Insider baseball

Where will the new park be built?

by Dan Kennedy

It was April 28, 1995, and Red Sox chief executive John Harrington was in an expansive mood. Appearing before a state commission planning a convention center and sports complex, Harrington shared his dream: to celebrate the team's 100th anniversary by hosting the 2001 All-Star Game in a brand-new stadium.

Since then, though, the Red Sox have done precisely nothing to get themselves out of crumbling Fenway Park, the oldest, smallest stadium in Major League baseball. Will the Sox refurbish and expand Fenway? Build a new stadium next door? Relocate to South Boston? All these possibilities are regularly bandied about, but the Red Sox remain serenely silent.

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Green monstrosities
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Ask the Sox' vice-president for public affairs, Dick Bresciani, about the 2001 goal, and he responds mildly, "If you look at the calendar now, that probably isn't very feasible."

No kidding.

Yet there's an emerging consensus within the political and business communities that the Red Sox' moment is at hand, whether they want it or not. Things may be quiet right now, but behind the scenes the stadium issue is slowly bubbling toward the top of the agenda.

Harrington was scheduled to meet with Mayor Tom Menino on Wednesday, but the meeting was canceled because of the blizzard. And although at press time the meeting had not been rescheduled, a get-together could help push the Sox toward Menino's goal: a new or refurbished ballpark on more or less the same grounds they've occupied since 1912.

Menino is on the right track. If properly designed, with respect for the scale and fabric of the area, a new Fenway Park would enhance a neighborhood that has long since learned to live with the Red Sox. Equally important, other sites mentioned for the Red Sox, including vacant property in South Boston and Roxbury, could instead be developed by businesses that can offer more stable employment than a sports franchise that opens its doors only 81 times a year.

Indeed, the decision over where to put the Red Sox's next ballpark is about a lot more than baseball and politics, or, as cynics might have it, greed and opportunism. More than anything else, this is one of those rare chances to define the future of the city. The ultimate location of a new baseball stadium will have an enormous impact on the city's economy, on its aesthetics, on traffic, on the very livability of whatever neighborhood ends up playing host. Local activists will be yelling about a thousand different issues. Business groups will pushing their conflicting interests. Keeping mere baseball fans happy will be easy by comparison.

The Red Sox may think they can proceed on their own timetable, but they're caught up in a dynamic larger than themselves. The modern era might be said to have begun in 1993, when ground was broken for the FleetCenter, which replaced the ancient Boston Garden -- basketball and hockey's version of Fenway Park. Within a year, the New England Patriots, exiled to Foxborough in the early 1970s, were demanding to come home. And the Red Sox, who for decades had complacently promoted "Friendly" Fenway Park as -- in John Updike's words -- a "lyric little bandbox of a ballpark" whose archaic charm outweighed its tiny capacity and uncomfortable seats, were suddenly faced with two unpleasant truths: 1) their competitors were making more money by playing in newer, bigger stadiums, and 2) Fenway was slowly but inexorably deteriorating to the point at which it would become structurally unsound.

So far, though, the FleetCenter is all the city has to show for its sports-fueled development urge.

The convention center/sports complex, a/k/a the megaplex, which would have included a football stadium and property on which the Red Sox could build a privately fianced ballpark, died on Beacon Hill over concerns about its $1 billion price tag.

Just a few months ago, fierce neighborhood opposition forced Patriots owner Bob Kraft to abandon plans to build a privately financed stadium in South Boston, near property the Red Sox also covet.

Now it's the Red Sox' turn. And though it's understandable that Harrington would be reluctant to offer himself up as the latest victim in a process that seems more designed to quash innovative ideas than to work out reasonable solutions to pressing needs, he has to grab hold of the process now, before it grabs hold of him.

For one thing, Boston has a reputation of being a place where dark motives such as resentment, politics, and revenge can destroy the most worthy of projects. Bob Woolf Associates president Larry Moulter, who as the former president of the Boston Garden was instrumental in putting together the FleetCenter deal, believes that reputation is exaggerated. "The city has changed a lot," he says. "We use the parochial, tribal metaphors as excuses." Though Moulter concedes that the public-planning process can make for a long, drawn-out ordeal, he says a team owner must be willing to work within the system rather than let "hubris" (a Greek word meaning "Bob Kraft") lead him to try to force something down the throats of an unwilling populace.

Adds Patrick Moscaritolo, president of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau: "The process is more rigorous, probably more contentious than any developer would like to face, but the end result is that these projects come out much better, and they fit much more into the fabric of Boston." In other words, Harrington needs to be politically astute enough to cut the best deal he can get in a place where he'll actually be allowed to build: the Fenway.

The Red Sox also must consider the ambitions of Tom Menino, stung by criticism that he lacks vision, damaged by the failure of the megaplex project (even though the only aspect of the megaplex for which Menino expressed much enthusiasm was the convention center), heckled -- except in Southie -- for his opposition to the Patriots' plans. Eager to portray himself as an activist mayor, Menino is pushing hard to build a convention center in South Boston. Last week he announced a major redevelopment project at City Hall Plaza that will include a new, 350-room hotel. A firm plan to build a new baseball stadium in the Fenway would complete an impressive triple play for a mayor who appears to be running hard for re-election, even though he doesn't have an opponent.

Part 2

Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com.