Anyone with half a brain and a speck of honesty covering real estate development in Boston has known for years that all the grand buildings slated for the Greenway were the biggest fraud since the lid was blown on the Big Dig’s bloated budget.

You didn’t need to be an urban planner to figure out the well-heeled but overly ambitious charity types pushing these monumental museums and cultural centers were never going to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to start building.

So why has it taken more than a decade to put an end to this foolish, rich man’s ego trip?

Maybe it’s because here in Greater Boston – the land of long-entrenched, thin-skinned political bosses and media outlets that cater to their petty power games – it can be risky to your career and livelihood to call things as they are.

Whether we like it or not, it’s a local political/media culture of don’t-dare-rock-the-boat timidity. And sadly, fiascos like the Greenway are one of the byproducts.

A Long Time Coming

A Boston Globe story recently sought to draw a final curtain on the Greenway follies, reporting that the YMCA of Greater Boston had finally given up on its proposal to build a $70 million recreation palace next to a thin strip of parkland.

It was the last in a long line of similar Greenway fantasy projects to bite the dust.

I can already hear the apologists saying something like, “While it all looks bad in hindsight now, no one really knew at the time that all these grand building plans were headed nowhere.”

In fact, it was very clear, way back in the early 2000s, that the Greenway building plans were far from what they seemed.

At the time, the end of the Big Dig was finally in sight. And the rollout of the new underground highway and the dismantling of the 1950s Central Artery were poised to free up acres of land in the heart of downtown Boston.

Suddenly, the old hack-encrusted Massachusetts Turnpike Authority found itself overseeing a massive, urban park planning process for which it hadn’t a clue how to handle.

But instead of admitting it was not up to the task, the Turnpike fumbled ahead, drawing up an elaborate charade of plans for fanciful parks and lavish buildings for what was then billed as Boston’s answer to Central Park.

The Turnpike dunderheads did their best to give a free pass to the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, which was running around showing off majestic plans for a $100 million, glass encased botanical garden next to South Station.

The only problem was that Mass Hort had been handed the rights to redevelop this prime Greenway acreage back in the 1980s – and, as the new millennium dawned, hadn’t raised a dime.

No matter. The Turnpike let the prestigious but financially troubled nonprofit blunder ahead for years more. At one point, Mass Hort hired a former top planner from Boston City Hall and even renamed the Garden under Glass the “Darwin Project” in order to get donors to pony up for this turkey. No bites, though.

Meanwhile, Matt Amorello, a one-time state highway department bureaucrat elevated to Turnpike chairman, got to play urban planner.

Amorello went out to hire architects on the public dime to come up with all sorts of fanciful park designs. Then he began doling out key parcels to nonprofits with plans for grand cultural palaces and unproven fundraising abilities.

A cultural center was supposed to take shape outside Rowes Wharf; the YMCA got the rights to build along the Greenway near North Station; and another group pitched plans for a Boston history museum.

Eventually, Mass Hort lost its claim to its Greenway site, but not after years more of silly plans and fumbling around. As late as December, 2006, the Turnpike decided to throw the nonprofit a $2 million bone to keep its fantasy project alive.

Ample Warning

No one was seriously questioning Amorello’s ability to carry out the role of park builder – in fact, everyone took the park design process he set up so, so seriously.

He kept on with this nonsense until a section of a new Big Dig tunnel roof collapsed and killed a motorist, leading to his ouster.

It all defied common sense, how second- and third-tier nonprofits were going to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to build what amounted to major downtown development projects.

Moreover, these groups were trying to compete for money and donors in a city replete with high-powered, nonprofit cultural, collegiate and health care institutions – most of whom have tin cup rattling down to science.

As the would-be Greenway builders were struggling to get a couple dimes to rub together, Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts was on its way to raising hundreds of millions of dollars for its glitzy, new Art of the Americas wing.

The sign posts warning of disaster were all over the place, if anyone had wanted to heed them.

OK, there were occasional stories that raised basic, common sense questions about the whole Greenway delusion. But we are talking about a reporter here and a columnist there. Local media outlets were more interested in running silly renderings of parks that would never get built than taking on this white elephant.

It was apparently more fun to write editorials pontificating on urban design than to ask where the cash was coming from.

Better to go along to get along, and avoid ruffling the feathers of some tin-pot municipal dictator, state pooh bah or pretentious charity type – or, for that matter, some risk-averse editor thinking of his next career in public relations.

It’s just the way we do business here in Boston, and, sadly, it is likely to doom us to more Greenways in the years ahead.