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ESNA discusses White Stadium parking plan

Proposed parking restrictions around White Stadium during Boston Legacy soccer games were a main topic of conversation at Monday night’s monthly meeting of the Egleston Square Neighborhood Association.

The city of Boston and the Boston Legacy professional women’s soccer team are partnering to renovate White Stadium as the future home of the women’s professional soccer team, as well as to increase use for Boston Public Schools athletics.

The Legacy are expected to move into the stadium for its 2028 season.

Chris Vaughan of the ESNA reviewed the proposed game day parking plan, as well as some of the preliminary results of a city survey on the plan.

Residents in the affected areas still have until Friday, Nov. 6 to respond to the survey, which is available through a Google form that can be accessed through the Boston.gov website by searching for White Stadium Game-Day Transportation Planning.

Vaughan also reviewed the timeline for the ESNA and other neighborhood associations that will be affected by the game day parking plan to weigh in with the city.

“The city has been running an online survey; back on the 23rd of October, they shared a snapshot of what those results are with ESNA,” said Vaughan. “We are currently in the process of having neighborhood meetings around the impacted areas, so the Parkside Neighborhood already had their meeting a few days ago, and there is this meeting. The Stonybrook Neighborhood Association also has their meeting and the Roxbury neighborhood associations are following up in a couple of days.”

ESNA has a deadline of Nov. 23 to submit its recommendations on the parking plan to the city, Vaughan said.

“Then in the winter, the advisory group for White Stadium and the city will take all of the neighborhood association feedback and announce what the final plan will be,” Vaughan said.

The current catchment area for the proposed parking restrictions are an approximately three-quarter of a mile radius from White Stadium.

“What this would impact is game days only, and there are scheduled to be 16 games during the regular season with up to four additional games if a team makes the playoffs, so it could be anywhere from 16 to 20 games,” Vaughan said. “Most of those games are intended to be played Friday, Saturday, or Sunday, but there’s a chance that it could happen on weekday evenings as well.”

The parking restrictions would go into effect on those game days several hours before kickoff and extend until about one hour after the game.

“The idea is that anyone who lives in this catchment area … will get one parking permit for each vehicle they have registered at their address,” Vaughan said. “So if you have two cars registered, you get two parking permits. Then, every resident in the area gets two visitor placards for guests to use on their game days.”

The city survey asks if the residents support the parking restrictions in the area.

“We have also started listing … there are questions that have come up around on if this is the right catchment area, should it be larger than this and include additional streets, do we still have traffic and access control where you have someone, police or otherwise, stationed to prevent access to the streets?” Vaughan said. “What do we do about students who don’t have cars registered here? What do we do about the commercial corridors, etc?”

As part of the city’s agreement with the Boston Legacy, no games can start any later than 8:30 p.m. and every game has to end by 11:30 p.m.

Vaughan said the preliminary survey results show that there is overwhelming support in both the ESNA and Parkside neighborhoods for the Resident Parking Protection Zone. In addition, he said the survey shows that there is strong support from those living outside the .75-mile catchment zone to increase that radius for the parking restrictions.

In addition, there was also strong support for parking restrictions within Franklin Park during game days with a system where people could reserve parking spots online for certain times and activities.

Some of the questions that Vaughan said were still up for discussion on the proposed parking plan revolved around extending that catchment area, adding traffic control points in the Parkside neighborhood, and whether or not to allow students who lease in the area but have cars registered elsewhere take part in the program.

There were also questions raised about residents who live on commercial streets and the status of parking for teachers, students, or other people who work within the restricted area.

Adam Swift:
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