The Emperor Now Has Clothes

The closing of the Downtown Crossing Filene’s Basement did much more than clear the way for the creation of a gaping hole in the ground that will, eventually, clear the way for a glittering new office tower. It also left Boston Mayor Thomas Menino without a place to buy clothes.

Hizzoner was one of a gang of Boston politicians who would regularly troll the Basement’s dusty aisles, searching for bargains on fine menswear. Suits, shirts, ties, he bought it all. When word broke that the Basement was closing, temporarily, to make way for the planned One Franklin tower, Menino described himself as "agitated" by the news. He called the store’s closing "a bittersweet day." He did so while decked out, head to toe, in Basement-bought apparel.

So, good news for the mayor, and anyone else with an interest in his sartorial habits. Because Tom Menino has found a new place to buy his duds. He said so last week, at a press conference welcoming two new firms to South Boston’s Channel Center development.

One of those firms is Retail Convergence, a firm that has taken 43,000 square feet at the refurbished warehouse.

Happily enough, one of Retail Convergence’s lines of business involves selling name-brand clothing at steep discounts. And, Retail Convergence’s Web sites live on the Internet, so there’s little chance they will soon be evicted and bulldozed in favor of a half-excavated construction site. That was enough for a grinning Menino to declare, to an assemblage of reporters and real estate professionals, "I just found a place to buy my suits!"

Menino Makes It Happen

Swank new threads aside, the story of Retail Convergence landing in Channel Center shows that the mayor’s recent talk about keeping businesses in Boston hasn’t just been talk.

Retail Convergence was placed in South Boston by Boston World Partnerships (BWP), a networking nonprofit that the mayor announced two years ago. It’s headed by former Boston Redevelopment Authority Director Mark Maloney. BWP’s executive director, Dave McLaughlin, heard that Retail Convergence needed space, and that the firm was looking for it, as Menino put it, "in the hinterlands of suburbia."

McLaughlin connected with the firm and showed them data about how city offices would give them "access to a broader, deeper talent pool." Since Retail Convergence also needs easy access to shipping, McLaughlin steered them towards the South Boston waterfront. A BRA-owned building in the Marine Industrial Park wasn’t a fit, but the company liked the waterfront. So McLaughlin put them in touch with Archon. Archon didn’t have a building that was a match, but the company discovered Fort Point. They finally landed down the street, in Channel Center.

"It happened the way the operation was set up to happen – through personal networks and word-of-mouth networks," McLaughlin said. "It’s a kind of quiet, behind-the-scenes, aggressive focus."

Leads have come in all sizes, from identifying board members for a new public policy institute to helping an entrepreneur barter yoga classes for a new Web site. Channel Center’s broker recently put a company with a 75,000-square-foot requirement on BWP’s radar. Boston is one of four locations they’re looking at. McLaughlin put them in touch with city and state business development officials, who are now crafting a package of incentives.

"It’s not rocket science," McLaughlin said. "It’s a targeted approach. It’s not about ads or travel. It’s about creating a network of people that shares information to yield a tangible economic outcome."

AG: LoanMods Are Frauds

If truth is the first casualty of war, then perhaps unhelpful FAQ pages have become the first casualties of the foreclosure boom (so long as you don’t count the American people as "casualties").

In that spirit, last week, Attorney General Martha Coakley announced her office had slapped a temporary restraining order against an outstandingly-named company called Loan Mods By Lawyers. The loan-modding lawyers in question recently tried to drum up business with newspaper ads advising financially-strapped homeowners to "Save Your Home, Modify Your Loan," and "Stop Foreclosure; Call NOW!," while pointing them to the Web site, LoanModsByLawyers.com. For this great crime, Coakley cast Loan Mods By Lawyers as a "loan mod scam." (Also, Loan Mods By Lawyers charges homeowners a $1,500 up-front service fee, which is, under anti-foreclosure legislation passed in 2007, rather criminal.)

Coakley is seeking to permanently bar the company from doing business in Massachusetts. Even though the company has clearly buried this very helpful caveat, for all the world not to see, at the bottom of its FAQ page, which is itself littered with pictures of smiling, happy folks who haven’t lost their homes to foreclosure: "Question: Is Loanmodsbylawyers.com a law firm? Answer: No."