Inside a Black Family’s Struggle to Redevelop Their Roxbury Home

Anyway, he thought, why not let a local black family participate in building something the city needs and create generational wealth of our own at the same time?

It was a vision born of good intentions. Four years later it almost collapsed.

“It turns out that no other way works,” Webster said on a rainy afternoon this summer. “I wouldn’t wish this process on anyone else.”

Webster, of course, expected opposition. What he did not expect was a never-ending saga of destructive meetings and stubborn refusals, or a front-row seat to a development system that sometimes hinders projects that the city desperately needs.

The Elmwood plan won approval more than a year ago from the city’s two main boards, the Boston Planning & Development Agency and the Zoning Board of Appeals, and most immediate neighbors are in favor of demolishing the existing buildings there. But the site is within the newly formed Highland Park Architecture Conservation District. And an influential group of residents argues that it’s too big, too expensive and too destructive to the neighborhood’s historic character.

The saga is unfolding as housing availability in Boston is reaching dangerous lows. Both state and city officials are pushing to build transit-accessible parts of the region, with some success. And Mayor Michelle Wu has made it a priority to overhaul Boston’s burdensome development approval process, creating a Department of City Planning that will include a broader range of community voices — even as some of those voices oppose new housing in their neighborhoods.

“No matter what you do, there’s going to be a group in the neighborhood — even if it’s two or three people who may not be neighbors — who will say, ‘This development is going to ruin the neighborhood,’” said Ted Landsmark, a Northeastern University professor, longtime urban planner and board member of the Boston Planning and Development Agency. “The challenge that Boston faces is answering the question of when enough is enough.”

In Webster’s case there is an additional hurdle. Highland Park is one of 10 historic districts in Boston, which give architectural commissions an extra layer of authority over the development of places deemed aesthetically and culturally protected. It’s the only one in a predominantly black neighborhood, and was created in 2022 after residents lobbied for decades to protect the stately Victorian and Gothic Revival buildings built before the turn of the 20th century.

When the new district was launched, commissioners temporarily froze all ongoing projects, including 1 Elmwood.

That gave opponents time to formulate their arguments ahead of the committee vote, which is expected to hold a decisive vote in the coming months.

During public meetings, residents criticized the Webster team for building student apartments under the guise of affordability, including a lack of parking and the gentrification of the enclave they call home. Others simply feel that a 65-foot building has no place in a neighborhood of multi-family homes, even though several nearby buildings are at least that tall.

Rod Singleton, a member of the Highland Park Neighborhood Coalition, said he and about 200 people have signed a petition asking the Websters to put on the brakes and instead put “a little TLC” into the existing structure.

“I don’t begrudge a black family building wealth,” Singleton said. “We all do it here. Just because you build wealth doesn’t mean you have to completely overhaul the neighborhood you’re building wealth in.

“The greed demonstrated by this is shocking and misplaced.”

He and others are urging Webster to reduce the building’s height to three stories or less. Another suggestion from a resident was to leave the existing structures intact and instead build a small garage on the unused gravel lot behind. Almost everyone wants to reduce rents further.

But the economics of that simply won’t work, Webster and his team say. They’ve already cut the number of units from 47 to 39, seven of which would be reserved for people earning less than the area median income. Katie Faulkner, project architect at West Work, updated the design by adding corners, cornices and double-height windows that match the surrounding buildings.

If we were to shrink it any further, “the whole project would become unprofitable,” said Minkoo Kang, one of Websters’ development partners.

The Websters estimate they’ve spent $500,000 so far on drawing up plans and paying staff. Two members of the development team have been working pro bono for months. Meanwhile, rent and construction prices have skyrocketed, making the math behind construction — the cost of materials, time and labor — more difficult. Additional changes could prompt the Websters to convert the building from rentals to condos.

The debate is even more heated in Roxbury, where the legacy of redlining and urban renewal and contemporary fears of displacement lead some residents to view almost all new developments — from impressive university residences to the renovation of White Stadium — with skepticism.

But others argue that Roxbury needs to move forward. Development happens with or without the community, said Christopher Martin Grant, a 26-year member of the nearby John Eliot Square Neighborhood Association. The Websters are a “nice, responsible, honest family” who have lived in the neighborhood for a long time, Grant said, and who are equipped to build something that would benefit Highland Park rather than undermine it.

“We’re very cautious about what we build in this neighborhood because of urban renewal and so many government actions that have put people on guard,” Grant said. When it comes to development, “the idea has always been to turn the switch off,” Grant said. “The question now is, how do you turn that switch on?”

The answer could come when the protection district is ready to vote, once a fifth member of the new five-member panel has been approved by the city’s Planning & Development Agency. A rejection would push the Websters back to square one, and completely redraw the design and present it to the community again in a year’s time – that is, if they choose not to kill it outright.

Neither Gabriela Amore, the city-appointed planner for Highland Park’s preservation, nor the commissioners responded to the Globe’s many phone calls and emails.

All Sean Webster wants in the end is… see the fruit of his family’s labor.

“This is a lifelong dream that my father has tried to pursue,” he said, “and it’s high time he made it come true.”

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Diti Kohli can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @ditikohli_.