Court battle continues over 64 Allandale St. project

The long, drawn-out court battle over the 64 Allandale St. project is continuing, with the latest a rescheduling of a hearing for the Springhouse Senior Living Community lawsuit.

The hearing was originally slated for last month, but has been rescheduled to March 25. That is several months after another judge will hear a motion for a summary judgement in a different lawsuit over the project.

Springhouse Senior Living Community filed a lawsuit that requests that the court declare that the City’s Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) went beyond its authority in granting the variances and that the zoning relief be annulled. Springhouse Senior Living Community abuts the proposed project site.

The judge in the other lawsuit scheduled a Jan. 9 hearing on a motion for a summary judgment.

A group of abutters–Carl Tremblay, Jacqueline Lees, Stephen P. Bell, Mary Reed, and Elizabeth Bowen Donovan—filed a lawsuit in 2017 against Jacqueline Nunez’s Wonder Group, LLC and the ZBA over the proposed project. Wonder Group, LLC filed a motion for a summary judgment over the summer, which is asking the court to rule against the abutter’s lawsuit and in favor of the development.

Last year, Judge Paul D. Wilson of the Suffolk Superior Court issued a split ruling on a motion to dismiss the abutters’ lawsuit. The ruling denied the motion to dismiss over a lack of standing, but granted the motion to dismiss on the spot-zoning claim and several other issues, including citing potential damage to the wetlands as an adverse affect, which narrows the scope of the lawsuit.

Nunez plans to build an 18-unit development at 64 Allandale St., which is a reduction of two units from her original proposal. The project consists of renovating a farmhouse and building several townhouses on a road snaking down towards Allandale Woods. The proposal would have one affordable-housing unit. The other units would likely cost in the million-dollar range.

The project would abut Allandale Woods, which is an “urban wild” of about 100 acres of City- and private-owned land in Jamaica Plain and West Roxbury. The woods is roughly formed by Allandale and Centre streets, the VFW Parkway and Hackensack Road.

The site at 64 Allandale St. is on the border of West Roxbury and Jamaica Plain. It is part of the West Roxbury Neighborhood District, as a matter of zoning.

The vast majority of attendees at a meeting in 2016 on the revised proposal spoke out against the project, expressing concerns over density and the affect on Allandale Woods, among other issues. The ZBA granted the project more than 50 variances, a decision Mayor Martin Walsh backed.

 

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