At last Wednesday’s community meeting regarding the Orient Heights Housing Development rehab, Trinity Financial’s Patrick Lee said while he could make half the room happy with some of Phase II’s construction plans the other half of the room might be unhappy.
The meeting last week at the Marty Pino Community Center focused mainly on the routes trucks would take to access and depart Phase II’s construction site on Valler Road. Trinity has already completed Phase I of the project where 90 units of public housing were replaced with 120 units of public housing both in townhouse and apartment-style buildings.
Like Phase I, Phase II will tear down the old post World War II-era brick housing on Valler Road and replace it with 88 modern units of public housing.
However, some living on Orient Avenue and other streets at the top of the hill have expressed concern over the proposed trucking route to haul demolition materials out of the Valler Road site.
Trinity’s plan is to access Waldemar Avenue from Route 1A; head up Crestway Avenue; turn left onto Faywood Avenue; and turn onto Valler Road. When leaving the site trucks will leave Valler Road; turn right onto Faywood Avenue; and turn left onto Orient Avenue. The trucks will then head all the way down Orient Avenue and turn left onto Waldemar Avenue to head back to Route 1A.
Some living on Orient Avenue said they did not want construction trucks hauling debris driving down their street and complained it would affect the quality of life of residents living there.
The Orient Avenue residents requested that the trucks go out the way they come in and access Waldemar Avenue and Route 1A via Crestway Avenue.
However, Crestway Avenue residents like Anthony Leggiero said he shouldn’t have to bear the brunt of construction and have trucks go by his home both on their way into the site and on their way out of the site.
Lee pointed out that turning left onto Crestway Avenue when exiting the construction site was something Boston Transportation said would not work because it is a one way street and too narrow for both construction trucks and oncoming traffic to fit through.
Other residents suggested heading out of Valler Road and going straight on Faywood Avenue rather than turning right and and heading up to Orient Avenue.
Again Lee said that would not work either because that section of Faywood has parking on both sides of the street and is far too narrow for wide construction trucks.
“We would love to take the shorter route but we can’t,” said Lee. “We are only looking at two to three months of heavy trucking between the hours of 7 a.m. and 3 p.m. At the most there will be four to five truck trips per day between those hours.”
Lee added that Trinity would look at whether or not hualing the demolition loads out of the site could be staggered. This, he said, might reduce the number of days trucks would be on the streets but might increase the number of truck trips on the days the materials needed to be hauled out of Valler Road.
Both Lee and Trinity’s Eva Erlich encouraged residents to sign up for alerts that can be found at [email protected].