For at least five years, the Forest Hills station has been surrounded by a maze of development. East of the station, a parking lot was recently demolished to accommodate a 252-unit apartment building. To the south, an unused train depot is filled with construction equipment, awaiting more new apartments. Further south down Hyde Park Avenue, new luxury condos are for sale. Running north and southwest, Washington Street is lined with new buildings.

Residents’ view

The most visible and contentious construction project in the neighborhood is also nearing completion. The Casey Overpass Bridge -- which for 70 years spanned Forest Hill’s major streets -- has been replaced by the Casey Arborway Project, an initiative managed by the Massachusetts Department of Transportation (MassDOT).

Gaining new changes aaLosing long-term identity

For a small neighborhood, Forest Hills has experienced dramatic change at a dizzying rate. Since the 1960s, the Forest Hills station has undergone several major renovations. Over the same period, schools have changed names and businesses have changed ownership. Areas that were once industrial have now become residential.

Despite -- or perhaps because of -- these transitions, Forest Hills has never developed a strong identity.

“There’s no pride in Forest Hills,” said Richard Heath, a local historian and activist. “If there’s no pride in a place, it can easily disappear, easily change, easily be rearranged.”

When Heath first arrived in 1976, neighborhood residents were energized and optimistic. They had successfully prevented a well-funded initiative to pave over Forest Hills with a highway. The Massachusetts Department of Public Works had proposed a plan to connect Interstate 95 through all of Eastern Massachusetts, from the North Shore through Boston. Residents in every region fought the proposal on environmental and housing grounds, but the biggest displacement was expected in southern Boston.

A 1967 article in The Boston Globe reported that the project would, “force out about 725 persons, including 200 families and 70 elderly men and women, and almost 70 businesses and other institutions.”

“The I-95 story has entered into Boston mythology,” Heath wrote in A History of Forest Hills, which was published by the Jamaica Plain Historical Society. Throughout the late 1960s, state and city officials had seized land and demolished buildings to make room for the highway. “But demolition came to a halt at Forest Hills because, in 1969, people stood up and stopped I-95 at the moment when the wreckers were bearing down on Hyde Park Avenue.”

When the community stopped the expansion of I-95, they preserved their neighborhood. But the bitter fight left the community with a sour, distrustful aftertaste.

And in 2012, when MassDOT announced a plan to modernize the Forest Hills train station, along with the major intersections and freeways on either side, another fight began.

Gaining Casey Arborway Project aaLosing Casey Overpass

This time, the dispute focused on a decrepit bridge. The Casey Overpass Bridge was falling apart. MassDOT had two options: rebuild it or replace it at ground-level, also called “at-grade.” HNTB, the consulting firm that MassDOT selected for the project, recommended the latter option after a three-year preparation and evaluation process.

Jonathan Kapus, a design consultant for HNTB, managed the planning and design. “The goal of the project is to remove an existing structurally deficient bridge and reconnect the previously discontinued Arborway, while balancing the different modes of transportation: bicycle, pedestrian, transit and vehicular traffic,” Kapus said.

Residents’ view

Early on, the project managers recognized that, more than usual, they would need to keep the public informed and involved. The outreach campaign for the Casey Arborway project was extensive. It involved two major public meetings during the planning phase, four more during construction, weekly “office hours,” a dedicated project website, near-weekly email updates, a phone line, and more.

“By far, this is the most robust public outreach that I’ve ever seen on any construction project. It’s multi-layered, and the information is given out as quickly as possible,” said Chris Evasius, an assistant district construction engineer for MassDOT. Evasius oversaw construction for the project.

Some residents were ardently opposed to the plans for demolition without a replacement bridge. Leaders in nearby neighborhood organizations created their own pro-bridge website, and community meetings were frequently the site of protests. Pro-bridge advocates did not believe ground-level replacements could accommodate the volume of traffic in Forest Hills.

Reactions may have seemed familiar, if you consider the neighborhood’s fight against I-95 in the 1960s. But in reality, the two projects were nothing alike.

The Casey Arborway Project has not caused any displacement and was not the focus of protests. And unlike the highway, which would have replaced nature with concrete, the current renovation is actually adding trees and expanding green spaces. connecting Arnold Arboretum and Franklin Park and making Forest Hills part of the Emerald Necklace.

Clay Harper, a 20-year resident who writes a blog titled #ArborwayMatters, viewed the resistance to the project as ill-informed and misplaced frustration.

“There is a small ‘c’ conservative resistance to change. As progressive as [Jamaica Plain] is, there’s a resistance to change when it seems radical,” said Harper. If the bridge was still intact, according to Harper, the Emerald Necklace would have remained disconnected indefinitely.

Debate has dissipated. But MassDOT has still encountered a fair number of challenges.

Today, as it nears completion, the Casey Arborway Project is over a year behind schedule and more than $10 million over their initially proposed budget.

Harper does not blame MassDOT for the scheduling issues. Insead, he said that the sheer number of stakeholders - the city of Boston, Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, MBTA, and community members - created a need for approval at every step. That issue combined with the massive snowstorm during January 2015 - when construction was slated to begin - which made it impossible for MassDOT to stick with their planned schedule.

Regarding budget overruns, Evacius and Kapus both spoke about late additions to the project. Specifically, MassDOT is constructing a centralized busway with a new canopy, which was not included in the initial budget.

“The bid was around $60 million, and then there was about $14 million in expected contingencies, which can be traffic police, which can be what we call overruns - which is more work than we thought there was going to be,” Evacius said. “The largest singular add was, we added the canopy, which was not part of the contract. It was certainly part of the public effort, so it was added to his contract. And that’s around $10-11 million.”

Regardless of budget, timeline and communication, construction is almost over.

The new roads and intersections are now fully constructed, and MassDOT plans to synchronize the traffic lights in the coming months. New bike lanes and wider sidewalks have opened up all major roads for safe travel by multiple modes of transportation. Bus terminals have been consolidated, and new bus exit routes have diminished the delays for many T riders. The new station has natural light pouring in from every side. Still to come are additional station entrances across the wide Arborway road, a canopy for the new bus depot and fully-synchronized streetlights to eliminate traffic delays for vehicular traffic.

Gaining wealthier class aaLosing original diversity

The Casey Arborway Project has dominated headlines. However, the current transformation of Forest Hills goes beyond transit. The neighborhood has also seen a sharp rise in luxury condo development.