Narrow West Roxbury side street to get speed humps in 2026, just in time for planned apartment building to start taking tenants

Residents of Redlands Road off Centre Street in West Roxbury are mostly reacting cautiously to a developer's plans to replace the closed Stonehedge nursing home with a 30-unit apartment building. Traffic and parking, of course, are their main concerns.

On a neighborhood Zoom call last week, some residents said they were worried more traffic up the one-way street from Larkin Real Estate Group's building would only further clog parking spaces on a road already used by people getting takeout at the nearby takeout places on Centre - and increase the risk of a crash between careless motorists and residents, especially children.

Others, however, worried that residents of the new building - which would have 45 parking spaces for the 30 units - would succumb to the temptation to turn left out of the building and make a quick dash the wrong way to Centre Street, raising the specter of head-on collisions between lawbreaking apartment dwellers and people innocently turning onto Redlands from Centre.

"Unfortunately, I do not have the kind of faith in humanity" that other residents do that the apartment dwellers will always make the long haul up Redlands to Schirmer to get back down to Centre via parallel side streets, one resident said.

The building's driveway would be on Redlands. Larkin's architect, Eric Zachrison, who represented the company on the call, said that while just a small parking lot separates the site from Centre Street, the developers can't use that for access because it has a different owner.

Boston Planning Department project manager Camille Platt said one bit of good news for residents is that BTD has now penciled in Redlands between Centre and Schrmer for construction of "traffic calming" speed humps in 2026 - a decision so new it's still not listed on the city map of streets designated for humps.

Some residents said they're worried that 45 parking spaces for 30 units isn't enough, that people wealthy enough to afford units in the new building - no affordable units are proposed - would bring multiple cars with them, which would mean even more competition for scarce on-street spots on a street where not all the homes have driveways.

"It's been a delight while Stonehedge has been closed," because its employees are no longer parking on the street, one resident said.

A couple of residents expressed concern about the lack of affordable units. Larkin filed its plans in August, which means its proposal is grandfathered from a city requirement, which went into effect Oct. 1, that requires all projects of its size to rent at least 17% of its units as affordable. There was a similar 13% requirement before Oct. 1, but only for projects that require zoning variances, and the project is a Boston rarity because it requires no variances.

Zachrison spent much of the meeting agreeing to at least consider resident requests, except that one. The developers "do not intend to include any [affordable] units at this time," he said. Platt, however, said the department, whose approved the project will need, will be talking to Larkin about that. "That will certainly be a continuing conversation, 100%."

One resident wholeheartedly supported the project. "I think it's fantastic, a great use of the site," he said, adding he would oppose "any pressure" on Larkin to add affordable units, which he said could make the project economically unfeasible.

Video of the meeting.
5 Redlands Rd. filings and meeting/comment schedule.