The city wants to change the mindset of real estate developers "hard-wired" to comply with only "bare-minimum" federal and state accessibility mandates for people with disabilities.
New development review guidelines adopted by the Boston Redevelopment Authority on Thursday are intended to instead convince developers to incorporate "ideal" accessibility and "visitability" accommodations into their building projects.
Developers will be required to complete an accessibility checklist at the start of the project review process. The city's Commission for Persons with Disabilities also will play a greater role in the process, starting with "pre-filing" meetings between the BRA and developers so issues can be considered during initial project design.
"Our expectation is … it will yield projects that do more than mere compliance with minimum standards," said acting BRA executive director Brian Golden, referring to the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and state Architectural Access Board requirements.
"This is not a coercive device, because we don't have the authority to coerce in this regard," Golden said. "We think that if developers are shown options and discuss options early, they can incorporate them at minimal costs and maybe at no cost."
But while the BRA technically can't force developers to include "ideal" accessibility features in projects, it can use the permitting process as leverage, said David Begelfer, CEO of NAIOP Massachusetts, a commercial real estate development trade group.
Begelfer, who had yet to see the new BRA guidelines, said he's "cautiously concerned," citing already strict federal mandates and state requirements that exceed them, and possible added costs. "To go beyond the state and federal (requirements) … seems to be asking a lot," he said.
But, getting all city departments involved early in the project review process would be a good thing, Begelfer said. "There are a lot of other departments that don't get involved until much later ... and that gets to be a problem," he said.
The Commission on Persons with Disabilities previously got involved in the BRA development reviews about halfway through the process, when many design decisions already had been made, commissioner Kristen McCosh said.
"The goal is really to map out the accessibility features of a project at the beginning … rather than having them try to fit them in at the end," she said.
More than 77,000 Bostonians identify themselves as disabled. The city wants to develop not only accessible buildings, but accessible routes to accommodate them, McCosh said.
"We ask the developers to look at things like accessible transit stations in proximity to the development, sidewalk conditions ... accessible pathways … and visitability," she said. "Developers don't have that lens when they look at their projects.
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