Scott Van Voorhis

It may be human nature to seek a silver lining after a disaster of some sort or another, but sometimes a bungle is just a bungle.

Such is the case with the now mercifully defunct Boston 2024 Olympic bid, which by any rational estimation amounted to a first-class screw-up of epic proportions.

Yet, oddly, there is already some revisionist thinking going at City Hall that the whole fool’s circus of pie-in-the-sky proposals and sleazy political salesmanship might have actually have some residual value.

Sure, the Olympic bid may have come up short, or so this line of reasoning goes. But at least it uncovered the development potential of Widett Circle, that obscure patch of South Boston turf Olympic boosters argued was ready to blossom into a new neighborhood – after a boost from the “temporary stadium” planned for the site, or course.

But you can’t turn someone else’s junk into gold, and Widett Circle is just that – a junk project, an idea thrown out there by Olympic boosters to cover their need for centrally located land to bulldoze in order to make way for a disposable stadium.

Widett Circle is not a real project, but rather something that Boston has had more than its share of over the past few decades – a pipe dream.

To recap, Olympic boosters hoped to build a deck over the railroad tracks on this tract of industrial land between South Boston and the South End, long home to dozens of food wholesalers. The centerpiece was to have been the Olympic stadium, with developers supposedly eager to foot the bill for the crazily expensive air-rights decking – an insane $1.2 billion – in exchange for massive tax breaks and a chance to build Boston’s newest neighborhood.

Olympic boosters didn’t hold back in their efforts to put lipstick on this pig, talking loosely of the potential for 18 new city blocks, 4,000 new condos and apartments, and hotels, shops and restaurants.

But even taking out the Olympic deadweight and the shamefully wasteful temporary stadium, the idea of turning Widett Circle into the next Seaport has three fatal strikes against it.

First and foremost, at its heart, the redevelopment of Widett Circle is an air-rights project, with decking over a transportation link (in this case railroad tracks), the most expensive and financially challenging project any developer can undertake.

And the track record, in Boston at least, is hardly inspiring.

Strike One

Veteran developer Arthur Winn spent years trying to line up political support and financing to build a luxury hotel and condo tower on a deck over the Massachusetts Turnpike between the South End and Back Bay. But Winn could never make the numbers work, with the cost of the deck alone around $200 million. That may be a bargain compared to the $1.2 billion the Widett Circle deck would have cost, but it was more than enough to sink Columbus Center, even with plans to sell off floors upon floors of multimillion-dollar condos overlooking the city.

Ditto for developer and anti-gun activist John Rosenthal, who has spent decades pushing plans to deck over the Turnpike by Fenway Park.

Nor was it for lack of public support that such air-rights plans have gone nowhere, with both developers promised millions in city and state tax breaks.

That’s strike one.

Strike Two

Then there’s location. Even with steep challenges he faced, everyone understood why Winn was willing to spend years and countless millions pushing his luxury tower. After all, it’s a prime piece of real estate if there ever was one, with Copley Square, the Hancock Tower and Main on Main in Boston practically right around the corner.

Ditto for Rosenthal and the luxury tower he has been pushing next to Fenway. Name me a hotter neighborhood that that right now, with a bevy of sleek new high-rises and hip restaurants having transformed the once dingy streets around the lovingly restored antique ballpark.

Widett Circle is hardly a real estate hotspot like the Fenway or the Back Bay, with even long-time city residents not aware it existed until the Olympic boosters swooped in. Rather, it’s like a little piece of Boston from the 1970s that time forgot – the values just aren’t there now, especially with opportunities in other, far more promising neighborhoods.

So location is strike two.

Strike Three

Finally, there are dozens of thriving small businesses, seafood and meat wholesalers employing 800 people at the new Boston Public Market.

Development plans that involve taking other people’s property – and shunting their businesses off to other, less desirable locations – have a pretty poor track record in Boston.

The old Red Sox ownership of the curse years – remember John Harrington? – failed miserably in their attempts to buy out neighboring businesses and landowners in hopes of building a new ballpark.

The plan was to build the new ballpark on neighboring sites and then tear down old Fenway and sell off the site for development, but stubborn opposition by business owners helped kill a real estate atrocity in the making. Even threats by City Hall to seize the land by eminent domain weren’t enough to make those stubborn Fenway business owners roll over and go away.

It is a safe bet that all those food wholesalers making their living at Widett Circle aren’t going to prove any more amenable to some cockeyed real estate scheme to profit at their expense.

So that’s strike three.

Expensive Pipe Dream

Even if the air-rights decking part of Widett Circle were dropped, as one city official suggested might be an option, the thing still doesn’t work. The two strikes against it – a dubious location and lots of businesses already there – are toxic enough.

So what’s the harm in City Hall playing around with the Widett Circle idea? Pursuing pipedreams can grab headlines and generate all sorts of hypotheticals, which is great if you are a professional, consultant, lobbyist, apublic relations guru or simply hoping to launch your own debating society. But it’s a crime to waste precious time and resources – including those of already hard-pressed City Hall urban planners – when, amid a dire housing crunch, many other real and potentially productive development sites await.

Let’s face it, Boston’s ill-fated Olympic bid, in which boosters tried to pull a Big Dig-style fast one on Bay State taxpayers, was a disaster in the making.

The only good thing was that it fell apart before any real damage was done; trying to pursue Boston 2024’s half-baked development plans is simply throwing good money after bad.