Almost 10 years after the Newton Board of Aldermen rejected Boston College's proposal for the Monan Student Center on the basis that the proposed building would be too tall, a mayoral committee for the City of Newton is currently in the early stages of planning development for Newton Centre on the same vertical scale as the now-defunct Monan Center.
The purpose of the Task Force is to identify any aspects of Newton Centre that needed to be changed to improve the quality of life for both residents and businesses. Changes to parking facilities and building zones were given particular consideration.
After nearly a year of investigation, the members of the Task Force convened on March 12 to share their findings and propose their own individual visions for the future of the businesses and buildings of Newton Centre.
According to task force member John Furst, the Task Force overwhelmingly supports vertical development along Centre Street and Langley Road, including the construction of a five-story parking garage.
"Every member of the Task Force, pretty much, with the exclusion of myself and a resident who was on the Task Force, wanted the following: They want to build out the triangle parking lot. Everybody in the Task Force also wanted to knock down, re-zone all the single-story commercial buildings in Newton Centre. They want to zone them for three or four stories."
The Task Force's proposals may face an uphill battle in the coming stages of planning. The second public visionary meeting of the Newton Centre Task Force which was held yesterday afternoon, quickly erupted into a shouting match, as angry residents voiced their concerns over the Task Force's support of vertical development in Newton Centre.
Though no final proposal has been laid out, development on this scale would mark a contrast to decisions made about buildings BC has hoped to construct in the past. In October 1996, the Newton Board of Aldermen determined that the "towers on the Heights" were, in fact, reaching a little too high. The board rejected the University's proposal to build the Monan Student Center on the current site of Carney Hall and McElroy Commons on the basis that the proposed building would be too tall.
When the Newton Board of Aldermen rejected BC's proposal for the Middle Campus Project because of the height of the Monan Center, the University brought the case to Massachusetts Land Court.
In early 2001, after 22 months of consideration, Justice Karyn Scheier sided with BC, citing the Dover Amendment of 1950, which protected the University, as a non-profit religious and educational institution, from Newton zoning laws. The City of Newton appealed Scheier's decision based on the size of the project, though was unsuccessful.
In 2001, after the city of Newton lost the Land Court case, Mayor David Cohen sought to negotiate for a vertically smaller Monan Center, even though the University had already agreed to submerge one-third of the building below street level.
In May 2005, Cohen appointed the Task Force, whose members are now recommending that three-, four-, and five-story structures be built in Newton Centre.
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