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Dorchester Bay City Should Be For Us! Not Another Seaport! Petition and Emails to Mayor Wu and the BPDA

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Goal: 1000

Join us in making your voice heard about the Dorchester Bay City development. This is one of the largest developments coming to the city, and it is coming right to our neighborhood of Dorchester. Join Dorchester Not for Sale in calling for a six month slow down of the process to get real community feedback, as well as more commitments around affordability, good jobs, and community benefits. This project has been moving rapidly through the BPDA process, in the midst of a Mayoral transition. We need time to get real commitments from the developer and to make sure residents most impacted by displacement are at the table.

When you sign this petition, it will automatically send emails from you to Mayor Wu and Brian Golden (Director of the BPDA). Your message will also be cc-ed to your Arthur Jemison (the Mayor's Chief of Planning and Director of the BPDA), Michael Firestone (the Mayor's Chief of Policy), Sheila Dillon (the Mayor's Chief of Housing), Michael Christopher (Interim Director of Development Review, BPDA), and your at-large and district City Councilors. Your email will be part of public comments to the BPDA and indicate that you oppose the project in its current form.

Step 1. Enter your name and contact information.

Your name and address will be automatically added in the signature of the email. But please remember to add a note about your connection to Dorchester or Boston in Step 2 below! Your phone number will not be shared with City officials.

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Step 2. IMPORTANT: Say how you are connected to Dorchester, Boston, or the project.

If you live in Dorchester or Boston, write text below that says your name, address, and neighborhood. If you don't live in Dorchester or Boston, explain your connection to the project (for example, if you attend or work at UMass Boston).

You can also add a personal message that will go above the main petition text. Remember that your message will go to the Mayor and Brian Golden (Director of the BPDA), and be cc-ed to City Councilors, the Mayor's Chiefs of Policy and Housing, and BPDA staff, so it shouldn't be a message specific to your City Councilor.

***IMPORTANT*** My name is _____ and I live at _______. Or: My name is ______ and I am connected to/impacted by Dorchester Bay City because ______.

Petition Text

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Your Letter *

Along with many Dorchester residents and concerned community members, I am writing to request that you take immediate action to extend the public process for the proposed Dorchester Bay City development by six months to ensure meaningful community input about on-site affordable housing, preventing displacement, jobs access, and climate resiliency in the project. I *OPPOSE* the project in its current form.

Development in Boston continues to exclude and leave behind the communities and residents who could benefit most. We appreciate your commitment to housing justice and the bold action you’ve been willing to take so far. However, in our neighborhood, we continue to see development speeding through the BPDA process with limited community input. To ensure that the process centers around affordability, racial justice, and equity, we believe that this development needs to slow down while we work with you and others to incorporate community voices. 

The Dorchester Bay City Development is a multi-billion dollar project put forward by the private development firm, Accordia Partners LLC. Currently, Accordia is seeking approval from the BPDA to redevelop 6.84 million square feet of land into a mixed-use development. We have a number of concerns with this project that need immediate attention, including affordability, job access, environmental justice, and community process. Specifically on affordability, Accordia intends to build 1,970 housing units, of which 15% units have been deemed affordable at 60% average median income. Accordia’s definition of “affordability” is not truly affordable for Dorchester; it excludes most Dorchester residents, particularly BIPOC residents, and paves the way for displacement.

During a six-month extension of the project, it is important to get further commitments from Accordia Partners about real affordable housing, displacement prevention, pipelines for residents into well-paying, quality jobs, and climate justice. This is public land, and therefore, it is especially important that the development meet community needs and promote racial justice. This includes dramatically more affordability onsite; funding to take housing off the speculative market; community decision-making about jobs access, funding, and pipelines; and increased linkage payments. This project does not comply with the BPDA’s own Columbia Point/Morrissey Master Plan, and continues to concern the community in terms of the ripples of displacement that this new Seaport will cause. 

Dorchester Bay City is one of the largest development projects currently under consideration, and it will shape the surrounding communities and the City of Boston for generations. The process is moving ahead too quickly, particularly during an ongoing pandemic, leaving residents most impacted without adequate time to contribute feedback, particularly in languages other than English. The BPDA and Accordia have rushed through a series of meetings in January and February presenting new information without the opportunity to engage in real dialogue, and Accordia has refused to answer key questions or respond to solutions and concerns from residents. Especially for a development on public land, this could be an opportunity to develop something that meets our communities’ needs, with affordability, good jobs, and climate justice at the center, not another Seaport that caters to the wealthy. This can only happen if the current project is slowed down significantly, for at least six months, in order to create an equitable and robust community participatory process. There is an obligation to local residents and surrounding communities to ensure this project is equitable.

We request you to take immediate action to slow down the Dorchester Bay City development process by 6 months so that residents most impacted by displacement may provide meaningful engagement and input on a development that will impact them for generations.

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