Brookline church sues after Boston cancels parking on a lot it owns in Chinatown

A Boston board that oversees a federally mandated limit on the total number of parking spaces in Boston Proper voted last month to forbid any more parking at a lot between Hudson and Harvard streets in Chinatown, arguing the 30-space lot violates the parking cap.

The Chinese Christian Church of New England, which owns the lot, yesterday sued, charging the commission's ruling is based more on shoddy and missing paperwork than any legitimate reason - and charges it's long had approval for the spaces, just that they were included as spaces in a second, neighboring lot the church also owns:

The Hudson Street Lot has an exempt Parking Freeze Permit for a total of 97 spaces, of which up to 30 spaces are actually located on the Tyler Street Lot. When TSS became aware of the permit situation with the Tyler Street Lot, it filed an application for a Parking Freeze exempt permit in November 2023, and the APCC held a hearing on this application on December 13, 2023. TSS also filed a separate Application to renew the Hudson Street exempt permit and the two permit applications were considered at the same hearing. While the Hudson Street permit was approved by APCC, it did not approve the Tyler Street Lot permit application.

The church was originally located on the land, but converted it into parking when it moved to Brookline. The church has long leased the lot to Tufts Medical Center for valet patient parking on weekdays - and let St. James the Greater Catholic Church on Harrison Avenue use it for parishioner on Sundays. The church also let parents from a nearby daycare use it to drop off and pick up their children.

In its suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, the Chinese Christian Church argues the commission, based on its own poor record keeping, directed Tufts in 2022 to file a parking-ban exemption request for the Tyler Street lot because the commission had no records it had ever had an exemption - even though, the church avers, the spaces had long been permitted.

It then rejected the request, and Tufts sealed the lot off on March 30, the church says. The church then resubmitted an application, but at a hearing in June the board allowed "lengthy and irrelevant" comments from people who wanted the lot shut, while board members declared the application was for "new' parking spaces, rather than 30 spaces that had long been allowed.

Sampan reports opponents of letting the lot re-open said the lot contributed to Chinatown air pollution and road congestion and said the land should be turned into a park.

But the church says it has no interest in selling the lot and wants a judge to overturn the commission vote as arbitrary, capricious and illegal overreach and a violation of the church's rights to due process and order the commission to grant the church the permit it needs to re-open the lot.

Complete complaint (2.4M PDF).