“Woonerf” Axed For Pedestrian Greenway

A closed-off section of Fair Street will open to pedestrians — but not to cars or bikes — according to the latest plans from a Wooster Square developer looking to build 185 more market-rate apartments in the neighborhood.

Neighbors learned more about those plans Thursday night during a community meeting about the future of 20 – 34 Fair St. The revised plans came in response to neighbor complaints about cars potentially dominating a new cut-through, as contained in a previous ​“woonerf” version of the plans.

Organized by Hill Alder Carmen Rodriguez, the hour-and-a-half-long virtual meeting took place online via Zoom.

The 1.21-acre parcel on the south side of Fair Street is currently home to two service garages.

New York City-based developer Darren Seid’s company Epimoni is almost done building 299 new market-rate apartments right next door at the Olive & Wooster complex. He told the nearly 20 Hill residents, Wooster Square neighbors, and city staff Thursday night that he plans to build a new seven-story, mixed-use building with 185 apartments, 69 parking spaces, and groundfloor retail space on the Fair Street site.

Seid has already won a suite of zoning relief from the Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) for the project. He next plans on submitting a detailed site plan for review by the City Plan Commission.

Much of Thursday night’s meeting was focused less on the residential building itself, and more on the road in front of it.

That stretch of Fair Street between Union Street and Olive Street is privately owned, and has long been closed to through traffic. For years, the city has sought to find a way to reopen it to the public.

Seid said on Thursday that his company’s latest vision for this to-be-reopened section of Fair Street is to allow for car traffic on the publicly-owned western half of the road, and to have pedestrians only on the privately owned stretch near Olive.

“At one point, we were considering having cars coming through here and creating a ​‘woonerf,’” he said. ​“We have abandoned that idea through conversations with the city and with [Hill] Alder [Carmen] Rodriguez. We’ve determined it’s probably best to just have for pedestrians, and that cars coming in from Union Street will be able to access some outdoor parking” or make a U‑Turn and head back out the way they came. Residents of the new 185-unit apartment building, meanwhile, will be able to access a private parking garage from that same section of Fair Street.

Woonerfs, Explained

What’s a ​“woonerf,” again?

During a previous Zoomed community meeting and at recent presentations to the BZA, Seid had broached the topic of reopening the dead-end section of Fair Street to pedestrians, cyclists, and automobiles alike. The development of that multi-use cut-through would have been designed to keep all traffic slow and all users of the road separated as they made their way from Union Street to Olive Street, he said.

On Thursday, Seid said that his company has scrapped those ​“woonerf” plans in favor of creating a pedestrian-only stretch of the street as Fair heads east towards Olive.

“The intention would be to treat it like a park space,” he said. The stretch would include benches and trees and trash cans with pizza box-shaped slots for those ambling from Wooster Street with a take-out pie in tow.

There will be bollards and planters placed at the dead-end of the road where Fair Street runs up against the new pedestrian greenway, he said. ​“People would not be allowed to drive through.” Same goes for bikes, he said: Cyclists will have to dismount and walk their bikes through.

What else might go in this pedestrian-only greenway?

His hope is to have cherry blossoms planted throughout that stretch, Seid said, ​“in honor of our beloved cherry blossoms in Wooster Square.”

He said the angles of the brickwork and pavers on the greenway will also be designed to mirror the pedestrian paths that currently cut through Wooster Square Park a few blocks away.

“We believe this is a great element to the community for hopefully hundreds of years,” Seid said about the proposed greenway, ​“because the city will have an easement over this land.” That is, even though that stretch of Fair Street will remain privately owned, his company and the city are negotiating a public right of way that would ensure that anyone can still walk through Fair Street from Olive to Union, even if the property changes hand sometime down the road.

Seid added that the ground floor of the planned new 185-unit apartment building will have retail space at the corner of Olive and Fair. And the lobby and leasing areas along the south side of Fair will be fronted by glass.

There will be sidewalk on the north side of Fair Street from Union to the greenway, he said, so pedestrians do not have to walk in the middle of a two-way road if they’re coming from downtown.

“We see this as a linchpin to what will attract people to this building, having this greenway here,” he said, ​“and we see it as having an amenity for the city, and even for the state.”

Affordable Housing? Not Here

While much of Seid’s focus Thursday was on the to-be-reopened section of Fair Street, he did also field questions about the apartment building to be constructed alongside it.

How many total units, and what’s the mix of apartment types? asked Hill resident and Affordable Housing Commissioner Claudette Kidd, through a pre-submitted question read by city Deputy Economic Development Administrator Steve Fontana.

“It’s currently at 185 units,” Seid said, down one unit from the 186 that his company won BZA approval for last month.

He said the building will have a mix of apartments from ​“micro-studios” to four-bedrooms; the final numbers have not yet been finalized. That final shakeout will be determined in part by talking to ​“big investors or lenders” who — for example — may want to see more two-bedrooms and fewer three-bedrooms.

What about deed-restricted affordable units? Kidd asked.

“Current code does not demand affordable units,” Seid said. ​“We filed this along with current code.”

The alders are currently considering an inclusionary zoning ordinance that would require a certain percentage of units in apartment buildings in and around downtown be set aside at affordable rates. During a recent City Plan Commission meeting, Seid testified against the current city proposal.

Seid also said Thursday that some of the four-bedroom apartments will be open for leasing by the bed. That would lower the cost of entry for single people who want to live in the new-construction building and don’t mind living with roommates they don’t know, he said.

“I know that oftentimes it feels like, in any city, the developer and the people in the community are not eye to eye,” Seid said. ​“As best as we can be, we will be. We see ourselves as part of the community here.”