Scott Van Voorhis
Disliked by developers and neighborhood activists alike, the Boston Redevelopment Authority just spent untold thousands of dollars on a study on how to reform itself.
Predictably, high-powered consulting firm McKinsey & Co. came back with all sorts of options, but left the one that may actually make the most sense off the table: Abolishing the agency altogether.
The development authority is a relic from an increasingly distant era, a time in the 1950s and ’60s where a decaying, corrupt and dingy Boston, like many older cities, appeared headed for a Detroit-style meltdown.
In Boston, the answer was a form of shock therapy better known as urban renewal, with the powerful super authority we know as the BRA created to be the bulldozer to revive a moribund downtown and a struggling city.
Half a century later, Boston is flooded with billions of dollars of new condominium, apartment and office towers under construction, and billions more in the works, much of it taking place in spite of the BRA, which too often has proven to be a developer’s worst bureaucratic nightmare.
Yet instead of retiring the BRA to a museum, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh is determined to whip the agency into shape with the most sweeping reforms in recent memory.
But it is an ultimately doomed task, failing to take into account the agency’s glaring internal contradictions.
“It’s a conflict of interest,” said long-time BRA critic and Back Bay resident Shirley Kressel. “They cannot be the planner and be an advocate for developers.”
No Savior
Boston may be a dramatically different city today, but it is largely no thanks to the BRA.
The agency has never managed to live down its infamous debut, leveling the “slums” of the historic West End to create the rather dull Charles River Park apartments. Scollay Square, once home to burlesque theaters and other dives, was leveled to make way for the Stalinist-style bunker-and-concrete wasteland better known as City Hall and City Hall Plaza.
If that weren’t enough damage for one century, as the 1960s moved into the ’70s, the development authority was gearing up to start tearing down all those beautiful Back Bay brownstones before neighborhood activists managed to put a kibosh on it.
If there is a success story, it is the Prudential Center, built over all rail yards in the heart of what is now the Back Bay’s commercial district.
A new generation of relatively decent and relatively honest mayors – and at least by standards of the legendary James Michael Curley, who spent part his fourth and final term in federal prison – have certainly have played, and are playing, a big role. The ’50s and ’60s saw Collins and Hynes, followed by White and Flynn in the ’70s and ’80s, and then Menino, the longest-serving mayor of them all, and now Walsh.
Larger economic cycles are also at work, with Boston hardly the only city benefiting from disillusionment with suburban living and a slow but steady revival of the urban core.
The Temptations Of Power
So why has mayor after mayor kept the BRA around, despite decades of complaints by developers who spend years trying to get their projects through, and neighborhoods who say they were shafted by the agency?
Simply put, the BRA is too powerful a potential political tool to walk away from – it is a mayor’s best friend.
The BRA pretty much has the last say on all development in Boston and much that is related to it, combining powers typically enjoyed by city councils, planning boards and economic development agencies all under one roof.
The agency is both an economic development booster and a planning agency, combining two inherently contradictory – and also quite powerful – roles. Its urban renewal powers also give it final say over ambitious redevelopment that city councilors or aldermen in other cities – such as Cambridge and Newton – would typically debate.
Given that they are elected representatives, having city councilors or aldermen debate the merits of a big project is not such a bad thing, especially compared to the typically nameless faces on the BRA board, which is appointed by Boston’s mayor and reliably acts as a rubber stamp.
That gets to the main point, for while it is powerful super agency, it is firmly under the thumb of the mayor, ready to be used and abused as whoever is in office sees fit.
The Case For Demolition
The BRA has been behind countless eminent domain takings and demolitions over the years, from the West End razing to the seizing of the site of the huge Boston Convention and Exhibition Center.
Now maybe it’s time the BRA got a taste of its own medicine.
The very thing that has made the agency so attractive to mayors over the years – a Swiss army knife of government powers ready for any situation – has also made it a terrible steward, if that name can even be used given its track record, of development in Boston.
At its heart, the BRA is primarily an economic development booster, with a mission to cheerlead and clear the way for major projects. But as Boston’s planning agency, it also has the role of regulator, with the conflicting mission of reviewing projects and sometimes rejecting those that aren’t a good match.
The solution too often has been to approve everything – to my knowledge, the BRA board has never voted against a major project – with the agency’s rather weak planning department then dragging out the design review for months or even years in what amounts to an additional layer of reviews and approvals.
Developers aren’t happy that project reviews can drag on for years, sometimes only to finally crump out when the economy turns, while neighborhood activists feel the ultimate decision has already been made.
The way Boston does this is far more the exception rather than the rule. Cities and towns across the country have an independent planning board, with city councilors or other elected reps debating the merits of individual projects, notes Kressel, who knows a thing or two about the agency after years of dueling with it.
Amazingly, sometimes those reps even reject a proposal or plan they don’t like – that’s called democracy.
Is that a perfect situation? Hardly. But after spending decades saddled with the dysfunctional bureaucracy called the BRA, this would be a perfect time for Boston to cut the cord.
After all, if not now, with billions upon billions of dollars in new development projects taking shape, then when?
