The Boston Zoning Board of Appeals on Tuesday rejected a building that would have included the first birthing center in the city amid strong opposition from the surrounding community.
The Community Movement Commons wanted to bring the first birthing center to Boston with a two-story, 10,000-square-foot building in the historic Moreland District in Roxbury. The building would’ve housed the birthing center with five other local nonprofits. However, the project was nixed during Tuesday’s hearing.
“We’ve got to appeal to the zoning board to do the right thing,” said Lorraine Payne Wheeler who is a resident of the Moreland District. “Follow the legal zoning and allow us to continue as a mostly residential district.”
Wheeler is part of a vocal faction of residents in the neighborhood opposed to the project.
Earlier this month, a group of residents with similar sentiments gathered in Nadine Riggs’ brownstone living room to run through their grievances with the project ahead of Tuesday’s hearing.
“We’re not against birthing,” Riggs told GBH News. Birthing centers offer a more supportive, residential setting for than hospitals for childbirth.
What Wheeler, Riggs and neighbors are against is allowing a residential parcel of land to be used for commercial purposes.
“It’s a great project, but not here,” Riggs said at the time. “A lot of communities are struggling to try to hold on to what they have.”
What these residents want to hold on to are two iconic homes in the neighborhood — 14 Winthrop St., affectionately called “The Red House,” and 23 Kearsarge St.
“I became a taxpayer in this particular pocket of the city because of its attraction and those attractions I’d like to see sustained,” said Edmund Barry Gaither, director of the Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists and a resident on Winthrop Street.
The proposal to demolish the two homes and build the non-profit center was denied without prejudice, meaning the group that paid $2.5 million for the land is allowed to reapply to the ZBA with a similar proposal.
Nashira Baril, the president of the Community Movement Commons, told GBH News that when they bought the property, the red house came with a notice for demolition. Baril also said the houses themselves aren’t in any historical registry, despite their significance to the local community.
Baril, who also is the founder and executive director of Neighborhood Birth Center, told GBH News that no matter what happens to the property, the original homes are likely to be demolished.
“The call for housing — that’s what some who are opposed want — is going to also require the tearing down of those two houses and the putting up largely unaffordable condos or apartments in the neighborhood. That’s not historic,” Baril said.
“But opening a birth center — the first in Boston, the only Black-led birth center in all of New England — is historic,” she added.
