the DPH garage plan, the group backed down when the city's strong support for the project became evident last year. Now, ACE activists say, environmental mitigation will be key to making the project work. If additional cars are going to come to Dudley Square, activists want to ensure that the number of new spaces is kept to a minimum, that DPH workers are encouraged to use public transit, and that other steps are taken to minimize auto emissions.
City officials say they are sensitive to the groups' concerns, but call the new garage a worthwhile price to pay for a project that will clean up one of the most polluted sites in the city and bring the DPH to Dudley Square. "By locating the parking facility behind that commercial and retail center, you guarantee the parking component of the DPH gets done, which basically delivers you the headquarters," says Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) project co-manager Tom Ahern. And to some, that tradeoff is not a bad thing at all. Joyce Stanley, program manager for the Dudley Square Main Streets program, flatly says the additional parking spaces are needed if businesses are going to thrive.
Arthur Jemeison, the BRA's regional manager for Roxbury, says the agency is willing to explore steps such as encouraging the DPH to use electric vehicles in its fleet and setting aside some of the garage spaces for car-poolers. "We want to engineer the facility so it has the least impact," says Jemeison.
Links between the health of the urban environment and development surfaced at City Hall recently. In April, City Councilor Mike Ross chaired a council hearing on the topic, giving voice to concerns that neighborhood activists in Roxbury, the Fenway, and elsewhere have about the effects of new development on air quality (see "Car Talk," This Just In, News and Features, April 14). And, as the Modern Electroplating site demonstrates, questions of balancing the environment with new development will continue as long as Roxbury keeps growing.
-- BG
But the hazards are more than merely environmental. The site's presence in the middle of a commercial district that's not yet living up to its full potential jeopardizes the area economically as well. Putting the site to use is almost as important for Roxbury as cleaning up the contamination.
"It's probably the most high-profile of the brownfield sites," says Trish Settles, director of community development for the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, a nonprofit community-revitalization group. "It represents so much potential for jobs and boosting surrounding economic development in Dudley Square. It's kind of a little black hole hanging out over there."
The city has a lot of sway over the eventual development -- it took ownership of the site last year after the previous owners ran up $300,000 in back taxes. In addition to the DPH parking garage, the city envisions 30,000 to 40,000 feet of retail space on the ground floor of the new development, and office space on its upper floors. All told, Ahern says, the site could draw 400 permanent jobs to the area, in addition to 300 jobs in construction and clean-up.
Dudley Square is already doing well where small businesses are concerned: Kathy Kottaridis, director of the city's office of business development, says 42 of them opened in Dudley Square between 1995 and 1997. But what the square currently lacks is larger commercial spaces. There are 15 or so small take-out places in the area, but hardly any larger sit-down restaurants. Sizable development on the Modern Electroplating site could bring bigger stores and restaurants to the square.
The developers eyeing the site are a wired and well-known crowd. One proposal, submitted by Brownfield-Hastings LLC, envisions something called Dudley Pavilion, a circular structure that could include a restaurant, a jazz club, office space, and a new home for Children's Services of Roxbury, which abuts the site. One of the partners in the pavilion proposal, the Brownfields Recovery Corporation, was founded by Boston philanthropist David Mugar, who funds the annual July 4 celebration on the Esplanade. John DeVillars, the former regional administrator for the EPA, is the executive vice-president of Brownfields Recovery.
Another proposal, called the Dudley Square Executive Plaza, is being pitched by the Cruz Development Corporation, part of the Cruz family enterprises, which include construction and property-management firms. The company has been involved in several important city projects, such as the police headquarters in Roxbury. The company, which would move its headquarters to the site, has partnered with the New Boston Fund, headed by Jerome Rappaport Jr. and founded by the Rappaport family. (Jerome Rappaport Sr. developed the Charles River Park complex in the West End.) The partnership has retained former Roxbury city councilor Gareth Saunders as a community liaison.
Whichever developer is chosen will have plenty of support. The city is chasing up to $2 million from the state's $30 million brownfields-restoration program to help defray the costs of the ground-water testing needed to determine the extent of the contamination. And already, according to the BRA, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development is offering more than $7 million in grants and loans for remediation and construction.
That kind of government investment, combined with a hot real-estate market, is spurring commercial development in Roxbury on a scale not considered possible just a few years ago. In addition to the Modern Electroplating site, the nearby, newly renovated Palladio Hall houses new retail and office clients, such as Boston Community Capital, a dentist's office, a sub shop, and Nuestra Comunidad -- the community-development corporation that owns and renovated the building.
Farther away, a new Grove Hall Mall is under construction on Blue Hill Avenue. And in Lower Roxbury, the enormous Crosstown project is under way. Slated to open in 2001, the development will include a hotel, a movie theater, retail space, and a 1200-car parking garage. According to Kirk Sykes, one of the site's developers, the new activity is a sign that businesses are again willing to service Roxbury after the loss of larger restaurants and theaters in the 1960s, which he says left a commercial void. "We never got back the places to go -- the movie theaters, the hotels, the places to eat," Sykes says. "We have lost out on a lot of the choices that other communities have." Now, he sees that changing.
"There are a fair number of things going on and it's an . . . example of an opportunity generated by a market cycle," he says. "Each one does something a little different, whether [it's] Grove Hall reinforcing a neighborhood center, or [the redevelopment of] Modern Electroplating helping to import new uses and cure old problems, or Crosstown serving an unmet local demand and [helping create] a regional identity for the area."
That isn't to say these changes are going to happen overnight. Even some optimistic observers are cautious. "The jury is still out -- it depends on what benefits flow to the community," says Roxbury city councilor Chuck Turner, who'd like to see local contractors work on the project and local businesses eventually rent the new space. But what's clear is that the site that once threatened Dudley Square with a cyanide cloud has become a cloud with a silver lining. The Reverend Richard Richardson, president and CEO of neighboring Children's Services of Roxbury, says he wasn't aware of the dangers next door until Modern Electroplating was shut down. "We really never knew how bad it was," he says, remembering when the trucks came to begin clearing the contaminants. "It was scary -- they had these big dump trucks marked `contaminated materials.' . . . It's a relief that it will be gone, out of our community."Now, Richardson looks forward to the development of the site and the new customers the DPH will draw to Dudley Square. "They have to eat lunch, shop, do something during the day, and that money will stay with the local merchants," he says. "That's something Dudley has needed for a long time. This is a real opportunity for the businesspeople that have hung in there."
Ben Geman can be reached at bgeman[a]phx.com.
