This is FU

On Janurary 11th, the Economic Development Director Sarkis Sarkesian, unveiled his plan to destroy the livability of south side by extending the central business zone from the Natick line to Winter Street (by La Cantina), with buffers on each end, ramping up the size of the buildings. The plan is to create a stretch of 2.1 miles of massive apartment buildings and mixed use housing, to eventually bring in businesses, restaurants, the eventual business tax base, with the eventual goal of reducing taxes on the housing on the north side, at the cost of livability on the south side, further traffic snarling.

In the Zoning Board of Appeals meeting that night, Economic Development Director stated that he’s coming up with new zoning, a multi-mile overlay zone as stated above, and that businesses now, should comply with his future zoning, that has no basis in the current law.

Sarki is in f*ucking god mode. I’ll repeat this… He’s seeking to impose his future, and unapproved zoning plans – on businesses applying to move in, under today’s current zoning. None of his plans have been approved, or argued… or voted on in the city’s legislature (city council and planning board). However his plans are already being enforced as if they were current law. In the Zoning Board of Appeals, he had a list of 10 conditions that a new building would need to comply with, and he alone would review – to be approvable – now… as if his plans were commandments and he was the dictator with the approval stamp.

There was concern for the businesses we’d lose in the plan to bring in massive housing developments, such as at 208 Waverley St, where the local and ethnic Seabra Supermarket will be replaced with 225 units of apartments, in a massive 5 story building as shown above. Sarki stated that he is going to move the Seabra market from where it is, it a neighborhood where it plays a vital role, to a spot in downtown, where it will face competition from other local supermarkets and small grocer/butchers, and may push Seabra or other markets out of business.

Below- see the tentative Waverley Street overlay district as currently is mostly otherwise only in Sarkis’s brain.

And the letter with conditions ordered by Sarkis and not due to any law or rule on the books in the city.