'Burb Development

A friend of mine sent me an article from the local paper about the development going on in our neighborhood.

However, more and more, the homes in Lakeview, especially on Marivista Avenue, are being torn down and replaced by taller and larger homes. Rose's single-story home is now sandwiched by towering houses.

"They're too tall," Rose said yesterday as she sat in her kitchen. "The neighborhood was beautiful, and it was very peaceful until they started the construction."

Two similar-sized homes once sat on either side of Rose's house at 113 Marivista Ave. One of her former neighbors, she said, was a gardener for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When he sold his property to be developed by Walter E. Ohnemus Inc. last year, his beautiful landscaped yard went away as well.

His lot now holds two homes on one side of Rose's house. And on the other side, two more homes replaced a lot that once held one house, Rose said.

"When they razed the homes, they also razed the beautiful trees I enjoyed," she said. "Where the house (to her right) sits now, there used to be a beautiful ash tree that turned a gorgeous gold in the fall. It used to cast a golden light into my kitchen. Now, I can practically reach out and touch the new house."

There has been quite a bit of development going on in Waltham. It's hard to miss when you can hear the construction and the road traffic (trucks and backhoes and the like), and previously, the excavation (can you say...BOOM-BOOM?) from the bedroom, with windows closed. There's also been flyers around town about the proposed development of Lincoln Woods. But I hadn't really noticed all the other pockets of construction until I started running around the neighborhood again. I was kind of surprised how many new constructions were getting squeezed into spots around the neighborhood.

I'm not so thrilled about all of it, but I have to remain a bit circumspect. I was thinking about it on my run this afternoon, and I remembered a conversation I had with one of my neighbors who told me that the land my house was built on had actually been part of the lot next door, and that one of the previous owners had built a second house, my house, and sold it off. And as I walked my cool-down along the street, I think I could tell which houses were from the original neighborhood, and which ones had filled in the cracks, mine amongst them.* It was actually interesting to imagine what the street would have looked like without all the modern colonials that have gone up over the years -- a handful of bungalows on nicely sized lots dotting the road, all with a view of Hardy Pond out the back and with nothing but the tree-filled hillside across the street.

* FWIW, I take at least some consolation that my house isn't wildly out of scale with the rest of the houses in the neighborhood, as opposed to some of the newer McMansions that are going up right now.

My house wouldn't exist if there hadn't been any new development. I can appreciate that. And I can appreciate that I probably wouldn't have been able to afford any other house in the area because of it. But it still bums me out. And I guess I'll just have to deal. And I'll have to be thankful that, at least, they didn't cut down the ash** and oak trees that are now in the backyard of my house.

** The sad thing about the ash tree is that it hasn't been doing so well over the last few years. It seems to be constantly shedding branches (especially in storms) and the foliage has been looking a little thin. I had a tree guy look at it last fall and he told me that something has been happening to the ash trees in the area, and that they weren't sure if it was due to some kind of disease or just the result of recent changes (hopefully temporary) in the local climate or environment.