Revised Roxbury project to mix museum, office, retail, housing
Mayor Thomas M. Menino is giving a tentative thumbs up to new development plans for a barren stretch of land along the Southwest Corridor in lower Roxbury, opening the doors for a new shopping and housing haven on the city-owned parcel opposite police headquarters.

“They have an ambitious plan, and whatever it takes to get a project done that’s in line with the community and developers, is good progress,” Menino said through his spokeswoman, Dot Joyce, on Friday.

Menino’s reaction to the new plan is a far cry from the tumult that ensued last year, when his administration accused the developers of failing to make progress on the site, questioned the feasibility of the $400 million mixed-use plan and yanked the rights to develop the parcel.

In April 2009, the mayor bent to community pressure and re-designated the developers.

“We want to knit the community of Roxbury and the city of Boston back together,” said Barry Gaither, who heads the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists and is a member of the development team, Elma Lewis Partners. “Ms. Lewis visualized the possibility of Parcel 3 as one that brought together arts and commerce.”

Menino is said to have had a prickly relationship with the late Lewis – a doyenne of the African American community – as he has had with a project that many consider her legacy.

Armed with a new financial backer and partner, New Canaan, Conn.-based Feldco Development, Gaither and fellow developers unveiled a modified plan to abutters this week. The plan does away with a previous proposal for a school of fine arts. It calls for an African-American arts museum, restaurants with outdoor seating, an eight-story parking garage, 300,000 square feet of office space, housing and a new element: large retailers.

As for the retailers they hope to lure to the site, Felco President Barry E. Feldman said to expect “some of the large retailers you would find in South Bay,” a Dorchester shopping center that includes a Target, Best Buy and Stop & Shop. Feldco is known for developing mixed use developments throughout New England that are anchored by supermarket tenants.

Known as Parcel 3, the project site comprises the remnants of the Inner Belt, a failed transportation plan hatched in the 1960s that razed more than 300 homes in Roxbury.

Talk of redeveloping the 9-acre parcel began nearly 20 years ago. Promises of a $15 million retail center and supermarket were hailed in 1993, and four years later the city leveled the legendary Connolly’s Tavern jazz club in preparation for the development. The plan never materialized.

At Gaither’s meeting with abutters, the biggest point of contention was that their plan calls for decreasing the number of traffic lanes on the Tremont Street stretch – worsening the gridlock that grips that area in rush hour. However, the developers said the plans are preliminary and can be adjusted.

Boston Herald / by Jessica Van Sack