Boston College expansion gets OK from city zoning commission

The Boston Zoning Commission has approved a plan to expand Boston College. More than 200 people packed a public hearing to argue the merits of the $1 billion construction master plan. The college plans to build new baseball and softball stadiums on open space that used to belong to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Also included is a proposal to house students in university-controlled residence halls.Residents vehemently opposed the construction of the 1,000-seat baseball stadium, which they said would generate excessive noise and light, and disturb the neighborhood.

Earlier...from The Boston Globe: A group of neighbors and environmental leaders is seeking to delay Boston College's $1 billion expansion plan, raising concerns about its possible impact on aqueducts beneath the campus that carry the water supply for Boston and many surrounding communities.

FROM MARCH 2009....A Boston city councilor and two members of a city-appointed task force have personal or financial connections to Boston College, even as they represent neighborhood concerns amid the college's plans for a $1.6 billion expansion. Councilor Mark S. Ciommo, who represents the Brighton neighborhood, is waiting for a final decision from Boston College officials on his application for a scholarship for his son, who was accepted over the winter. Ciommo has upset some neighborhood activists for dropping his earlier opposition to the college's plans and his embrace of a compromise to build a new residence hall on a 60-acre property the university bought in 2004.
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FROM JANUARY 2009: The city of Boston's planning agency has approved Boston College's $1 billion expansion plan, but has put off a decision on its most controversial aspect: a 150-student residence hall on the former property of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Neighbors have long urged the college to build more student housing, saying students who live in off-campus apartments often are rowdy and disruptive. But many oppose the specific sites chosen, saying they are essentially extending the campus into the neighborhood.To read The Boston Globe article, click here.

FROM JULY 2008: Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino wants Boston College to increase its voluntary payments to the city to offset tax revenue lost as a result of the school's recent $67 million purchase of a high-rise apartment complex. As part of its $1 billion expansion plan, the college wants to turn the building, about a third of a mile from the university's Chestnut Hill campus, into a residence hall for more than 500 students.
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EARLIER: Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino is denouncing Boston College's $1 billion expansion plan as an intrusion into the Brighton neighborhood. He accuses university leaders of arrogance in pursuing development goals with little regard for residents' concerns. The college wants to convert a high-rise apartment building about a third of a mile from its main campus into a residence hall for 560 students; the school also wants to build new student housing on property it bought from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston.
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FROM JUNE 2008: Boston College, seeking to quell neighborhood complaints over disruptive students, plans to provide new residence halls for nearly 1,300 students. The school is seeking to become the first major college in the city to provide university housing for all of its undergraduates. To achieve that goal, the college has agreed to pay $67 million for a 16-story apartment building that would house 560 students. The school also reaffirmed its plan to build new housing on property it bought from the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Boston College's plan could intensify pressure on other local universities to accelerate housing construction.
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FROM FEBRUARY 2008: City officials in Boston are urging Boston College to find alternatives to its plan to build student housing on the property formerly owned by the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Nearby residents said they would prefer that the college use the former archdiocesan property, which the college calls the Brighton campus, for academic and administrative use.
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FROM DECEMBER 2007: Boston College plans to spend $1.6 billion over the next decade to expand and rebuild its campus, bolster its faculty by 15 percent, and create a dozen academic institutes in a far-reaching effort to vault the Jesuit college into the top echelon of the nation's universities.
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