New boss, but same old, slow and stinky way at Boston City Hall of vetting big development projects, at least for the foreseeable future.
Mayor-elect Marty Walsh says he wants to revamp the Boston Redevelopment Authority and create a more streamlined, transparent way of permitting real estate developments.
But it remains to be seen whether the former building trades union chief will truly shake things up, or simply become the new political boss atop Boston’s development heap, Menino lite or Menino 2, depending on your take.
Either way, it will likely take months if not years to play out, time that the current crop of tower and mega project developers pushing billions in new construction simply don’t have.
Like developers everywhere, our builders are engaged in a race against time, to get in the ground and open for business, whether that’s renting apartments or offices, before the next downturn hits.
But in Boston, that risk is magnified by a purposefully cumbersome and politically driven permitting process that can literally sink a project with endless reviews and inertia that can span years.
“It can be so long that a project dies,” noted David Begelfer, chief executive of NAIOP Massachusetts, which represents developers across the state.
“You can start construction in a strong market but finish in a down market,” he noted.
A bevy of high-powered developers scrambled in the last few months to line up the byzantine array of city and, for that matter, state approvals to build billions in new high-rises and towers across Boston.
Big projects in the pipeline include former City Hall development chief Tom O’Brien’s multimillion-square foot development proposed for where the grotesque Government Center garage now stands and recently approved plans for a new Copley Square condo tower.
Other developers are just kicking off the permitting process, like Steve Samuels and his proposed $500 million expansion of Fenway’s Landmark Center office and retail complex.
The popular explanation is that mega builders are simply pushing to get projects OKed before Mayor Thomas M. Menino leaves office early next year.
And, sure, to the extent the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t, that explanation bears some resemblance to the truth.
Deadly Combo
But developers also know that whoever is mayor, the combination of Boston’s slow-as-molasses development bureaucracy with the volatile, boom/bust economy of recent decades can be particularly deadly for ambitious builders.
The annals of Hub development are haunted by the ghosts of projects that never made it, that got mired in Boston City Hall’s permitting quagmire for years or even decades.
These hapless and, in some cases, not-so-hapless builders missed the boom times of their day, forced either to quietly pull the plug on their grand plans to start building in the teeth of a downturn.
John Hynes had visions of restoring Filene’s, only to leave Boston with a hole in the ground when the Great Recession hit. Millennium is now picking up the pieces and reaping the profits from the permits Hynes won.
Fan Pier languished for decades before waterfront builder Joe Fallon came to the rescue, though he too got caught trying to open in a weak economy when he was finally able to start construction in the fall of 2007.
And rather sadly, housing developer Arthur Wynn saw a long and respected career collapse under the weight of the Columbus Center air-rights tower fiasco. After years of city and state reviews and hundreds of meetings with neighborhood residents and activists, Wynn finally began site work in 2007, only to see the final hope for the project wiped out when the global economic meltdown hit a year later.
“Columbus Center was clearly bled to death,” Begelfer argued.
Of course, as we look around, all seems fine right now with the local economy, with booming life science and tech companies helping fuel plans for new projects.
But as savvy Boston developers know, it’s not the economy now you have to worry about, but one four or five years from now when you are finally ready to open the doors to your new building.
Anyone care to venture a prediction on whether the economy will be booming or down in the dumps come 2017 or 2018? I thought not.
But any builder just starting the Boston permitting process right now will have to make exactly that call given it will take at least a year or two to get all the required City Hall and state approvals in hand, provided there is no petty controversy or local gadfly stirring the pot against the project.
Add on another two or three years to build, and suddenly you are nearing the end of the decade.
Even those developers that just got approved or are close to it – like O’Brien and his Government Center megaproject – are still looking two or three years out before opening day.
A new mayoral regime will add even more uncertainty, at least initially.
Who knows what Walsh will end up doing. But even reforms that ultimately help developers spend less time in City Hall permitting will take time, precious time, to implement.
No, right now, my money is on Fallon and Fan Pier, well into its multibillion-dollar build out, and John Rosenthal, who has his permits in hand to build an apartment and retail complex on a deck over the Turnpike overlooking Fenway Park.
Yes, Fallon’s plans are looking a little shaky with the announcement of big cuts by his anchor tenant, life science giant Vertex. And yes, Rosenthal, who has doggedly pursued plans for his Fenway project since the late 1990s, and now says he needs a nearly $8 million city tax break in order to start construction.
But both developers have all their permits in hand. And in Boston, especially now with one mayor leaving and another coming on board, having a project approved and ready to go is worth its weight in gold.
Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
