FOREST HILLS—Bicon Dental Implants, a 501 Arborway company, has started the controversial demolition of a 19th century house at 21 Yale Terrace.
Bicon had agreed with the City and neighbors to hold off razing the house until May 19 and had a demolition company there that day to start work. Bicon plans to replace the house with a building and a parking garage.
Bicon did not respond to a request for comment.
Bicon’s plans are controversial with neighbors and the two parties had been meeting with the help of the City to try to come to a resolution.
“The Yale Terrace neighborhood is angry that Bicon is destroying a perfectly good house in an effort to push through the city a commercial project that does not comply with zoning; does not fit the scale of our residential neighborhood,” said Gail Sullivan, a member of the Yale Terrace Neighborhood Association. “Their parking garage is over-sized, inappropriate and ugly. We are very sad to lose a neighborhood house, which has been home to generations of families since the 1870s.”
Sullivan said that the neighbors met with Bicon on May 11, but the discussions were not fruitful.
Bicon has a history of controversial expansions and operations that have drawn neighborhood complaints, City citations and City Council hearings.
Berta Berriz, the former owner of 21 Yale Terrace, says that she was “deceived” by a buyer who claimed to be a family-minded local grandmother into selling the historic house to the neighboring Bicon Dental Implants. Berriz did not want to sell the house to Bicon.
The start of the demolition of 21 Yale Terrace on May 19. (Gazette Photo by Peter Shanley)