After decades of appointing little known second-stringers, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino has finally brought in an A-Lister to run the powerful Boston Redevelopment Authority.

The appointment of Peter Meade as Menino’s right-hand man on development comes with a number of very ambitious projects already on the table – and I am betting others we have yet to hear about that are right now bouncing around inside the mayor’s head.

Development in Boston, typically a Wild West show, began to get a little dull during the recession, with developers focused on keeping angry bankers at bay.

But that was just a breather. Things are about to get very interesting once again.

“I don’t see Peter as being a caretaker BRA director,” said David Begelfer, CEO of NAIOP Massachusetts, which represents developers across the state. “There could be surprises in the future.”

A Household Name

For Menino, tapping Meade was a bold departure.

The mayor has typically filled the BRA’s top post with safe candidates easily kept under his thumb.

“Who’s this guy?” was the typical reaction after a new BRA director was named in years past.

The development authority’s outgoing director John Palmieri had big-city development experience in Rhode Island and Connecticut, but in parochial New England, he might as well have been from Phoenix.

Mark Maloney was a wealthy housing developer and friend of the mayor’s when he was appointed, but no one beyond the apartment sector had heard of him before. And despitean occasionally tumultuous, years-long reign, Maloney quickly faded back into obscurity after stepping down a few years ago.

There were others, but with the exception of Tom O’Brien, a rising star who got ousted by the mayor, I frankly can’t even remember their names. BRA directors under Menino have come and gone without much notice.

Not so with Peter Meade. He’s a household name in the business community, and has a rolodex that reaches into the top corporate suites and boardrooms.

Meade got his start, along with a lot of other talented people now prominent in Boston’s business and political community, under Kevin White back in the 1970s, where he served in the hot-seat job as public safety coordinator during the heated student bussing controversy.

He went on to become a popular talk show host at WBZ radio and later a top executive at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts. In recent years, he has chaired the nonprofit overseeing the struggling Greenway parks, while also helping get the new Edward M. Kennedy Institute off the ground.

Meade now finds himself back in the spotlight, this time with Boston poised for another surge in development that could transform the city for decades.

Fresh Perspective

For starters, Meade will surely bring a fresh mind to the Filene’s debacle, which left a hole in the ground in Downtown Crossing where a new tower was supposed to go.

National apartment developers are circling the site, and Meade’s deft touch with the corporate community may yet help snatch a victory out of what has been a humiliating fiasco for Menino.

Meade is also the right guy to persuade tower owners currently balking at forking over millions to help save struggling Downtown Crossing through a business improvement district to reconsider.

And Meade will surely have his hands busy on South Boston’s waterfront, where the seven-year-old Boston Convention and Exhibition Center is gearing up for a major expansion, one that may include the largest hotel ever built in Boston.

And let’s not forget the Greenway – Meade should prove invaluable guiding what is likely to be rising interest in building new projects and redeveloping older buildings along the new downtown parks.

But of course, knowing the mayor as we do, Meade may already be getting prepped to deal with one of the mayor’s periodic development bombshells. The scuttlebutt is that Meade’s hiring was far from a spur of the moment decision – my guess he was being wooed for some time.

But for what? I remember my amazement when Menino came out with his sweeping plan to sell City Hall and build an entirely new municipal palace on South Boston’s waterfront.

Likewise, the mayor had us staring in disbelief when he unveiled renderings of his proposed 1,000-foot, skyline-topping tower at a meeting of the down-to-earth business executives that make up the Boston Municipal Finance Bureau.

Of course, both proposals, while they generated lots of headlines and stories, never came to pass.

Maybe Meade can help channel the mayor’s next development brainstorm into something more enduring.

Relationship Builder

But Boston being Boston, Meade is already facing criticism for not having extensive real estate experience. This is a red herring – Meade, through the many and varied roles he’s played over the years, has amassed a lot more experience than critics are giving him credit.

He chaired Emerson College’s board during a major downtown expansion, and worked as a top executive at a Boston public relations firm with its hands in major projects across the city.

And he’s already demonstrating a deft touch when it comes to the politics of real estate development in Boston.

The night before last Tuesday’s big City Hall press conference announcing Meade’s appointment, he took the time out to respond to an email from Vivien Li about a fundraiser for the Boston Harbor Association, which Li leads as executive director.

Meade said while he was be happy to help out with the event, he deferred to Kairos Shen, musing that auctioning off lunch with the super-smart BRA planner – and brief rival for the top job – would bring in more money than if he were offered up on the menu.

To Li, that makes Meade a peach of a guy, and that’s fine. But it also shows that Meade knows the important role played in Boston development by activists like Li, who can help make or break major developments.

Development is nothing if not deal making, and in that department, it looks like Meade is off to a good start.