It’s finally time to sink or swim for the Innovation District, Seaport, South Boston Waterfront, insert-your-preferred-name-here neighborhood.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino will rumble into retirement early next year after more than two decades on the job, half of which was spent legacy-building along the city’s waterfront.

Let’s hope this will mark the end of the name changes inflicted upon the city’s post-industrial and now half-redeveloped waterfront, which stretches from the Moakley courthouse and Fan Pier down to Castle Island.

But with Menino riding into the sunset, it’s high time to find out whether the so-called waterfront building boom is real or instead government-driven at the behest of one of the nation’s most powerful big city mayors.

“The Seaport district has its own momentum now,” contends Vivien Li, executive director of the Boston Harbor Association and an indefatigable booster of the city’s waterfront.

With all due respect, you can count me as a skeptic on this one.

The Waterfront Mayor

Let’s not kid ourselves here.

The party line from developers and city officials alike is the Innovation District/Seaport flowered under Menino’s benevolent gaze and far-sighted tutelage and will roar on into the future, a living testament to the down-to-earth, everyman wisdom of the Urban Mechanic.

Yet the mayoral devotees can’t have it both ways. The growth of the Seaport/Innovation district has Menino’s paw prints all over it – you will be hard-pressed to find a single waterfront development or project without a connection, whether it’s a city tax break or a mayoral friend at the helm.

So it stands to reason that once that driving force packs it in, either organic market forces will kick in and keep the building rolling, or the waterfront, deprived of its biggest and most powerful cheerleader, will stall out.

And frankly the record, when it comes to market forces driving development down on the waterfront, is not too encouraging.

Now certainly the area has development potential, don’t get me wrong, with the Big Dig having created a direct Turnpike connection.  

But the mayor and City Hall’s development arm, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, have been far from content to let market forces play out.

Instead, we’ve seen a now decade-and-a-half campaign to drive development to the waterfront.

The big push began with the construction of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center nearly 15 years ago now.

The aim of the $800 million-plus, aircraft carrier sized hall was to spark development in the so-called Seaport/Innovation District and make Boston a major convention city.

Since then, Menino has pushed nonstop to bring new development to the waterfront.

The question is not what the mayor has done to try and bring new offices, homes, shops and restaurants on the waterfront, but what hasn’t he done.

Menino and City Hall have doled out countless millions in tax breaks to spur construction of projects like the multibillion-Fan Pier complex and myriad office and residential high-rises.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority, the mayor’s right-hand arm in pushing his development vision, has spent countless hours and money producing and promoting various waterfront development plans and blueprints. When you count all the consultants brought, we are talking countless millions more spent.

The mayor even spent years lobbying to get the FBI to build a planned headquarters complex/fortress at Fan Pier and to have a new City Hall built on the waterfront as well.

However, here’s the dirty little secret: Despite all this lavishing of time, attention and money by the mayor and City Hall, development along Boston’s waterfront has been far from booming. Rather it has been slow and at times halting.

Plans for Fan Pier have been in the works for decades now and are just getting off the ground, the massive Seaport Square project is yet to really break ground, not to mention the Pier 4 project.

Despite success at bringing in meetings, the giant, publicly owned convention center has yet to spark a private-sector hotel building boom and is looking at taking matters into its own hands and build its own giant new hotel to meet its needs.

The frequent name changes – Seaport, South Boston Seaport and now Innovation District – are a dead giveaway, a series of strained attempts by City Hall to create a sense of excitement about waterfront development.

Time To Let The Market Decide

It’s not as if Boston’s sprawling waterfront is devoid of natural development potential – far from it.

But Boston is hot now and has been hot for years now when it comes to new development, with an enticing number of opportunities across the city for builders to exploit, not just on the waterfront.

In fact, developers have been voting with their feet, packing the Back Bay with new high-priced condo towers and turning the once gritty streets around Fenway Park into new apartments, restaurants and offices.

Compared to the attention showered on the waterfront, the boom taking place around Fenway Park has been a relative afterthought for Menino and City Hall.

In fact, John Henry’s Red Sox ownership group, with its decision to renovate Fenway Park instead of tearing it down and building a new stadium somewhere else, has been the catalyst here.

Looking ahead, developers will have other enticing opportunities to explore across Boston, without the heavy hand of City Hall forcing them to look first at the waterfront.

Former City Hall development chief Thomas O’Brien, heading HYM Investment Group’s local operations, wants to tear down the unsightly Government Center garage and replace with millions of square feet of condos, apartments, offices and shops. The plan may very well spark Boston’s next development gold rush.

After all, you can’t beat the location, next door to all of Boston’s major subway lines, giving it a decided advantage over the waterfront, served by the less compelling silver line.

One thing you can surely count on is that Menino’s successor, the next mayor, will be sure to forge his or her own path.

And trying to force waterfront development – and burnish Menino’s legacy – is not likely to be on the new mayor’s to-do list.

Scott Van Voorhis can be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.