Boston’s ailing Financial District looks more irrelevant by the day, a ghostly monument to the stifling corporate bureaucracies of the 1970s. The question now is not whether it’s dead, but who killed it? And can this beached whale be revived, or is it simply fated to slowly rot away while other downtown Boston neighborhoods sparkle?

Boston’s ailing Financial District looks more irrelevant by the day, a ghostly monument to the stifling corporate bureaucracies of the 1970s.

The question now is not whether it’s dead, but who killed it? And can this beached whale be revived, or is it simply fated to slowly rot away while other downtown Boston neighborhoods sparkle?

The answer to both questions can be found within Boston City Hall. Mayor Thomas M. Menino has spent years building up potential competitors while looking upon the fat cats in their Financial District towers as a convenient ATM.

Now those years of neglect are finally coming home to roost, with big blocks of empty corporate suites no one wants, lots of empty retail space, and a general apathy about the future of the city’s once proud and mighty center of commerce.

And with city planners busy touting the development possibilities of just about every other downtown neighborhood except for the Financial District, it is a downward trend that, barring any dramatic policy shift over at City Hall, appears here to stay.

Mired In The Past

There was a time that a glittering skyline full of tall towers was a sight to behold. Certainly such was the case in Boston in the late 1970s and 1980s when a surge in tower construction made the city’s skyline a beacon for the Hub’s comeback after decades of decay and decline.

But today every two-bit city in America has its collection of high-rises, not to mention every Third World megalopolis.

Meanwhile, the banks and big insurance companies that built many of the towers of Boston’s central business district are now either branch offices of national firms or have shifted their attention elsewhere.

Empty retail and restaurant space abounds, topped by floor after floor of offices that look as empty as they did during the height of the Great Recession, with a vacancy rate of more than 18 percent, according to Colliers International.

Some of this, of course, has to do with sweeping, historical trends beyond the control of any business leader or city planner. The regional banks with their vast bureaucracies that built Financial District towers – remember Bank of Boston and Shawmut? – have long since been steamrolled by technology and globalization.

Still, it is certainly fair to point the finger at City Hall for exacerbating some of these trends, lavishing attention on other downtown neighborhoods while letting an increasingly struggling Financial District fend for itself.

Menino has showered the Seaport with mayoral attention during his two decade reign, staking his legacy on remaking South Boston’s post-industrial waterfront into a glittering new harborside neighborhood.

The massive Boston Convention and Exhibition Center led the way, followed by the launch of the long-delayed Fan Pier project. Other mega-projects are now teeing up, ready for takeoff, as apartment companies, hoteliers and office builders start to move in.

At one time, Menino even hoped to build a new city headquarters on the waterfront, an idea that just about says it all about the area’s importance to the mayor.

It’s been a long haul, but office rents in the Seaport are now rising, while vacancy is a good notch below that of the Financial District.

Competition Emerges

The Back Bay and the Fenway have also both fared well under the mayor’s attentive gaze.

The Back Bay surpassed the Financial District as Boston’s most expensive and coveted office market, with rents soaring at the Hancock building and other towers. Ironically, it is the neighborhood’s well-rounded appeal – loaded with shops and restaurants and a thriving residential sector – which has helped attract big corporate tenants. It is an appeal that has only grown for the wealthy corporate set as a flurry of luxury condo towers has been added to the mix over the past decade.

For its part, Fenway has undergone an amazing transformation as well, with upscale apartment high-rises and new restaurants helping transform the once gritty streets around Fenway Park into a Disney-like tourist attraction.

Even woebegone Downtown Crossing has gotten a shot in the arm, with new plans by one of the mayor’s favorite developers for what would be one of the tallest towers the city has ever seen.

But what about the Financial District?

Well, the city’s business district was the lucky recipient of one of Menino’s zanier development ideas – a 1,000-foot skyscraper on the site of a crumbling city-owned garage off Winthrop Square. There were many potential causes of death for this ill-fated plan, and not enough time and space to detail them all. But suffice it to say if this more than $1 billion albatross had ever gotten built, it would have been like setting off a neutron bomb, sucking corporate tenants out of other Financial District towers to fill its massive hulk.

More recently, City Hall has tried to put the muscle on some Financial District tower owners to help pay for efforts to turn around struggling nearby Downtown Crossing. Very helpful indeed, as you can imagine.

Let’s be fair, there is no easy answer here. The age of mega office towers is coming to a close, with technology and changing ways of doing business making the traditional Mad Men-style office more obsolete by the day.

But ignoring the problem will only make things worse. Love may be too much to ask for, but maybe it’s time for the mayor to show the long-neglected Financial District just a little attention.