BandA wrote:Is Readville competitive?
It would be more competitive if Dept. of Conservation and Recreation dropped the truck ban that's been in effect on Neponset Valley Pkwy. since 1987 (at arm-twisting of then- Hyde Park City Councillor Tom Menino). Straight, direct access to the interstates on high-quality state-maintained pavement is impossible because of that ban. Trucks from Readville instead have to make a convoluted trip down Sprague St. and East St. in Dedham, narrow town-control streets that themselves have tight hours-of-day restrictions on trucking. After dark there is literally no way in or out of Readville except to barrel down Hyde Park Ave. Which is insane because the parkway route only requires the trucks to pass like 4 houses total before shooting down wide Route 138 through the unpopulated Neponset Reservation to reach the highway; the hands-down least disruptive 24-hour route of all is maddeningly the one that they're totally prohibited from using in any capacity. These truck bans are literally responsible for driving the massive Stop & Shop Warehouse out of town to inferior locale in Freetown. But that was just fine with Mayor Menino and the Dedham NIMBY's, who just wanted Readville to die already.
The one thing CSX lacks on the southside that PAR has up north is a Tighe Warehouse-type transload anchor customer inside of Route 128. PAR's going to have two of those right down the street from each other when that new entrant on the Woburn Loop track gets its permitting sorted out. It's proving to be a very good thing for them, but CSX thus far hasn't found a matching opportunity of similar upside down south. The S&S property is absolutely golden for that kind of activity. The absolute max neighborhood mitigation that would be required is erecting a sound wall around the existing tree buffer on Meadow Rd. so Wolcott Sq. residents hear nothing, then installing a traffic light and truck-geometry turn lane at the parkway intersection. Everything from there is directed away, away, away from residents on a 5-minute trip to the first I-93 exit adjacent to the Canton split and MA 24. One MassDOT action to lift the truck ban and slapping the Boston Redevelopment Authority with a ruler to stop interfering by proposing one inappropriate BS redev proposal after another at Readville that no developer has any interest in biting on (the latest: "tech lofts"...whatever that's supposed to mean)...and you'll get a transload warehouse showing immediate and considerable interest in that site.
CSX long ago stopped caring because the city was hopeless to deal with, but if they actually got somebody at MassDOT to realize what they were sitting on and lift that truck ban they'd snap immediately into gear recruiting an anchor tenant who can drive revenue growth out of that yard. It is a missing piece of the puzzle that complements their New England business model a lot better than trying to recruit any new on-line customers. Yard-to-yard jobs, customers feasting off the yards, the interchanges...that's the window for modest, high-ROI local growth amid their all-consuming IM focus.
