Over the last 60 years, the buildings in Chinatown and the people who live and work there, have undergone massive changes. The Boston Planning and Development Authority (BPDA) relaunched its lapsed PLAN: Downtown in November with an added focus on post-pandemic revitalization and stands to bring yet another wave of changes. The plan will culminate in new zoning guidelines governing land use, allowable heights, and density, and will encourage mixed use development and a more predictable system of trading larger scale development for community benefits.
Chinatown Protection Areas Should Have Smaller Scale Zoning
PLAN: Downtown includes Chinatown, but community participants have argued that Chinatown needs a different set of guidelines designed to preserve its historic and cultural character. Not only do historic buildings like the Mary Knoll Sisters Center or the 19th century brick row houses deserve additional protections, but smaller scale zoning in a few targeted protection areas can curb the level of speculation that has made it so difficult for a family to buy a home today.
The super-hot market is driven by outside investors for whom real estate speculation has become the new stock market. This July, the old garage and associated storefronts at 40 Beach Street sold for $32 million to a limited liability corporation (LLC) from Delaware and New York City! Row houses that less than ten years ago sold for $800,000 now list for twice that amount. Zoning laws, and Boston’s historic lack of enforcement, are key to driving up these land and property values.
A History of Displacement
It seems hard to believe now, but Chinatown was once known more for affordable living rather than desirable real estate. In the 1800s, the area was home to many working-class immigrants and their families. Rowhouses – three- to four-story brick buildings connected by their outer walls – provided shelter for new arrivals, including Irish tailors and laborers as well as Jewish and German immigrants. Starting in the late 19th century, the same rowhouses were home to families from what is now Syria and Lebanon, followed by multiple waves of Chinese laundrymen, garment workers, and restauranteurs.
However, as told in Forever Struggle: Activism, Identity, and Survival in Boston’s Chinatown, 1880–2018, the neighborhood’s identity started changing after Boston’s government implemented “urban renewal” plans in the 1960s. Many rowhouses — longtime homes and spaces for small businesses run by Chinese immigrants — were replaced with highways and taller buildings. Tufts-New England Medical Center, now known as the Tufts Medical Center, also expanded significantly between 1972 and 2014, taking over some blocks where rowhouses were formerly located.
During these waves of development, thousands of residents were pushed out of Chinatown to other neighborhoods and suburbs like Malden and Quincy. Since then new mixed income developments like the Metropolitan and One Greenway have added affordable housing to the area, but haven’t been able to reverse the trend of rising housing prices.
Today, as Lydia Lowe of Chinatown Community Land Trust (CCLT) argues, it’s much harder for working-class immigrants and families to stay in the neighborhood, let alone move here. CCLT has worked to prevent some of these homes from being converted into luxury units by buying them outright, but current real estate prices make this difficult.
A Row House Protection Area and Implementation of the Chinatown Master Plan. Because the City of Boston has routinely allowed developers to work around zoning limits, builders have felt free to propose high-rise buildings in the neighborhood. Sing Ming Chan, for example, has proposed a 25-story luxury development where the See Sun Market and single room occupancy housing once operated. Another investor will pay $32 million for an old parking garage that will be torn down for new development.
Chinatown residents are not opposing taller buildings in a knee-jerk reaction. But unlimited real estate speculation is driving families out of the neighborhood’s smaller properties. Chinatown zoning laws should allow for height when development projects address community priorities and protect smaller scale streets from unwanted demolition or expansion.
Our volunteer group, Chinatown Stabilization Committee, is committed to using zoning in just this way. Together with CCLT and other community organizations, we’re advocating for a new Row House Protection Area to limit height and density on a few intact row house blocks, and proposing that the community’s own development vision, expressed in Chinatown Master Plan 2020, become the foundation for development decision making in the neighborhood. With amended language to enforce zoning protection areas, we aim to achieve the following broad goals:
- Preserve the small-scale, family-oriented community that’s existed for decades
- Prevent powerful developers from disregarding Chinatown’s history and displacing local businesses and workers
- Add more opportunities for community input into the development process
We’re asking Boston’s development authorities to change zoning laws in order to stabilize Chinatown’s future and preserve an important piece of Chinatown’s history. If you’re interested in learning more about the proposal or supporting us, please get in touch through this Google form.
Chinatown Stabilization Committee is a volunteer-led group that supports organizing efforts for workers, tenant power, and language justice. They work in conjunction with the Chinese Progressive Association, Chinatown Community Land Trust, and other Boston grassroots progressive organizations.
