We want our Austin Street parking lot beautified, not privatized. We call on the members of the Board of Aldermen to reject a special permit for the Austin Street Partners' proposed development, to return this public property to public use, and to improve Newtonville's village parking lot with trees, landscaping, benches, electric car charging posts, smart meters, Zipcar spaces, and places to park bicycles.

The Austin Street parking lot is essential to the health of the village of Newtonville.  The village is thriving; the Austin Street lot is at or near capacity much of the time. Local businesses say they will close if shoppers can't park easily, and must shop elsewhere.  Commuter rail users, seniors using the Senior Center and NNHS drivers need the parking lot too.  Newtonville needs its village parking lot; it doesn't need a gigantic apartment building on stilts above it.

The developers' latest plan is a failure. Despite a modest reduction of 12 units, the latest design would reduce the height of the development by only 6 feet. The proposed development would be even less attractive than the earlier iteration, as now the enormous structure would be mostly up on pillars, with cars underneath.  Trimming a massive 80-unit development by 12 units would still leave Newtonville with a massive 68-unit, high-density, for-profit, luxury housing development that residents don't want.

The developers' proposal is not about affordable housing.  The proposed development is 75% high-priced, luxury housing, driving up land prices and the cost of living in Newton. Down-sizing seniors and young professionals won't qualify for the affordable units and will find the "market-rate" units too expensive to be a sensible option. The small number of affordable units proposed is not worth the proposal's large negative impacts on the village, and on Newton generally.

This proposal is not "transit-oriented development".  Newtonville doesn't have a regular "T" stop, but the commuter rail, which helps commuters going directly to and from Boston during rush hour, but which runs infrequently, and to few destinations, otherwise.  The steep, rickety stairs make the station inaccessible to the disabled and many seniors. The proposal won't improve public transit at all, but will bring more cars into an already congested area.

The proposed development is out of scale and character with the village of Newtonville and burdens existing Newton residents. The proposed high-density, luxury housing development will loom over the adjacent buildings, casting shadows and adding unwanted density, traffic, parking demand, school overcrowding and costs in City services that far outweigh the property tax generated. The ASP proposal is a losing proposition for Newton taxpayers.

Newton voters voted 2 to 1 against the surplusing of public property without their vote of consent. The Austin Street lot belongs to the public - yet it was surplused and rezoned in a process that lacked transparency. Residents have rejected the idea of conveying their public property to private developers.  The ASP development team offered far less than the market value for our public property, and far less than another qualified bidder, which is very troubling to residents. Newton surplused and sold off schools cheaply in the past, and regrets it now.  We demand better stewardship of our public assets. We need to preserve the Austin Street lot to protect our options for meeting the future needs of Newtonville.

The City shouldn't transfer our public property to these developers in particular. The lead partners in the ASP team are locked in a legal battle with the City, trying to defeat Newton's claim of having satisfied the legal requirements of Chapter 40B.  Satisfying those requirements gives back to the City the power to say no to threatened high-density 40B developments that are currently opposed by residents in neighborhoods across Newton.  Why would the City want to reward these ASP developers - who seek to keep us chained to 40B State control over our local land use - with a special permit and control over our public property on Austin Street?

Shoppers won't tolerate the developers' latest parking "solution" and will abandon village businesses to shop where parking is easier.  While they've dropped the parking stackers, valets and double-parked cars for now, the latest plans show parking hidden under a massive building, behind screening, and reachable only by awkward access points - all of which will lead shoppers to avoid the village.

The developers' parking claim is untrue.  They claim their latest plan will "match the existing supply" of parking spaces at 127 spaces. If their goal is to match the existing supply, that is an admission that the parking supply is needed and the Austin Street lot never should have been declared "surplus". In fact, there are 159 spaces at Austin Street, 32 of which are used by NNHS Tiger Permit holders during school hours, and which are available to the public at other times. The students are being kicked out of the lot, and those 32 spaces will disappear in the developers' current plan. The 32 student cars will end up parked on nearby residential streets, adding to the negative traffic and parking impacts of this project. The plan is unrealistic and places an unacceptable burden on the community.