Hillers gathered for pancakes and a good cause on Saturday, May 20 at the Church of the Advent on Brimmer Street. Donations from the Neighborhood Pancake Breakfast went to the Campaign for the Advent—and will be used to restore the historic church.

#1 Rainbow the clown applied body paint to the arm of Pinckney Street resident Richard Patrick Dooley, age 5, in the courtyard of the Advent Church.

#2 Mindy Davis, who lives in Sudbury and is a member of the Advent Church, baked chocolate chip pancakes in the kitchen of the Advent Church.

The planned restoration of the Longfellow bridge will return the historic structure to its former glory days, according to project officials who held a public meeting last week to discuss the work.

“The bridge is an icon in Boston,” said Jonathan Taylor, project manager from Jacobs Civil, Inc. who addressed the engineering issues with the bridge at the Shriners Auditorium on Blossom Street. “The main goal…is to restore its former glory.”

In an effort to return the bridge to its 1907 style, officials plan to replace walls and existing contemporary railings with granite and refurbished iron railings, replace the decorative filigree type work to the underside of the bridge that was removed in the 1950s, and restore the bridge’s four iconic “salt and pepper” towers, adding back windows that have been destroyed over time and updating doors that were changed over the years.

To restore the towers, officials are proposing to completely dismantle the towers stone by stone and then reassemble them once they are fixed.

“We are going to put back the towers in as good a condition as they could be,” said Taylor.

In addition, officials plan to add lighting to the bridge that will illuminate both the bridge’s arches and its famous towers.

The Massachusetts Highway Department, which is jointly overseeing the project with the Department of Conservation and Recreation, met with the public last fall to solicit input and suggestions for the initial design phase of the project. The result was a set of design alternatives that incorporated the public concerns including expanded lanes for both pedestrians and bicycles.

The project is slated to begin in 2009 and take five years to complete at an estimated cost of between $125 and $150 million. It will include a complete structural overhaul of the bridge’s surface and supporting steel structure.

To accomplish the work, officials anticipate shutting down one lane of traffic on each side of the bridge for the duration of the project.

Some members of the audience were unhappy about the traffic problems that could result in having two lanes of traffic closed and urged officials to look at other options.

“I just think there’s a larger issue here about how we keep traffic flow in and out of the city,” said Joe Crowley, manager of outside services at Mass General Hospital, who suggested meeting with MBTA officials to look at running one train at a time across the bridge.

The preliminary design phase of the project is scheduled for completion by December.
“Our community is going to suffer another major construction project,” said Malek Al-Khatib of Whittier Place. But he added, “it seems for this bridge it’s a price we are willing to pay.”

caption: Demolition has begun on Mount Vernon Street.
Credit: John Besser


It all begins well before 7:00 a.m. In what has been called the “Beacon Hill shuffle,” contractors line up on neighborhood streets, trucks idling, ready and waiting to grab the parking spaces of bleary-eyed resident sticker-holders making their way to work.
It’s the annual spring love-hate relationship between residents living in aging historic homes and craftsmen hired to preserve them. We want them when we need them, but we don’t want them when they are in our way.

They take our parking spaces. They block traffic. They make noise. They make a mess. They don’t move their vehicles when the street sweeper comes by. The list goes on and on.

But, if we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t live in the lovely homes we do.

One block particularly under siege this spring is on West Cedar Street between Mount Vernon and Chestnut streets. While the building permit attached to 3 West Cedar St. has just been taken down and residents moved in, new building permits have sprung up to dot the block’s architectural streetscape. According to the city’s Inspectional Services Department, Number 4 has a permit to repair, renovate and demolish; Number 8 will spend up to a year renovating, performing electrical and plumbing work; Number 16, whose façade is now ornamented with scaffolding, has a permit to repair, renovate, demolish, move roofing, remove gutters, new slates, new gutters and repair chimney.

And those are small projects, compared to the project at the Number 18, the building on the corner. Also called Number 108 Mount Vernon, this massive 15-unit apartment building is now being converted into eight luxury condominiums by Center Development Corporation and Connaughton Construction Corporation. The latter is best known for its luxurious renovation at 50 Beacon Street, at the corner of Spruce Street.

The first phase of the work at Number 108, which has too many permits to list, is the interior demolition, which began last week and is expected to take two more months.

As is considered good practice, the developer slipped a note under neighbors’ doors, thanking them for their “patience and understanding” during this project, which is not expected to be completed until the summer or fall of 2007. “In consideration of the historic significance and high standards of the neighborhood, careful thought has gone into the planning for the conversion,” the note continues. “We hope that, upon its completion, your home and the neighborhood will be enhanced.”

They included in their note a number to call if residents experience any problems. John Connaughton, head of construction, said they a received a few calls and tried to respond quickly and do what they can to alleviate the problems.

But what if the firm running the construction project near you isn’t as forthcoming? Here are some tips for monitoring the work.

First, check the address of the work site on the Inspectional Services Department website, www.cityofboston.gov/isd, by clicking on the link to “obtaining a building permit” to make sure permits have been granted for the work being done. According to the Massachusetts State Building Code and City of Boston Zoning Code, a building permit is needed when residents are building an addition, repairing, renovating or demolishing a building or structure; changing the use and occupancy of the building; installing or repairing any equipment of fixtures covered by state building, plumbing, gas and electrical codes. Permits are good for six months as long as work continues without interruption, and during that time a request may be made for an additional 180 days of work.

While permits are not needed for ordinary exterior maintenance, repairs and painting, permission must be granted from the Beacon Hill Architectural Commission. Check with it at 617-635-3850.

Check with the Massachusetts Department of Environment Protection (www.mass.gov/dep) to learn about the regulations contractors must follow to prevent the release of dust or other hazardous air pollutants during demolition.

Understand the regulations governing the construction parking permits. According to the Beacon Hill Civic Association’s Neighborhood Guide, permits may be obtained to reserve resident parking spaces in front of a job site for a two-week period only by contacting the Boston Transportation Department. Such spaces may be used only for dumpsters during demolition and for loading and unloading materials. They may not be used for contractors or workers to park their own vehicles. In order to renew a permit beyond the initial two-week period, contractors must first receive a signed affidavit from the Beacon Hill Civic Association. Complaints about misuses of the parking permits should be directed to the association (617-227-1922) and to the transportation department (617-635-4680.)

Call the mayor’s hotline (617-635-4500) with complaints about noise, excessive trash, dust and debris, and other concerns.

And then try to focus on all those dollar bills these projects are hopefully going to drop in your pocket someday.

CREDIT: James Mooney.

Tanks-A-Lot, a fuel oil and installation company, hauled a 7,000-gallon oil tank from the ground beneath a Phillips Street parking lot last Monday. The tank, no longer needed after four new oil tanks had been installed to warm the residents of 72-74 Phillips Street, was much larger than expected, according to James Mooney, the Beacon Services, Inc. property manager. The first attempt to remove it two weeks earlier proved futile when Tanks-A-Lot toilers discovered it was too big to be transported on a front-end loader through narrow Philips Court to the street. This time, with police on hand and fire department inspectors giving the go-ahead, the aged tank was taken out, cut up and hauled out in sections, and the parking spaces were returned to their rightful owners.

Start compromising on the Suffolk Dorm

You have asked us to print the opinion of The Beacon Hill Times’s editorial board about Suffolk’s proposed dorm. You may not like what we have to say. We believe everyone should climb out of their intransigent positions and start compromising.
One group of residents is pressing The Times to write strong objections to Suffolk’s proposed dorm. They are the ones who have so eloquently and vociferously stated their own objections in this paper at the series of meetings Suffolk has held to talk about their proposal. Those who object tend to be older, long established residents, who have been good citizens and responsible leaders of the Hill during their time here.
There is another group of residents which disagrees with the older, more established population. We’ve heard from them too. They don’t go to the Suffolk meetings because they aren’t opposed to the dorm. This group tends to be in their 30s and 40s and not well known to the long-term residents. A typical example is a Revere Street couple, both lawyers, who own a single-family house and have one young child. This couple, one of whom went to Suffolk, plans to stay on Beacon Hill, but they are shocked with the behavior of the older residents. They say it is a perfect example of NIMBYism. They say they enjoy the students, whom they consider fun, not bothersome. They acknowledge that kids can be noisy, but one person in this cohort told us that her conscientious, good-citizen neighbor, who sweeps the street every morning at 6 a.m. with what sounds like a steel shovel, disturbs her sleep more than the young people do.
Then there is Suffolk itself, whose representatives give their presentations, get defensive, and appear rigid and unengaged to the audience.
The four of us who determine what we write about neighborhood affairs have shared going to the meetings, writing about them and talking with neighbors and Suffolk representatives. Here are some beginning thoughts on a compromise.
Suffolk should halve the number of students it wants to house in its proposed dorm. We’re after variety in this neighborhood. We don’t want to live in an old folks home, so we welcome students. But 800 people in one four-year span of any age is too much of the same thing for any neighborhood of this size.
Suffolk should do what they promised and put more of their own patrols on Hill streets at night, establish rules of behavior that students living in local apartments must follow and throw them out when the students break those rules. Even the local police captain has complained about how the university handles its students living in the neighborhood.
Suffolk should be more forthcoming. Show neighbors the purchase and sale agreement. Why is an agreement with a state agency such a secret? It makes people think they really do have something to hide.
Beacon Hill residents should start working with Suffolk. The kids are not going to be as bad as everyone predicts, and if there are fewer of them, the impact will be reduced. It’s not that we can’t handle students. It has been only three to four years since Emerson moved out of its buildings on the flat of the hill and in the near Back Bay and took its kids with them.
The Garden of Peace advocates should work with Suffolk too. Students can’t be worse than the smokers that right now make the garden unusable for passersby.
And as one meeting attendee suggested, DCR should forgive the debt of the Garden of Peace no matter what happens.
At this point, we don’t know whether the old MDC building, the site of the proposed dorm, will be given landmark status, so it is difficult now to discuss height, but presumably, if they decrease the number of students slated for the dorm, Suffolk could make do with a shorter building.
It is important to recognize what we cannot do.
We can’t do anything about Suffolk’s decision to become a resident, rather than a commuter school. While one fantasizes that the commuting students are all living in their parents’s home and riding the Red Line into town from Quincy, it is more likely that they are living in Brighton. By denying those students dorm space, we are making Brighton residents suffer in our stead. This doesn’t seem fair.
We can’t and shouldn’t stop dorms. Mayor Menino is right: Boston’s colleges and universities need to house students in dorms. If a large building on the edge of Beacon Hill and in the middle of Suffolk’s rag-tag campus becomes available, it seems reasonable that they would try to use it in some way and that they should. And if all of Suffolk’s students were in dorms, we wouldn’t have them packed into apartments next to us. It’s this transition period that is the one we’re living in now.
Although residents who have put up with Suffolk’s poor control over their students will have a hard time recognizing it, Boston’s colleges and universities add to Boston’s quality of life. Its students are part of what makes this old, stodgy place not old and stodgy, but exciting and vibrant. Students and their institutions drive the economy in important ways. It’s an economic factor that gets more important as we lose large companies like Gillette and John Hancock.
More than 70 percent of the people who live on Beacon Hill were born outside of Massachusetts. Most of them got to Boston in the first place because they went to MIT or Harvard or BU or BC and liked the city and stayed. People like that have an obligation to make it possible for today’s young people to be educated and thrive as they did.

CLEANING SERVICES
CLEANING BY PATRICIA. Good job, good references. Call 781-244-9998.
MARIA’S HOUSEKEEPING. Good references. Call 617-629-0553 or 857-991-3351.
EDUCATIONAL SERVICES
LOOKING FOR A TUTOR? First & Second Grade Beacon Hill private school teacher available for summer tutoring before beginning her graduate degree at Harvard in mid September.
Available immediately. Call Sara at 617-429-9159.
PERSONAL ORGANIZER
TOO MUCH CLUTTER? Home, offices, mail/filing, closets, basements, kitchens, toys, moves, charity deliveries and spring clean outs. Call Katrina 617-723-8877.
RENTAL SPACE WANTED. Small letterpress & design studio looking for small office space on the flat of the hill or off Charles St. Should be ground level and tucked away in the rear of a building is fine. Open to all possibilities! Please call 617-263-1051 or email Elisabeth@blackpearlpress,com.
VACATION RENTAL
Boxhead
LOON MOUNTAIN. Immediate vacation rental. Call 781-395-7529.
NEWPORT R.I. Roommates needed to share house off Thames Street from Memorial Day to Labor Day. $2275. Call John at
617-327-4491.
WELLS BEACH, MAINE. 1 bedroom condo-weekly rentals starting at $600. Call 781-405-9004.
VOLUNTEER OPPORTUNITIES
CAREER COLLABORATIVE. Practice interviewers needed Fridays 9 a.m.-12 noon to run practice interview sessions for low income people seeking permanent jobs. Individuals with extensive interviewing experience please call 617-424-6202 or email Valerie@careercollaborative.org.
BOYS AND GIRLS CLUBS. The Arlington Boys and Girls Club is coordinating a campaign to support local programs. They are asking people with unwanted cars to donate them for auction with the proceeds going to local clubs. Call 1-800-246-0493.
MADD. Are you or is someone you know the victim of a drunk driving accident? We offer many free services including court-accompaniment, referrals for counseling and literature to help. Call 1-800-633-MADD.
HORIZONS FOR HOMELESS CHILDREN. Volunteers needed to play with children living in homeless shelters in your neighborhood and in Greater Boston. A two hour weekly commitment for 6 months is required. Call 617-287-1900 ext 314 or visit www.horizonsforhomelesschildren.org.
BECOME A BIG BROTHER OR BIG SISTER. Being a “Big” means simply sharing a little time with one great kid just like someone once did for you. Become a “Big” today. Call 800-412-BIGS or logon to www.bigbrothersbigsisters.org.
PARENTS HELPING PARENTS. Needs volunteers with good interpersonal skills and a commitment to strengthening families to facilitate support groups aimed at assisting individuals who are anxious, overwhelmed, frustrated or feeling isolated in their role as a parent or guardian. A commitment of several hours a week for one year is required. Call 1-800-882-1250 or e-mail www.parentshelpingparents.org.
COMMUNITY SERVINGS. Volunteers needed one Saturday per month to deliver meals to homebound individuals with life threatening illnesses. Shifts are from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Call Jennifer at 617-445-7777 or e-mail JPOCKOSKI@servings.org.
BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY. Seeks literacy volunteers to tutor adults with limited English writing and reading skills. Two hours a week, compatible with your schedule. One year commitment required, must be 21 years old with a minimum of a GED or high school diploma. Contact Nora 617-859-2446 or VolunteerBPL@yahoo.com.
BOSTON MINSTREL COMPANY. Needs singers, musicians, and songleaders to facilitate sing-along songfests at Boston-Cambridge homeless shelters. Amateurs welcome. Call 617-787-2122 or e-mail Bostonminstrel@aol.com.
MATCH-UP. Interfaith Volunteers needs people to commit to making a weekly visit to an elder in need of companionship. Call 617-482-1510 or visit www.matchelder.org.
THE GREATER BOSTON FOOD BANK. Needs volunteers to inspect and sort donated food at the Food Bank's headquarters at 99 Atkinson Street in Boston. Call 617-427-5200, ext. 5030 or visit www.gbfb.org.
AFC MENTORING. Needs volunteers over 18 experienced with adoption/foster care to mentor adopted children. One year commitment desired. Karlee, 617-695-2441 or karlee@afcmentoring.org.
BLIND AND DYSLEXIC in East Cambridge. Needs volunteers with liberal arts, scientific and/or technical backgrounds to record textbooks. Call Peggy at 617-577-1111, ext 17 for more info. www.rfbd.org/bostonhome.htm.
GENERATIONS INCORPORATED. Needs older adults to volunteer as reading coaches and mentors to children in Dorchester, S. Boston and Roxbury. Training provided. Call 617-423-0408 or see www.generationsinc.org.
WGBH. Needs volunteers to assist with computer projects and office support during weekday business hours, Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Call Liz Hagyard at 617-300-5715.
LITERACY VOLUNTEERS OF MASSACHUSETTS. Help an adult learn English. Call 617-367-1313 for information.
VOLUNTEER COORDINATORS. The American Cancer Society’s Road to Recovery program. Work from home or in our Weston office. For further information call 1800-ACS-2345.
SPAULDING REHABILITATION HOSPITAL. Boston. Opportunities for volunteers. We match volunteers' skills and talents with the needs of the hospital's patients and staff. Training provided. For more information contact volunteer services at 617-573-2740 or jburke11@partners.org.
BOSTON PARTNERS IN EDUCATION. Volunteers needed to tutor 4th grade students in math. Training and placement will be provided. Join this proven program and be a vital part of a student’s success story. Contact Barbara Harris at 617-451-6145 x 620, or apply online at www.bostonpartners.org.
WALKBOSTON. Volunteers needed for walks, legislation and newsletter/e-news committees. Also occasional office work including membership mailings. Call 617-367-9255,www.walkboston.org.
MASS SUBSTANCE ABUSE HELPLINE. Volunteers needed for phone service to help people affected by alcoholism and substance abuse. Must have computer experience. Call 617-536-0501 ext. 201 or see www.helpline-online.com.
BEACON HOSPICE.Volunteers needed to provide support and companionship to patients and their families. Call Laraine Kohler at 617-242-4872.
COMPUTER TUTORS. Volunteers needed for coaching senior and disabled citizens at the Blackstone Apartments. Daytime and evening hours needed. Call Al at 617-557-9121 or email xAlbert3259@aol.com.
BEACON HOUSE. Housing for elderly needs volunteers for front reception desk, a few flexible hours per week. Training provided. Please apply in person at 19 Myrtle St. to fill out an application.
ANIMAL SHELTER. Donations needed: dog and cat toys and treats, blankets and towels for the cages, paper towels, clay cat litter, postage stamps, animal nail clippers, dog and cat collars and leashes. 617-522-5055.
DR. SOLOMON CARTER FULLER. Mental Health Center in the South End needs volunteers for several committees. Call C. Curtiss Carter at 617-626-8726.
MAB COMMUNITY SERVICES. Volunteers needed to read or shop with a blind neighbor. 2-3 hours per week, flexible hours. Training provided. Call Donna Bailey 800-852-3029 or see www.mabcommunity.org.
SAMARITANS OF BOSTON. Volunteers needed to provide telephone counseling on our 24 hour listening line. Help prevent suicide and alleviate the pain of isolation. Training provided. 617-536-2460.
ALZHEIMER’S ASSOCIATION. Cambridge chapter needs volunteers for its telephone Helpline service to answer caregiver calls. Training provided. Call 617-868-6718.
ADBAR ETHIOPIAN WOMEN'S ALLIANCE.Volunteers needed to help with its newsletter, website, grant writing, special events and fund raising. Near Harvard Square. 617-234-8981.
THE BOSTON HOME. Dorchester seeks volunteers of all kinds in this long term care facility for adults with physical disabilities. Pet visits welcome. Call Sally Gorman 617-825-3905 ext. 299 or gormansally@aol.com.