Young, professional families should be the lifeblood of Boston’s growing assortment of expensive residential towers, according to Boston City Councilor John Connolly. But instead, they’re being pushed out of the city by a lack of quality, convenient schools.
Connolly addressed a crowded conference room at the Boston offices of Richards Barry Joyce & Partners last night. Proximity to public transportation and a robust mix of commercial, public and professional spaces is critical in developing the city’s neighborhoods, but none are as important as schools in keeping wealth rooted in Boston, Connolly said.
"The same way you look for that anchor tenant in a development, schools are the anchor in a neighborhood," Connolly told the assembled crowd of commercial brokers, receiving nods and smiles in response.
New residential development – be it condos or apartments – is an expensive proposition. Land, labor and construction costs all conspire to drive prices higher for residential developers, and those costs are passed along to residents in the form of higher-than-average rents or purchasing prices.
Because of those high prices, new residential projects must attract young professionals just entering their peak earning years to ensure the project’s viability. The problem is that the beginning of those peak earnings years – generally the low to mid-30s – often coincides with the ages at which those same professionals begin to start families.
As a result, just when the city’s glitzy residential towers need them most, young professionals flee for the suburbs in search of better and more stable schools for their children, a number of brokers told Connolly after his address.
Connolly, a former teacher, said he recognizes the problem, and has made reforming Boston’s often convoluted and illogical student assignment system a top priority. He also said he is focused on an overall improvement of school quality, in an effort to retain young families in Boston where they can support new development and contribute to the tax base.
Building new schools along with new neighborhoods is also a priority for Connolly, an at-large councilor and a potential candidate for mayor in the next election cycle. Connolly told the crowd last night the city should not have "slapped down" a proposal by John Hynes to build a private school as part of the development of the Seaport District.
Connolly also said he could see a wave of new residential development in the city spurring new commercial development.
"That’s the hope, anyway," he said.
He said he believed the city should have a stronger role in accelerating key projects, and streamlining the approvals process. Currently, developers face too many "yellow lights," and need to be told in a more timely way whether their project is going to get a green light or red light, so they can move on.
"The city has to accelerate certain projects, or the economy will pass us by," he said.
Connolly also said he wasn’t ready to give up on the traditionally strong financial services industry rooted in downtown Boston in favor of "putting all our eggs in one basket with life sciences." He said the city needed to link the existing Financial District with the emerging Innovation District in the Seaport.
