Beacon Hill addresses parking problems with garage expansion proposal

By KC Cohen

BEACON HILL—Beacon Hill is famous for its windy, lamp-lit cobblestone streets—and its lack of parking spots. Steep hills make parking difficult, and the tenement-converted apartment buildings usually lack off-street spaces.

The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority has recently proposed an expansion of the Boston Common parking garages, which would extend south beneath the Boston Common baseball field, said James Rooney, executive director of the authority.

“Parking—it’s a nightmare,” said Suzanne Besser, executive director of the Beacon Hill Civic Association. “It’s been a problem in Beacon Hill since at least 1922, when the BCHA was founded.”

Some restaurants and vendors offer valet parking for patrons as a solution. The Civic Association frowns on valet services, but it allows businesses to use them, with the expectation that they will park outside neighborhood boundaries.

As an alternative to valet parking, businesses suggest their customers use the Boston Common parking garages a few blocks from Charles Street.

“Hotel guests and restaurant patrons simply have to fend for themselves,” said Benson Willis, former general manager of the Beacon Hill Bistro. “The confusing issue is getting back to the hotel from the garage because of the difficult traffic flow on Beacon Hill.”

The Beacon Hill Civic Association does not have an official stand on the expansion, said Besser, but the association does not support the increased amount of traffic it would cause.
Beacon Hill’s famed Cheers Bar has only six parking spaces, and general manager Billy DeCain said he often steers patrons to the Common garages. The Hampshire House uses the garages for off-site valet parking.

Beacon Hill residents are allowed street parking with a residential parking permit. There is no limit on permits per family, which causes overcrowding and counts for a considerable amount of the neighborhood’s available parking spaces.

Besser estimates there are four times as many residential parking permits as available parking spaces.

The civic association’s volunteer Transportation Committee is attending meetings with the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority to assess the plan’s feasibility. They will consider construction costs, parking demand, and impact on historic sites. It not been determined who would pay for the expansion.

“We are still very much in the beginning stages,” Besser said, “but it seems like parking has been a problem in Beacon Hill since the invention of cars.”