Bay Village Neighborhood Association holds annual meeting on Zoom

The Bay Village Neighborhood Association (BNVA) held its annual meeting virtually on November 1, where committees provided updates. No special guests were invited to the meeting this year, as many who would have normally been invited had been to recent events in the neighborhood, according to BVNA President Tom Perkins.

Parks

Aoife Austin reported on the recently Bay Village Neighborhood Park meeting held by the city. There is a proposal on the table to redesign the park located at 32 Melrose St, with improvements such as making the fountain “more environmentally friendly,” making the park accessible, “and make it easier to do plantings in there,” according to Tom Perkins. Additionally, electricity would be brought to the park as part of this project to allow for easier lighting of the Christmas tree and other things.

Austin said that per the city meeting, next steps for this process include getting quotes to do the work, and then more details about the final proposal will be presented to the public. She said discussion at the meeting included talking about “the potential homeless situation” in the area.

Perkins said “I think a presentation to the community would be welcome,” and suggested that sometime early next year would be a good time.

Safety

Danny Moll reported that Bay Village remains a safe neighborhood, and provided a brief update on the survellance camera program that the organization has been working on for a while.

Moll said that the Boston Police Department “gave me the thumbs up that everything has been approved,” but “they’re just waiting on one document from the [Boston Planning and Development Agency] to push this thing along.”

Licensing and Planning

Sarah Herlihy talked about the space in the rear of the Park Plaza Castle space that is currently a large function hall. She said there has been a proposal for an “experiential art-type space” there that would be similar to the Van Gogh immersion experiences. “They want to take over thr space for a year,” she said, but no formal plan has been made yet. She said the committee is also “watching stuff on the perimeter of the neighborhood as well” as far as development projects go, so they can be ready to act and provide input should Bay Village be impacted.

City Services

Bay Village resident Kimberly Kulasekaran raised some safety concerns about the crosswalk that goes to Eliot Norton Park, as she walks her two young sons to and from school each day.

She called the crosswalk “so dangerous,” as “cars come flying around the corner there near the skateboard shop.” She also said that the reflection “is so bad in the afternoon” that cars are “skidding to stop. We are definitely highly concerned about this.”

Kulasekaran added that she is “appreciative and definitely notice the Arlington side,” which has had improvements made to make it safer for pedestrians.

The City Services committee said that they would prioritize this issue going into next year.

City Councilor Ed Flynn, who attended the meeting, said that he believes pedestrian safety is a top issue in the city, and that there needs to be further enforcement of the 25 mile per hour speed limit, and the potential to lower it to 15 or 20 miles per hour.

“We have to focus on infrastructure improvements,” he said, as multiple people have been killed in his district because of these kinds of issues.

He suggested a site visit to this crosswalk with himself and a member of the Boston Transportation Department (BTD) during morning hours when families are trying to cross to get to the Josiah Quincy School. He said that this would allow BTD to provide recommendations about how to make it safer.

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