With Thanksgiving still in the air, it’s time for the annual turkey shoot, featuring the biggest real estate flubs around.
And boy, do we have some big, fat turkeys to bag this year!
Here’s my list of full-blown turkeys – from the harebrained idea of building a casino over South Station to an airport with not a single airline. Where else but here in the Bay State? Oh yes, and let us not forget all those billions of dollars being pumped into new waterfront developments in downtown Boston that suddenly look like a good candidate for the next Atlantis.
South Station Tower:
This turkey gets plumper by the year – a recent report in one of our local rags cites an unnamed casino developer as interested in the planned 40-story tower. Wow! Stranger things have happened, but the idea of a casino over South Station is such a stunning violation not just of common sense, but really of any sense at all, that it is unclear where to start. (OKAY, if I have to spell it out, here are two obvious problems: traffic gridlock at the region’s main rail/transportation hub (duh!) and an unwanted competitor to Mayor Thomas M. Menino’s pet plan for a Suffolk Downs gambling palace.) However, it’s just the latest page in a seemingly never-ending saga. A South Station tower was first proposed back in the late 1980s and has gone nowhere since. Over the years, there has been a press conference by Menino – in 2000 – announcing the project’s imminent launch and battles with the Federal Aviation Administration over the proposed tower’s height, but alas, no construction.
Boston’s Waterfront Building Boom
Most of my turkeys are things that have not been built yet. I am really truly hoping I am wrong about this one, so I am listing the billions of dollars’ worth of new waterfront offices and condos taking shape on Boston’s waterfront as a potential turkey. Still, after “Superstorm” Sandy, moving to the harbor’s edge – whether to buy a multimillion-dollar condo or to lease some fancy corporate suites – seems akin to building a subdivision on an earthquake fault line. It may wind up giving meaning to the old term “underwater investment property.” Like I said, I hope I am wrong – I hope I’m the one who is the turkey here – but it’s not looking good right now for waterfront developers in Boston. Or, for that matter, anywhere on the East Coast within reach of a potential hurricane.
Foxborough Casino Fiasco
Speaking of casinos, Steve Wynn holds the dubious honor of proposing what may be the all-time biggest turkey in recent Massachusetts history. The Las Vegas tycoon teamed up with follow billionaire club member Robert Kraft to propose a $1 billion casino on a parking lot outside Gillette Stadium. It was easy to predict that residents of the upscale Boston suburb, who have spent years carping about the drunken antics of Patriots fans and concertgoers at Gillette, weren’t going to be enamored of plans for a giant gambling complex. Plus, to pass, the project would have to both clear a referendum and win a two-thirds majority at town meeting. Undeterred and apparently believing their wealth and star power would make the good folks of Foxborough roll over and positively beg for a casino, Wynn and Kraft plunged ahead. The promises of hundreds of $15 an hour jobs just didn’t do the trick in the solidly middle-class bedroom community. Irate residents elected a slate of anti-casino selectmen, with the whole affair potentially poisoning the atmosphere for future Kraft family projects. Just what in the world were these guys thinking?
Worcester’s Empty Airport
Massport is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to maintain an airport that lost its only airline last spring – and with no signs of any viable replacement in sight.
Here’s an excerpt from a recent Worcester Telegram & Gazette piece about Worcester’s sparkling and very empty airport. Read it and wonder who in the world is running our crazy state:
More than a million people live within an hour’s drive of the airport, but it cannot support even one passenger airline service? It’s absurd. And yet, it has been a repeating pattern.
The airport is an eerie place to visit. You can pull right up to the curb in front of the terminals and park your car. Then you can leave it there as long as you want, because there are no taxis, no families pulling out suitcases, nobody at all. It’s just empty.
Wellesley’s Hole-In-The-Ground
You have to really work hard at it to buy a piece of property in the downtown of one of most affluent suburbs in the country and wind up with a hole in the ground. But the would-be developers of The Durant managed to do just that, tearing down the old Wellesley Inn back in 2006 in hopes of building million-dollar-plus condos. That was the high point – nothing has moved onto the now fenced-off site since then. Apparently buyers with bucks weren’t bowled over by the marketing slogan, “It’s time to live Wellesley.” What a brilliant play on words. Supposedly a new owner is taking over. Well, there’s no place to go but up!
Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.
