Residents push back on White Stadium parking, transportation plans at heated meeting

A public meeting in Dorchester to discuss parking and transportation issues around the new White Stadium was heated at times Thursday evening, with residents confronting city officials, particularly over proposed parking bans on game days.

Residents of Roxbury, Dorchester and Jamaica Plain expressed ire at city officials, including Dion Irish, Boston’s chief of operations, and representatives of the Parks Department, Transportation Department and Boston Public Schools. Many residents remain upset over the city’s agreement to lease White Stadium to Boston Unity Soccer Partners, an investment group seeking to use the Boston Public Schools-controlled stadium as the home turf for Boston Legacy Football Club.

The dispute has been entangled in a lawsuit, which remains the subject of a Supreme Judicial Court review this month.

Under terms of the lease, the team is entitled to 20 games per year at the stadium. The city has proposed a plan to restrict parking in and around Franklin Park on game days. Soccer spectators will be required to take shuttle buses from remote lots or MBTA stations or to use public transit or ride share services to travel to and from the park.

Irish said the city hasn’t yet decided on the size of the parking restricted area and noted that some people don’t want a parking-protected zone at all. The zone is meant to discourage stadium visitors from using on-street parking near White Stadium, but as currently envisioned by the city, could restrict neighborhood residents from hosting parties and cookouts on game days.

Other visitors to Franklin Park will be required to request a parking pass that would enable them to park for a limited time. Residents of the surrounding neighborhoods will be required to obtain a resident parking permit to park at their homes.

Residents also were asked to weigh in on how far from the stadium the restricted parking zone should extend — a half-mile, three quarters of a mile, one mile or a mile-and-a-half.

But many who turned out weren’t interested in engaging in those exercises.

“Democracy is not f—ing multiple choice,” Williams shouted at the city officials.

Critics say that the Boston Mayor Michelle Wu's administration did not adhere to protocol followed in other instances in which community members were consulted before land is put out for a public bid.

Former State Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, a Dorchester resident, said Wu has given more opportunity for input to residents of Charlestown relative to a new soccer stadium in Everett.

“She was concerned about environmental and traffic issues, so she called the meetings and she goes to the meetings, and she showed up in person," Wilkerson said. "She has never agreed to have one conversation with us.”

Others in the meeting questioned the larger impacts of the city’s current parking and transportation plans.

Priscilla Andrade, who lives on Montebello Road, said she visited businesses on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain to ask whether they had been informed of the game-day parking restrictions.

“None of them knew this was happening,” she said.

Dorchester resident Reggie Stewart noted that the city’s restricted parking zone for game days could reach as far as Harambee Park in Dorchester’s Franklin Field. Stewart and others said the restrictions could affect churches, the Roxbury YMCA and local businesses, such as the District 7 Café in Roxbury and the Midway Café in JP.

“I don’t see how this radius makes any sort of sense,” he said.

The city’s new Parks Commissioner, Diana Fernandez Bubeau, said commercial parking districts, which generally have two-hour limits, would not be affected by the parking restrictions.

“Commercial zones are going to continue to operate as normal,” she said.

But Stewart and others noted that many of the businesses people currently patronize are in areas with residential parking.

“On game days, their businesses are effectively shut down,” he said.

Stewart asked city officials whether patrons of the Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center, which sits across from Franklin Park on Blue Hill Avenue, would be able to park without being ticketed and towed.

“Are you all even considering the way in which you up-end Black life?” he said. “Health care, houses of worship, businesses or just parking on our streets. This is just normal, everyday interaction of human beings. You’re turning it completely upside down.”

The city officials present at the meeting, held at the William Devine Clubhouse, did not respond to most of the residents statements. Following the meeting, Irish said city officials would seek to incorporate residents’ concerns into the plans.

“There are definitely a lot of strong feelings that we definitely want to hear, to help inform an improved version that includes the feedback we’re hearing tonight,” he said. “I think people really understand how the game-day parking restrictions will impact them, what accommodations can be made for them for special events.”

WBUR and the Dorchester Reporter have a partnership in which the news organizations share resources to collaborate on stories. This story was originally published by the Dorchester Reporter.