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Will meeting on kosher hotel in West Roxbury get a minyan?
By adamg on Wed, 04/22/2015 - 9:56am
The BRA holds a public meeting Thursday on a developer's plans to build a kosher hotel and restaurant on the VFW Parkway at the Dedham line.
The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. in the District E-5 community room.
The proposed 69-room King David Hotel would go where the McDonald's on the southbound side used to be, until it burned down in 2013.
This would be West Roxbury's first (and only) hotel catering to observant Jewish guests - its developer hopes to make it the first in a national chain of such hotels.
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Comments
It adds no value to the neghborhood
nor it it useful to the area residents. Place it in Newton where it would better serve the community.
But then again anything is better than a vacant lot I guess.
Um
Area residents don't stay in hotels...
You ever here
of a function hall/ ballroom.
Jews in West Roxbury!
They exist! Granted, probably not in numbers to suppprt a functuon hall, but it's not like Brookline and Newton are that far away.
One thing West Roxbury is not lacking is function rooms for people who don't keep kosher.
Have you heard of transportation?
Wait, so, people in West Roxbury who aren't Jewish and want a function room really close to home or work can't use this place, right?
And the Jews in West Roxbury can't use it because it's not a stereotypically Jewish community, so your talking points wouldn't work if we mentioned that they existed, right?
And people who are looking for a kosher function hall can only use it if they live in West Roxbury, right? People don't drive, walk, or ride buses, right? And the neighborhoods all have stockade fences around them with armed checkpoints, right? And this location isn't a mile or two away from several heavily Jewish neighborhoods, right?
EDIT: Jinx, Adam.
not on Shabbat or Yom Tov
if it's Shabbat or Yom Tov, the target population won't drive or ride buses to this location. (Are there even buses to this location?). Which is why, yes it would make more sense in Newton Centre or Coolidge Corner.
Not a big deal
So, wouldn't work for orthodox B'nai Mitzvot, but would be fine for weddings and nonreligious events.
You have misunderstood their
You have misunderstood their business model. They don't want people to be able to conveniently walk to functions there. It might be nice of them to do that, but they're not in nice, they're in business. They want people to have to stay over in the hotel to attend an event there, such as a wedding or a bar mitzvah.
Note this is the business model of hotels that host SF conventions such as Arisia: the convention contract stipulates that if the convention attendees book up enough guest rooms, the convention gets the function space for a steep discount or for free. The point of having function space is to attract large numbers of people to stay over in the hotel; they don't make nearly so much renting out the function space alone.
So by being just far enough away from dense Jewish communities that they can't walk there, for any Saturday event, those attendees will be just as stuck paying for rooms as attendees flying in from out of town.
Of all the enterprises that might be interested
Of all the enterprises that might be interested in building a business on this spot, a hotel is a good one. It'll bring out-of-town customers and have a restaurant which means more options for folks who live in the area. It'll generate tax revenue, not just restaurant tax but room tax. Do they need zoning variances to build it? The back of the property runs near the Charlie River, I think. I think the property is in Dedham not West Roxbury. If so, that's unfortunate for Boston.
I think that's the last lot in Boston
Sort of like Waves is the first in Boston on the other side.
Yay, a hotel in that spot is a good enterprise & a good neighbor
What is the new construction across the street just northbound of Ocean State Job Lot, same side?
And further up northbound is the narrow condo building. Every time I go by there's a Boston Police Patrol car parked in front.
On Route 1 there's a lot of traffic. Lots of potential customers makes it a good place to locate a business-- Dunkin Donuts, Party Store, Uno's, Starbucks, McDonalds, Burger King, Taco Bell, etc. And it's a good place to put a hotel because travelers can get there by 128 and Route 1.
The Place with the Big-Ass Fake Windows
Self storage, I think.
This section of "Rt 1"
Has been sort of a graveyard for most commercial businesses. Most thru traffic takes 109 to Washington St. and then Elm back to Rt. 1 to avoid the lights and traffic.
A hotel though might do better? Who knows, but of it caters to a specific clientele it might do ok.
Providence Highway/VFW PKWY
...not Route 1.
Route 1 has not run concurrent to the VFW Parkway for twenty years. For some reason the Federal Govt did not make it publicly known.
That's why I had it in quotes......
For those of us who called it rt 1.
So...
... where is the current Route 1 in the area (or is there none)?
Along "128".
Along "128".
;-)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
'Area residents'
What about Bay Sweets, can that stay or is that also not for 'area residents'? Al Wadi by Home Depot?
Does 'area residents' mean just Christians or just Catholics or just Irish Catholics or what exactly are the religious parameters of West Roxbury acceptability? Or is it just a simple no Orthodox Jews policy? I'm a recent yuppie transplant (10 years) but I mostly focus on destroying Roslindale, so I'm not totally up to speed on the finer points of West Roxbury localism.
My wife and I jokingly...
... (orr maybe seriously) congratulate ourselves on having been too poor to afford West Roxbury, and thus having to settle for Roslindale (almost) 18 years ago.
You're makings a lot of assumptions
and jumping to a lot of conclusions. Take a deep breath, your anger isn't good for your blood pressure!
I'm not angry
I think it's noteworthy/funny that someone thinks Orthodox Jews don't belong in West Roxbury for some reason.
Please
Point to where someone said that! They didn't, you chose to interpenetrate it that way. Maybe because you dislike people from Westie, or maybe because of other personal reasons. But the fact remains, nobody said anything ill regarding Judaism or people who practice it.
Um, ok
So by saying the Orthodox hotel didn't serve 'area residents' no-one was talking about the Orthodox Jews?
Cool story bro.
jewy, jew, jew, card
What commenter #1, anon, said is that the hotel has no value to the West Roxbury community and should be built in Newton (presumably because there it has value to 'the community.')
I think it's pretty clear anon was playing the jewy, jew, jew, card. And I call that straight up race-baiting. Judging by other people's comments, they made the same judgement about commenter #1's comment.
The race-baiting seems to have worked to the extent everyone responded to it but how they responded makes it clear they reject the premise, that kosher jewish hotels are not valued in communities like West Roxbury.
Kosher restaurant! Jew eat? https://youtu.be/DaPBhxXhprg
Bay Sweets
Actually serves West Roxbury's Syrian/Lebanese community (yep, there is one, dates back to when Little Syria, near South Station, was demolished to make way for an I-93 ramp).
But, yeah, I'm surprised to see somebody concerned about the community benefits of development on an empty lot bordered by a car dealership, a pet supply store, a highway and the Charles, on the way out of town.
I think that's why they
said, "Its better than a vacant lot."
Wow.
So hotels targeted to Jewish people shouldn't be put where "anon (not verified)" has deemed there to be too few Jewish people to be appropriate.
Again, wow.
Despite the resources we put into education in the US
Despite the resources we put into education in the US, there is a lot of ignorance... or willful race-baiting... or chuckleheads trying to be provocative, but what difference would it make?
Staff Jobs
However, there is no requirement for the staff-cooks[1], housekeepers, administrators etc.- to be Jewish. I would say jobs would count as a benefit to the community.
[1]Cooking is a bit complicated. There is a law that in order to retain Kosher status, food has to be cooked by a Jew. Today, this implemented by an observant Jew turning on the pilot light. After that, anyone can use the stove.
Indeed, the only Jewish person on site can be the Mashgiach, who checks incoming produce and packages, keeps an eye on everything etc.
As a resident - it doesn't
As a resident - it doesn't bother me. It also provides tax revenue to the city.
That's big of you
Is being "not bothered" more or less accepting than "tolerating" something?
Do you have a screw loose?
How do you turn her comment into her being intolerant?
Being indifferent to something is not being anti-semitic.
"Not bothered" in this context seems to mean....
... "I don't see why people are making a fuss by opposing this". No reason to slap down the person who said this.
inappropriate implication?
I see the inference you made and I'd agree if you're correct that westiemama is not bothered by Jews as opposed to being not bothered by a hotel in this spot.
But If westiemama's premise is that there's a public hearing about this land use proposal-- a hotel-- that'd be exactly the purpose of a public hearing.
That is exactly what I meant.
That is exactly what I meant. It's now that I don't care. A hotel there is fine - it doesn't bother me since it's a highly commercialized area of west Roxbury. It doesn't botter because it's not a shady motel (like the one right after the rt1/128 exchange). It doesn't bother me because the people who will stay there are generating revenue to the local economy.
I apologize then
It's just too often that "doesn't bother me" gets used by well-meaning but ignorant people regarding various minority groups, as if it's a majority group's place to approve or disapprove. "Doesn't bother me if my kid's teacher is Black," etc.
Absolutely not
This would disrupt the bucolic neighborhood atmosphere provided by U-Haul, Taco Bell, Ocean State Job Lot, the Laser Tag place and Town Fair Tire, among other things.
Not Town Fair Tire
Looks like they just closed.
Business model caught up with Town Fair?
Discount tires, premium-priced service for mounting, balancing and aligning. Plus they compete with Firestone across the way, a full service auto repair.
The website is still active
No mention of being closed online, but I haven't been by in a couple weeks, so I'll trust your judgement.
It's my fault if they went out....I used to buy tires there when they were NTW, but not since then.