A new high school or housing? Here’s how Boston could have both.

                                                        

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Sponsored by The Boston Foundation The Best of CommonWealth Beacon OPINION An aerial shot of the P3 parcel along Tremont Street in Boston. (City of Boston Planning Department)

A new high school or housing? Here’s how Boston could have both.   June 14, 2026 By Lawrence S. DiCara and Joseph Ravenna IV

Boston isn’t making land anymore. Despite our best efforts—filling in the Back Bay, Seaport, and much of the harbor—we now must finally face the question of not only where to build, but also whether we have space to build at all. Choosing between hospitals and housing, stores and schools, building in Boston has become a zero-sum game where some interests win and others lose.

These trade-offs were on full display earlier this year when the Boston Planning & Development Agency announced it would not keep its previously designated developers for the long-contested Roxbury Parcel 3. Instead of permitting already-planned laboratory space and affordable housing, the BPDA now looks to build a new home for the Madison Park Technical Vocational High School on the 7.7-acre site.

The change has drawn support from those who took issue with alternative proposals for replacing the aging facilities at Madison Park, but those who negotiated for housing and economic development in the neighborhood over recent decades have described the reversal as a betrayal. One Roxbury resident said it’s as if the land is “being taken back a second time from people in this community.”

The lot, known as P3, is the largest undeveloped, city-owned parcel in Boston. Over 50 years ago, the neighborhood occupying P3 was razed to make way for the I-95/Inner Belt highway project, which was ultimately never built. The vacant site has cycled through development teams since, culminating in January’s lapsed designation of HYM Investment Group and My City at Peace. They were originally awarded the right to develop the parcel as housing and commercial lab space in 2023.

The city has indicated that it does not expect the school to use the entire parcel under the Madison Park proposal. Some officials have suggested “we can ultimately have our cake and eat it too”—by accommodating other development on the site—but just not “all at the same time.”

HYM Investment Group and My City at Peace were not the first team to be designated to develop P3 over its long and tortured history. Given Mayor Wu’s public comments that the scrapped plan for housing and lab space is “not able to be delivered on,” it becomes difficult to rely on promises that someday these latest developers might be brought back.

The choice has begun to look like an either-or. Meanwhile, community members like Armani White, the executive director of Reclaim Roxbury, have articulated the conundrum that presents. “On the one hand, everyone wants to see Madison Park win,” he said following the city decision in January. “On the other hand, we also want to see the community development that we selected also win.”

Should we have to choose between building a new school or the housing and commercial space that have been pushed aside at P3?

No. We believe both uses can win. The reason: air rights.

Both of us have professional experience dealing with air rights. They are the already-zoned but unbuilt square footage above a property. We think they are an underappreciated feature of urban life.

Although how air rights can be used varies from city to city, in Boston, private developments above public spaces are the most common case. Perhaps the best example is the platform built over the Massachusetts Turnpike in the 1980s, creating Copley Place. A similar platform has just been completed at Fenway Center, after 25 years of planning.

Other Boston public spaces have also seen air rights projects and proposals. The recently completed Ritz-Carlton Residences above South Station proved how using air rights can allow more housing above and improved public spaces below. Three Boston branch libraries, in the West End, Uphams Corner, and Chinatown, have now also been tapped for the construction of new affordable housing above them. This could be the future of P3.

We believe the use of air rights will be essential for the future of any American city, not just Boston. Facing shortages of housing and open land in our densest cities, we should not construct a police station, a fire station, a library, or a school without providing opportunities for housing to be constructed above.

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