Affordable 
     Housing
  Development        Competition
    2003

The Auto Mall

Mark Wiranowski will receive master's degrees in public policy and urban planning from the John F. Kennedy School of Government and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, respectively.

One of the many auto-related businesses in the Norfolk Triangle section of Dorchester.

When the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation (NDC) first came to us, they wanted us to look at a 10-block area in the Norfolk Triangle. After looking at the site and talking to the residents, we realized there was no way we could deal with revitalization and affordable housing without also dealing with the auto-use issue.

In the Norfolk Triangle, there were a huge number of auto-related uses. But the number of auto-related uses didn't match up with city permits, so some of them were probably illicit. On the other hand, those businesses provide needed car-repair services and jobs for some residents, so we felt that removing those uses completely wasn't a viable option.

The area is on the edge of two zoning districts. Most of the area was zoned for multifamily housing, but a small piece was zoned for light industrial use. The combination was perfect. We felt that the best option was to clean up the auto sites, make the businesses legitimate, and provide an auto space that would be useful to both the neighborhood and the businesses.

The Norfolk Corners proposal would transform this vacant lot into the site of a neighborhood auto mall.

For a long time, there's been a huge income divide between the areas east and west of Washington Street. The figures are pretty startling. Within the Codman Square NDC service area, the median income west of Washington Street is on the order of $20,000 a year. This is significantly lower than the median income east of Washington Street. It's a typically poor area that went through the same rash of arson that many urban neighborhoods went through in the 1970s.

Auto Uses in the Neighborhood
Auto businesses can be a dirty unsightly use that a lot of neighborhoods don't want. Cheap rents and a plethora of vacant land may be factors that make this an attractive neighborhood for auto uses.

I hesitate to generalize but some of the auto businesses are probably chop shops. A huge number of stolen vehicles were recovered in the Codman Square area in 2001 — about 70 in the immediate vicinity.

Until somewhat recently, much of this activity has been out of sight, out of mind for the city of Boston. Last year Mayor Thomas Menino targeted Codman Square and other areas in Dorchester for attention, saying they were the city's next priority for community development.

Inspectional Services has been pretty active in the area recently, but earlier it was a place where businesses could either get away with illegal activity or run their businesses legally but not up to code. The auto-use area hasn't been attractive for housing because it's stretched along the commuter-rail line.

We based our idea for an auto mall on the Swifty Auto Mall, which was developed by the Nuestra Comunidad Development Corporation on Blue Hill Avenue in Roxbury. Their idea was to concentrate several auto-related businesses in one place. Nuestra turned its auto mall into a business incubator as well. Because Nuestra retains ownership of the property, it's able to mange the environmental isses and the small-enterprise issues related to it.

Some of the auto-related trash that plagues the area.

The idea was that an auto mall could help clean up the neighborhood by consolidating those businesses in one place. The building would be designed so that the auto work is shielded from the neighborhood. Currently some of the auto work is being done right on the street. The residents tell us that repairs and even spray painting is sometimes happening right on the curb. With an auto mall we can keep those uses in one area. Even though the auto mall would face housing, it would be designed so that parking and auto-repair work would be done at the back. A number of businesses would have space in the mall.

We intentionally didn't speak to the auto businesses as we were developing our proposal. We felt that we needed to have a resident discussion and a plan before approaching them. Because the development of an auto mall will likely be a contentious issue, we didn't want to approach the auto-business owners only to duck out after the competition was over. With a more formulated plan, they will be better able to work on those issues.

Certainly ownership and site control will be an issue in developing the auto mall, because many of these lots are privately owned. But some leverage is possible if the businesses are operating in residential areas or are not up to standards.