The next JP?

Just six short miles from Boston, Roslindale is booming

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

Rusted iron grates, filthy windows, and peeling paint once greeted customers at the small stores that lined the streets of Roslindale Square. Today, hand-carved, heavily lacquered signs hang above bright-blue awnings that cast shade on expansive picture windows. The gum-stained sidewalks have been replaced with brick paving.

After more than three decades of economic highs and lows, residents of Roslindale have much to smile about. Property values have skyrocketed. New businesses are eagerly snatching up space in the renamed Roslindale Village, just six miles from Boston. Meanwhile, merchants who have done business for years in the Washington Street commercial district are sprucing up and expanding their spaces.

Roslindale has long been a home for people who couldn't afford to live in neighboring Jamaica Plain. But as Jamaica Plain has become even more expensive, gentrification has spilled over into Roslindale. The appeal is much the same: the relative proximity of the city, the space and lifestyle associated with the suburbs, and, of course, the beautiful Victorian homes.

Alfred Wojciechowski, a 41-year-old architect, is one of many Roslindale residents who discovered the community only after beginning a house hunt. Living in the West Fenway in 1989, Wojciechowski and his wife decided they would like to buy their own home. They looked in Jamaica Plain, but they found it far too expensive and began exploring the alternatives.

"I had never even heard of Roslindale," admits the Canadian native. "Then I saw it and I loved the way it felt. The yards were beautiful, all the old Victorian houses were kept up, and I was right next to the commuter rail, which could get me to work in 15 minutes."

Now, with real estate values rising all over the city, many would-be buyers already know what Wojciechowski and his wife learned. "As opposed to a few years ago, home seekers are coming to me today with Roslindale as their first choice rather than as an alternative to other communities," says Linda Burnett, an agent at Innovative Moves, a Jamaica Plain real-estate agency that has just opened an office in Roslindale Village. According to the Greater Boston Real Estate Board, Roslindale Village's residential property values grew 16.5 percent in the past year.

The origins of this tree-lined, brick-paved community have almost a storybook quality. Named for Roslyn -- a small town just outside Edinburgh, Scotland -- and the surrounding hills that give the community the feeling of a valley, or dale, Roslindale was annexed to Boston as part of West Roxbury in 1873. It grew residentially as a classic streetcar suburb, and with the construction of the railway came a boom of commercial development. By the 1920s, Roslindale had assumed the geographic configuration it has today, with Adams Park -- a haven of manicured lawns, gleaming wrought-iron gates, and rows of blue spruces and golden maple trees -- at its center.

But a history of economic booms followed by fiscal crises has tested this picturesque community many times. Thirty years ago Roslindale had such a thriving business center that people came all the way from Newton to buy goodies at the town's small Greek bakeries or trusted remedies from the oldest independent pharmacy in New England. Things took a turn for the worse in the 1960s, however, with the development of the local malls. Many of the stores that lined the streets of Roslindale packed up and moved to the Dedham Mall, several miles and two towns away. An even more devastating blow was dealt to Roslindale in the 1970s, when residents were told their children would be bused out of town to attend other city schools. Things got so bad that the neighborhood suffered a spate of arson: residents and small-business owners were setting fire to their buildings for the insurance money. Adams Park became a hangout for young ne'er-do-wells and heroin dealers.

"No one wanted to live in the city," says Kate Horrigan, executive director of Roslindale Village Main Street, a public-private venture established to promote neighborhood businesses. "People started to move to the suburbs in droves."

In the 1980s, things finally began to look up. Roslindale was the first community in Boston to benefit from the National Trust for Historic Preservation's Main Street program, which uses federal and city funds and support from local businesses and institutions to revitalize historic or traditional commercial districts. Since 1983, when Thomas Menino (then a city councilor representing the district) sought the program's help for Roslindale, the neighborhood has served as a model for 14 other Main Street initiatives around the city. And thanks to Menino's efforts, Roslindale's business district was fully occupied by 1987, the year the commuter rail station opened.

Unfortunately, say Main Street officials, used furniture stores, bad restaurants, and five-and-dime shops came to dominate Roslindale's shopping districts. These businesses had very little appeal for the residents, and they suffered even more as the economy declined.

"It was apparent that having failing businesses in town was just as bad as no business at all," says Horrigan. "Merchants weren't making money, so they stopped contributing to Main Street."

So residents worked with Main Street to try a new strategy.

"Roslindale had the homes but not the shopping districts to attract higher-income families," says Jim Nichols, a local insurance-company owner. "The place sorely needed new business." The idea was to attract what Horrigan calls "yuppie types" with a taste for health foods, coffee shops, and nighttime entertainment.

The real coup of the early '90s was to bring a large market, selling specialized foods, to Roslindale Village for the first time.

The campaign for the market began in someone's living room in 1993 and became a reality in 1996 with the assistance of Mayor Menino, two local developers, and many residents who donated their time and money. As the Village Market began taking shape, Roslindale began to boom; the store opened on Corinth Street in March.

Now, eight new businesses have opened or are about to open in Roslindale Village. Three old businesses are currently expanding. Residents will soon have the pleasure of sipping coffee in three new cafés or decorating their yards with the help of a new florist and garden center.

"Last year commercial vacancies totaled more than 12 percent," says Horrigan. "This year, the vacancy rate is lower than 4 percent. Roslindale is returning to its vibrant, economically thriving roots."

But challenges remain. One of the unanswered questions is how best to manage the changing demographics. As wealthier residents move in, they push out the working-class immigrants who once called Belgrade Avenue, Corinth Street, and Washington Street their home. That is a tension that has not been resolved.

Meanwhile, the community is proceeding with smaller projects. Roslindale just received a $29,000 community policing grant to clean the graffiti off store walls and freshen up the aged surfaces of some of the older buildings. Main Street has also enlisted BankBoston to sponsor the upkeep of Adams Park and is in the process of having Alexander the Great Park, located beside the commuter rail at the back end of Roslindale Village, refurbished.

The next step, says Horrigan, is Main Street's Planned Courtyard Project, which will turn an abandoned lot that links many of the shops' back doors into an indoor/outdoor café.

Of course, not everyone in Roslindale Village has adopted the new look. "There are still some long-time shop owners who don't take too kindly to our requests that they spruce up their storefronts," explains Horrigan as she walks pasts one of the last of the rusty, old-fashioned iron grates. But she is confident that they, too, will be brought into line.

"Unless they want to lose their customers," she says, "they are going to have to keep up or get out."

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.