The MBTA Denied a Jamaica Plain Resident's Request for the Arborway Garage Plans. Its Own Bid Documents Already Describe Much of the Project

A revived Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Council subcommittee spent about 90 minutes on Oct. 19 discussing a bus garage plan its members said they had not been shown, after the MBTA denied a resident's public records request for the plans, according to the Bulletin Newspapers' account of the virtual meeting.

The dispute is over the Arborway Yard on Washington Street, where the MBTA intends to build a maintenance facility for up to 200 of its future electric buses, part of the Legislature's mandate for an all-electric fleet by 2040, the Jamaica Plain Gazette reported. The 16-acre site carries a promise that dates to 1999, when the MBTA and the city signed a memorandum of understanding pledging eight acres for community development, primarily affordable housing and commercial space, according to the Gazette.

Alan Ihrer, who told the subcommittee he has been working on the project since 1998, submitted a nine-point public records request to the MBTA on Sept. 18, the Bulletin reported. The request sought, among other items, current plans, renderings, three-dimensional drawings, elevations and construction details, and communications between the City of Boston and the MBTA concerning the eight acres.

The request was denied by Julie Ciollo, the MBTA's assistant general counsel, who cited, as quoted by the Bulletin, an "ongoing intra-agency process whereby policy and legal matters are discussed" and said release "will have a negative impact on the process and interfere with the MBTA's ability to develop policy."

Massachusetts public records law includes an exemption for inter-agency or intra-agency memoranda relating to policy positions being developed by an agency. The denial, as reported, does not say which of the nine requested items fall under that exemption or whether any portion could be released with redactions.

"The T is pretty closed lips," Ihrer told the subcommittee, according to the Bulletin. "They're circling the wagons, saying as little as possible."

Yet some of what the subcommittee wanted to see is described in documents the MBTA has already issued. According to the Bulletin, a June 26, 2026 site description in an MBTA request for proposals for a construction manager reads: "The proposed project includes a new two-story indoor maintenance facility, a new one-story service and washing building as well as a parking canopy covering up to 200 buses for storage area... and on-site 200 employee parking spaces."

The project review discussed at a June 26 MBTA public meeting listed two means of access from Washington Street and a third on Forest Hills Street at Lotus Street, the demolition of 500 Arborway and of the city's public works yard at 327 Forest Hills Street, and the selection of Michael Baker International to prepare design and construction documents, the Bulletin reported.

A preliminary site plan that Ihrer obtained and circulated to the subcommittee's email list on Oct. 17 shows the Forest Hills Street public works yard eliminated and replaced with employee parking and two bus maintenance buildings, one and two stories tall, according to the Bulletin. The same plan shows the surplus eight acres open, broken only by two new roads, the paper reported. The Bulletin also reported that a supplemental appropriations bill filed over the summer included an item authorizing the public works yard to move to state Department of Conservation and Recreation land on American Legion Highway and Canterbury Street.

Those changes were not discussed at the Oct. 19 meeting, the Bulletin noted.

The employee parking has been a point of conflict. Since 2024, the subcommittee has opposed the MBTA's plan to accommodate up to 200 employee parking spaces on land the neighborhood regards as its own, according to the Bulletin. In 2023, subcommittee member Gert Thorn told the full neighborhood council that the group's goals were to reduce the size of the garage, preserve the eight acres and allow access to the Stony Brook culvert beneath the site, the Gazette reported at the time. Other council members then described the T's revised design as "very impressive," according to the Gazette, showing that the neighborhood has never spoken with one voice on the project.

The MBTA's March 26, 2026 announcement that the garage was fully funded said the current facility on Washington Street "will be demolished and made available for development," according to the Bulletin, and the agency's timeline puts completion of the new garage in May 2031, after which the land would be made available.

The neighborhood has a recent model for what surplus MBTA land can become. The Bartlett bus yard near Nubian Square, closed in 2005 when its buses moved to Arborway, was sold to Nuestra Comunidad in October 2010 and has been built out over 13 years into six residential buildings with four more pending, 333 homes in all, according to the Bulletin.

New subcommittee chair Eryn Ashlie Bailey said at a Sept. 22 council meeting that state Rep. Samantha Montano had offered to set up a meeting with the MBTA, the Bulletin reported. Bailey closed the Oct. 19 session by assigning members to contact Montano, MBTA deputy chief Amy Pranger and the Boston Planning Department.

The JPNC's own web page for the subcommittee still describes it as on hiatus pending MBTA action. No date for a public MBTA meeting on the revised design had been announced as of Monday. What the full plan contains, and whether the eight acres become housing, will depend on documents the MBTA has so far declined to release.