For longtime Black business owners on Blue Hill Avenue, Boston’s $164 million corridor overhaul carries two competing possibilities: a chance to build wealth and a risk that higher costs will force them out.
For Skye Warren, a 31-year-old beauty entrepreneur, those stakes are personal. She is trying to buy commercial property near the Mattapan house her grandparents purchased in the 1960s as redevelopment proceeds along one of Black Boston’s most important commercial streets.
Here’s what to know
Her goal is to bring her business back from Milton to Blue Hill Avenue, where owning space could help her remain anchored in the neighborhood once long-awaited investment arrives.
Improved transit, rising property values, and new customers are among the project’s potential upsides. But business owners also see that the revamp could price out the local entrepreneurs who kept the corridor alive through years of underinvestment.
The Boston Globe reported that the 3-mile corridor contains more than 1,100 businesses, most of them locally owned. Business owners say extended construction, rising taxes, and rent increases could benefit chains and outside investors more than the people already operating there.
Fatima Ali-Salaam, president of the Greater Mattapan Neighborhood Council, described the corridor’s significance plainly, calling Blue Hill Avenue “the most important corridor in the city for Black Bostonians.” With meaningful support, she said, it could become the “Black Wall Street” of Boston.
Along the avenue’s Census tracts, the Globe reported, residents are about 65% Black and 23% Latino, and nearly 40% of households earn under $40,000 a year.
More background
The broader issue is whether a project designed to improve everyday conditions will widen economic gaps, pushing one of Boston’s remaining comparatively affordable business strips further out of reach for neighborhood residents and merchants.
Danielle Johnson, who moved her radio station Spark FM to Blue Hill Avenue, told the Globe that she is already setting aside money in hopes of buying space before costs rise further. “We’re going to be displaced in droves,” she said.
Boston also does not conduct economic impact studies before projects like this one, the Globe reported, leaving unanswered whether the redevelopment will generate jobs and opportunity for local residents or mostly make the area more profitable for absentee property owners and speculators.
What’s being done?
Some local leaders and entrepreneurs are trying to secure community ownership before that happens. Warren is pursuing space at Blume on the Ave, a mixed-use development on formerly vacant city-owned land where, according to the Globe, ground-floor commercial spaces are being offered at cost to encourage local ownership.
“When we talk about ‘buying back the block’ and we talk about ensuring generational wealth in our communities, that’s what this project is,” she said.
Mayor Michelle Wu said, as the Globe reported, that the city has awarded grants to more than a dozen businesses along the corridor and is developing a fund intended to offset revenue losses during construction. Wu said the city, state, and MBTA are “ready to do what’s needed to ensure that our small businesses will be protected.”
James Jennings, a professor emeritus at Tufts University, said that support will need to go further. As the Globe reported, Jennings said formal agreements could require local occupancy of ground-floor retail, make some commercial space available for affordable purchase, support local hiring and resident apprenticeships, and steer contracts to neighborhood vendors.
As Ursula Vaughn, co-owner of Lawson’s Hair Salon, put it: “It’s not a destination. It’s people’s homes and people’s businesses.”
Where can I learn more?
These stories explore how development fights and infrastructure projects can reshape neighborhoods, main streets, and housing markets.
• In Lexington, Massachusetts, a controversial construction law ended up coinciding with more housing, not less.
• In Schenectady, residents warned a new Starbucks drive-thru could make the street less walkable.
• In northern Minnesota, locals feared a massive luxury development proposal would bring traffic and disruption.
• In New York City, residents split over planting hundreds of trees in a changing neighborhood.
Get TCD’s free newsletters for easy tips, smart advice, and a chance to earn $5,000 toward home upgrades. To see more stories like this one, change your Google preferences here.
