Following is the complete text of the letter sent recently by the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council (JPNC) to the City of Boston’s Zoning Board of Appeals (ZBA) expressing the JPNC’s dissatisfaction with the ZBA’s recent decision to grant a variance for the 12-unit apartment complex at 561-579 Centre St.
Sherry Dong,
Chair
Zoning Board of Appeal
City of Boston
1010 Massachusetts Avenue
5th Floor
Boston, MA 02118
RE: 561-579 Centre Street
Dear Chairwoman Dong:
I write on behalf of the Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council and its Zoning Committee to register our strong objection to the Zoning Board of Appeal’s decision to approve zoning relief for 561-579 Centre Street, over the JPNC’s clear and well-founded recommendation for denial, and despite the applicant’s failure to participate in good faith in the long-established community process.
This approval is disappointing, but more than that, it seems to reflect a broader and deeply troubling trend. It appears that the ZBA and the Planning Department have adopted a posture of disregard for local zoning processes citywide, regardless of merit or substance, and are increasingly unwilling to view the community process – which in JP is written into Article 55 of the Zoning Code – as a worthwhile component of zoning appeal’s process and one that furthers the City’s goal of responsible development.
The Jamaica Plain Zoning Committee has operated continuously for decades and has reviewed and submitted recommendations on nearly a thousand zoning matters over the last ten years. Time and again, the Committee has received feedback from elected officials and process participants (both applicants and neighbors) that it runs one of the fairest, most consistent, and most transparent community zoning processes in the City. The Committee holds public meetings twice every month, and it works diligently to resolve abutter concerns, improve project designs, and move matters expeditiously to the ZBA. The data speaks for itself – over 98% of zoning appeals in JP receive a recommendation of approval or approval with agreed-upon provisos from the JPNC. People in our neighborhood do the work – between meetings, during meetings, and across substantive negotiations the City often does not have the bandwidth to address – to improve projects and help them succeed.
The Zoning Committee held two public meetings on 561-579 Centre Street, on February 5 and May 7, 2025. At the first meeting, which was well-attended by members of the community, the applicant requested and was granted a deferral – not a vote to approve or deny – with the understanding that they would hold additional meetings with abutters to address specific concerns about traffic routing, building height and design, rear setbacks, screening and buffering, and construction mitigation. At the second meeting, the applicant’s attorney stated that in fact no such additional meetings had taken place over the intervening months, declaring that such an effort would have been “futile.” In light of the extensive public comment at the February 5 meeting, the seemingly resolvable problems with the proposed project, and the applicant’s open contempt for the established local process, the Committee voted on May 7 to recommend denial of the requested zoning relief.
The JPNC and its Zoning Committee are far from anti-development, as our record shows. The JPNC through its Zoning Committee and its Housing and Development Committee strongly support new housing, greater affordability (greater than the City’s own inclusionary-development guidelines for many years), and more density – especially near commercial corridors and transit. But developers are expected to solve specific problems that the community identifies, not to ignore neighbors and be rewarded for it. The ZBA’s decision to approve this project – over the rare, limited, and well-founded objection the JPNC and its Zoning Committee – suggests not only a failure to respect the Jamaica Plain neighborhood process, but a broader institutional contempt for local input, no matter how thoughtful or constructive.
To be clear, we are mystified and also frustrated. When the one tool we have as a local community – a deliberative vote based on an open and fair process that leads to a formal Neighborhood Council recommendation – is dismissed out of hand, and when neither the ZBA nor our City Councilor Ben Weber, nor the Mayor’s Office, stand up to support that recommendation, it sends a clear message that the neighborhood’s work simply does not matter.
If the ZBA and the Planning Department have adopted an unspoken policy that treats all neighborhood input as equally uninformed, equally biased, and equally disposable – regardless of the integrity and long-established credibility of the local process — then they are throwing away one of the few practical and effective tools for public engagement in land use policy that Boston has left.
We urge the ZBA to reexamine how it evaluates and engages with the Jamaica Plain neighborhood and the recommendations of the JPNC. Our work in JP is precisely the kind of community process the City says it wants – open, prompt, respectful, productive, pro-housing, and above all pro-affordability. When that work is ignored, individual projects, neighbors, and the City of Boston all suffer.
Very truly yours,
Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council
cc: Mayor Michelle Wu
State Representative Samantha Montaño
State Representative William F. MacGregor
Council President Ruthzee Louijeune
Councilor Benjamin J. Weber
Councilor Henry Santana
Councilor Julia Mejia
Councilor Erin Murphy
Boston Planning and Development Agency
Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council Executive Committee