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Brian Golden
Brian Golden announced his departure after more than eight years of leading the Boston Planning and Development Agency, as Mayor Michelle Wu moves ahead with her reorganization of the city hall authority that controls Boston’s real estate development.
Speculation about Golden’s future with the agency has percolated since Wu’s election in November. The former city councilor campaigned to abolish the agency and split up its planning and permitting functions.
Wu has been critical of the agency’s powers to shape development and the future of Boston neighborhoods. In 2019, Wu issued a sweeping critique of Boston’s development review process as “a complicated system that only the most privileged and powerful can navigate.”
Wu also criticized the agency’s decision to let developer MP Boston revise its Winthrop Center skyscraper plans and substitute apartments for condos, resulting in a smaller anticipated payment to a city fund that subsidizes affordable housing projects. The Winthrop Center project has since shifted back to an all-condo residential component.
After her victory over City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George in November’s mayoral race, Wu moved ahead with one major reform, advertising for applicants for the newly-created BPDA chief of planning position.
Former Mayor Marty Walsh appointed Golden, a former state representative from Brighton, to lead the agency in 2014.
The Boston Globe first reported Golden’s pending departure.
During Golden’s tenure, the agency managed a historic building boom and approved 90 million square feet of development estimated at $43 billion. The approvals included 49 million square feet of residential projects, including 46,000 housing units of which nearly 11,000 units were income-restricted.
Golden’s departure takes effect at the end of April. He gave no indication of a potential departure at the BPDA directors’ March meeting, commenting about upcoming discussions about Wu’s plans to sunset the city’s urban renewal zones and the potential complications associated with that process.
