The dismantling, piece by piece, of Boston’s crime-ridden Combat Zone and subsequent rehabilitation of the city’s historic downtown theaters. The creation of an entirely new metropolitan district, burgeoning now with an influx of young high-tech and creative companies. And the long-lamented destruction of the landmark Filene’s building, which has sat for years as a high-profile demolition site in the heart of a bustling retail corridor.
These are a taste of the many economic development and real estate projects that comprise the legacy of four-term Mayor Thomas Menino, whose 20-year tenure as Boston’s “urban mechanic” will end when a replacement takes office on Jan. 1.
Menino, like him or not, knows how to get things done in the city where he was born, raised and rarely left. He made himself famous locally for shining a light on Boston’s pesky potholes and other quality of life issues, even creating a mobile app for residents to take photos of and immediately report trash collecting in gutters or fallen trees in their neighborhoods directly to the Mayor’s staff.
But far more visible, when considering the city’s skyline, is the lasting effect Menino’s policies – and his personality – will have on the built spaces where his beloved Bostonians gather to work, to celebrate and to live. He has master-minded, or at least approved, just about every major project in the city that has, or has not, been built.
The mayor has done that in large part through the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the city agency many say is often a puppet for Menino’s tastes and, sometimes, his grudges. Either way, to get a project built in Boston, developers must appease the gatekeeper.
That was not hard to do for Joseph Fallon, the developer of Fan Pier on the South Boston Waterfront, once the BRA realized the economic development potential of pharmaceutical firm Vertex moving into a 1.1-million-square-foot headquarters that Fallon has recently finished. Let’s not forget the mayor and his staff made that deal, the largest construction contract in the country when the project broker ground in 2011, at the end of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
With that momentum, Menino’s administration has been successful in luring company after company to occupy space in the newly dubbed Innovation District, a combination of the Southie Waterfront, the Fort Point neighborhood and the office and residential buildings being constructed atop the many parking lots that still dot the landscape.
In a similar vein, it also is not likely to be all that hard for Millennium Partners to build the 625-foot residential tower it plans to construct on the site of the former Filene’s building, which has sat fallow as a demolition site since 2007. At the time, Filene’s was part of a domino effect of retailers that failed along Washington Street, like Strawberries and Barnes & Noble.
A Lengthy Process
To some, especially neighborhood residents and local activists, the lengthy, expensive, internal and public process that Menino’s Boston Redevelopment Authority has created to review and ultimately approve or reject commercial development in the city has been a blessing. Through it, aggressive, inflexible developers have been forced to pull back on the reins and listen to the needs and concerns of neighbors. And many times, according to both developers and residents, projects are better thanks to the BRA’s reviews.
But not all see the process in such a glowing light. Some observers view the BRA’s approvals as a rubber stamp for projects the mayor personally wants to see come to fruition. City Councilor John Connolly, who has declared his candidacy for mayor to much fanfare, said he wants to streamline the permitting process for developers looking to start construction on projects and promote more transit-oriented development, as well as create a strategy to create more middle-income housing to prevent young families from moving elsewhere.
“As a core principle I want to be sure projects receive approval on merit, and not because of who you know,” Connolly told Banker & Tradesman. “We’ve done a lot of great economic development in the city, but that process needs to be merit-based. That will be a priority.”
Yet for Menino, the BRA has been more than just a reviewer of projects. In 1993, Menino asked his BRA staff to create a plan for what was then a dismal Washington Street, full of criminal activity and the downtrodden of society. He wanted a comprehensive plan for the major corridor, which links downtown to parts of the city’s poorer neighborhoods. The mayor asked for suggestions to boost economic development all the way from City Hall and Downtown Crossing through the South End and Roxbury to where the roadway leaves Boston and heads to the suburbs.
Now the Paramount, the old Opera House and the Modern Theater in Downtown Crossing have all have been rehabbed and brought back to life, with bright marquee lights glowing bright to beckon passersby. Nearby, the Ritz-Carlton hotel and residential towers were built, along with the AMC movie theater. Along with other improvements and a surge in new retailers in the area, these improvements have combined to create pedestrian traffic that the area hadn’t seen in decades.
“If you contemplate what was between City Hall Plaza and New England Medical Center back then, the Combat Zone still had six or seven active establishments,” said Tom O’Brien, a former BRA director who worked closely on the Washington Street corridor planning process. “There were dilapidated buildings surrounded by abandoned lots. Now there’s a Ritz-Carlton Hotel, there are all the theaters. People said rehabbing those three theaters would be an impossible task to take on, but [Menino] did it anyways. In the South End … buildings most people said should be demolished and replaced are now some of the most exclusive in the city. By any measurement, that’s just an amazing transformation of the city.”
‘We Need A Break’
One area in particular that has been heavily involved in the BRA’s process in the last decade is the Fenway neighborhood, where developers Samuels & Associates, the Abbey Group and others have been busy building mixed-use residential, retail and office buildings along Boylston Street and Brookline Avenue. And just up the road, the Longwood Medical Area is bursting at the seams with research and office tenants that are growing at rapid rates.
But according to one public spaces advocate, the new construction and economic boon has come at a cost to residents, and the mayor, through the BRA, continues to allow the loss of a precious public amenity – green space.
When Merck & Co., the big pharma giant, wanted to lease a vacant parcel from Emmanuel College for $50 million over 75 years in 1999, the school jumped at the revenue shot-in-the-arm. Merck then built a 12-story research facility on Blackfan Circle. While viewed as a victory for economic development and job creation, some locals were disappointed that that city would permit the loss of green space in an area of the city with so little space and so much density.
Now, Children’s Hospital is considering a similar move on its campus. The hospital faces community discontent over plans to build an 11-story clinical tower, a 211,170-square-foot office and retail building, a 526-space parking garage and more parking in the Longwood Medical Area and Audubon Circle neighborhood of Boston. The problem is the hospital filed plans with the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) to build a 445,000-square-foot tower on what is now a 25,000-square-foot park used largely by Children’s Hospital patients and employees at the area’s institutions.
“We need a break from the cacophony of intense development,” said Fredericka Veikley, a Fenway resident and park advocate. “Those campus [open spaces] provide that.”
Email: jcronin@thewarrengroup.com
