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Residents living near the Corporation Yard, a 4.5-acre site located on Bancroft Way near Acton Street, staged a small protest Wednesday to protest the city’s plan to partially demolish one of the buildings on the property and install three portable buildings. Neighbors said the plan will increase the traffic, noise and pollution that already stem from the site, which is used to store city vehicles, including diesel trucks, and includes a gas station. 

“With more trucks on the street there’s going to be more pollution,” said Regina Gurs, a retired teacher who lives across the street from the front entrance of the yard, on Bancroft Street. Gurs said she’s been battling the city over the yard since she moved into her house in 1977. “We had to fight for years to get them to build a noise wall around it,” she said. 

Another neighbor said she thinks the yard’s allowed uses should be scaled back. Tania Schweig, a mother of two children who is five months pregnant, worries the fumes are affecting her children. “At times, I don’t even want my kids outside.” She said she wouldn’t object to a lower level of use at the site. “The city needs to find an option that wouldn’t impact so many vulnerable populations,” she said. “We’re not NIMBY’s. I don’t think anyone would object to some use. It’s the big tankers that’s really the problem.”  

Her husband, Muni, said a tanker hit a parked car last week. “We’re talking about flammable explosive materials,” he said. “That’s a real problem.” 

—Angela Rowen