Roxbury development team split over Boston Mayor Wu’s plan to scrap their proposal
A developer is backing away from a mixed-use proposal for Roxbury land the mayor now wants to use to rebuild a new Madison Park high school, in a break with the rest of the development team challenging the city’s new plan.
OnyxGroup Realty & Development said the development team “is no longer on the same page” as it relates to the city’s decision to let the housing and life sciences designation for Parcel P3 in Roxbury expire, and shift to using the site for a new Madison Park Technical Vocational High School.
“We must speak the truth about the project’s current reality: the economic landscape has changed, life sciences investment is not coming, and there is no single vehicle willing to make the investment necessary to truly develop P3 as originally envisioned,” OnyxGroup leadership wrote in an open letter to the community.
“We believe that exploring the option of Madison Park as a contributing economic engine is a positive direction that should be pursued,” the letter states. “P3 needs a significant investment that only a strong public and private partnership can accomplish.”
OnyxGroup’s decision to pull out of the economic development plan for the site, approved by the city’s planning board in 2023, follows a letter sent last month to Mayor Michelle Wu by the rest of the development team. The other partners, My City at Peace and HYM Investment, wrote to request an extension of their designation for the parcel.
“We believe the future of P3 represents a unique opportunity to bring together housing, community-serving uses, and public investment in a way that truly works for everyone,” the Rev. Jeffrey Brown of MyCAP and Thomas O’Brien of HYM wrote in the letter.
Brown and O’Brien reiterated their intention to stay the course with their development plans for the parcel at a community listening session they hosted at Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury Monday night.
OnyxGroup wrote in its letter that it had urged Brown not to move forward with the community listening session after the city’s de-designation of Parcel P3, but the meeting proceeded as planned.
“We still believe that this community deserves these kinds of jobs and this kind of opportunity,” O’Brien said at Monday’s meeting. “While we care deeply about the high school, we care deeply about the Boston Public School system, we also care deeply about this community, and we’ll continue to care about this mission and this potential opportunity.”
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The My City/HYM designation is for a mixed-use proposal that includes housing, commercial and life science lab space, workforce training facilities, cultural space, and community-serving uses.
Mayor Wu has cited the developers’ lack of advancement on the project for the past three years and the plan’s lack of financial viability as reasons for letting the economic development designation expire.
O’Brien and Brown said in last month’s letter they “disagree with the mayor’s representation of our project’s viability.”
Speaking to a majority Black and Brown crowd at Monday’s community meeting, Ricardo Louis, CEO of Privé Parking and a partner with the development team, said, “I’m all about economic development. That land deserves to be developed, and I hope that the city considers it being developed by a team that represents and that looks like a majority of people in this room.”
