Moving Target.
By Jim Conley • Oct 20th, 2007 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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How is the Brookline Board of Selectman’s investment of $6 million in the Boston Roman Catholic Archdioces’s housing project at the former St. Aidan’s church working out?
Well, if meeting start dates is any indication, I’m inclined to say that it’s not working out too well.
During the last round of throwing millions at the ill-conceived project, the Selectmen said there’d be a construction start date of August 31. Then the Archdiocese said construction will start during the last week of September. And then a few weeks back, the start date was pegged as occurring the last week of October.
I’m not aware that the project even has a building permit at this point (the initial application had been denied). And with the political fallout facing the Selectmen with this dud, I would expect that had the financing come through there’d be a rider mounting a horse at the Devotion House to scream the news through the streets.
Six million dollars in affordable housing funds wasted invested and not much to show for it. That’s pretty much what you’d expect from Brookline Town Government.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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Compare the current situation vis-a-vis the $6 million and the St. Aidan’s project in limbo (not in a religious sense) with the number of affordable units that would long have been in place if developers had been required to provide affordable units on-site rather than permitted to make “in lieu” payments to the Town’s affordable housing fund. How many families, and for how long, would have had the benefit of on-site affordable units? But providing the units on-site doesn’t have the impact of socking away and building up the “in lieu” funding to write big checks for a project that may not have, but surely needs, a prayer for success.