Okay, let’s cut the phony speculation here: As long as he is able to wag that stubborn tongue of his and rumble about somehow, you can bet that Mayor Thomas M. Menino will run this fall for an unprecedented sixth term as Boston’s chief executive.
A revived Menino, his health on the mend, laid out an ambitious program in his Faneuil Hall speech last Tuesday night, fitting for a mayor intent on winning yet another reelection campaign.
This is good news for savvy builders like media mogul Mortimer Zuckerman’s Boston Properties and Millennium Properties Anthony Pangaro, who have parlayed rock-solid relationships with Menino’s City Hall into gleaming new office and condo towers.
Above all, it’s good news for investors who want to build a casino at Suffolk Downs.
But it’s bad news for other developers, who, unwittingly or not, have crossed the mayor over the years in their ill-considered pursuit of various projects.
Once you are on the mayor’s grudge list, it can be hard, if not impossible, to get off, with poor Frank McCourt, before he fled to Los Angeles and wrecked the Dodgers, even hiring one of Menino’s South Boston allies to help him connect, all to no avail.
Winners And Losers
The biggest loser in Menino’s all-too-predictable and all-but-official decision to keep on keeping on as mayor is Don Chiofaro, the colorful builder of International Place who has been pushing to build a new pair of twin towers next door to the New England Aquarium, nestled between the harbor and the new Greenway.
The blunt-spoken Chiofaro, a football standout at Harvard in his youth, foolishly started a war of words with Menino a couple years back in hopes of pressuring the mayor into giving him a green light for his mega-building plans. That tactic predictably backfired on a mayor who bristles at any sign of showboating – let alone outright defiance – by a developer looking to build in Boston.
It seemed pretty clear at the time that Chiofaro was looking ahead to Menino’s eventual retirement. But it looks like the mayor is set to outlast Chiofaro, who can now look forward to being frozen out for another four years – a not-so-great prospect when you are already in your 60s.
John Hynes, grandson of a major and son of newscaster Jack Hynes, can’t be too happy, either, as he struggles to get his own, grandiose, multibillion-dollar project off the ground in the Seaport. Hynes’ penchant for blowing his horn in the local press put him on the wrong side of Menino, and he has paid the price ever since.
Nor can I imagine that big tower/development haters like Back Bay gadfly Shirley Kressel were toasting the mayor during his speech – hurling things at their TV screens is more like it.
Menino and his slavishly loyal Boston Redevelopment Authority are public enemy No. 1 to Boston’s numerous NIMBY-types, for whom anything over 10 stories is considered a monstrous blot on the city’s skyline and a threat to all natural sunlight from Fields Corner to the Public Garden.
Suffolk Downs A Winner
But Menino’s reelection announcement – let’s get real here, for that’s what it was – was great news for a whole bunch of other builders.
Richard Fields, lead investor behind the proposal to turn Suffolk Downs in East Boston into a giant casino and entertainment hub, surely can’t be happier.
His group now faces a tough challenge from Las Vegas tycoon Steve Wynn, who has set up shop with a rival proposal next door at the site of an old chemical plant in Everett.
While Menino can’t win it for Fields, the mayor’s presence certainly gives Suffolk a more than fighting chance in this high-stakes duel. After all, Gov. Deval Patrick led the contingent of top state politicians fawning over the mayor after his big speech on Tuesday.
The Massachusetts Gaming Commission, whose chairman was appointed by Patrick, will be making the final call on this one.
The other winners are also easy to spot – all you have to do is take a stroll down Washington Street or the Seaport to see them at work. These favored few are all either counting their money after putting up new high-rises in Boston or busy building some more.
Pangaro’s Millennium Partners is gearing up to jumpstart the stalled Filene’s tower, even as it plunges ahead with a new residential tower on lower Washington Street near its pricey Ritz-Carlton towers.
Boston Properties is doing well by its latest development, the new Russia Wharf tower, which adds nicely to its bevy of corporate addresses in the Hub, including the city’s two centerpiece skyscrapers – the Prudential and Hancock towers.
Joe Fallon has earned his well-deserved reputation as Boston’s go-to guy for waterfront development, steadily moving forward the once-hopeless Fan Pier project, piece by piece.
So, Boston’s longest-reigning mayor clearly has a few more gallons in his tank. And considering all that has happened and will happen in Boston development under his reign, that’s not such a bad thing, now is it?
Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at svanvoorhis@hotmail.com
