Menino Building Boston

Mayor Menino explains how to remake the heart of Boston

by Dan Kennedy

It was a few days before Mayor Tom Menino and House Speaker Tom Finneran shook hands on a deal to build a new convention center in South Boston, and the mayor's frustration was evident.

Why, a visitor inquired, couldn't the deal be closed?

"I've taken a leadership role," Menino snapped in reply. "You'd have to ask the legislature why. We know it's needed. Why can't we get the job done?" Later, Menino described the failure to move ahead as the biggest disappointment of his four-year mayoralty.

Now that has changed. As his persistence on the convention center demonstrates, he has slowly plugged away on the vision thing, an area in which he is often thought deficient. Indeed, earlier this year he unveiled Boston 400, a long-range planning initiative that looks ahead to the year 2030.

His office, on the fifth floor of City Hall, is festooned with memorabilia: photos of him with Bill Clinton, autographed footballs and basketballs, and a Tonka toy bulldozer -- given to him by a friend after the freak April snowstorm, when Menino's image as a mayor who knows how to get the little things done took a rare (though well-deserved) beating.

During a recent Phoenix interview, a shirtsleeved Menino sat in a green-leather-upholstered chair once used regularly by the legendary James Michael Curley, occasionally propping his feet up on a wrought-iron-and-glass coffee table and leaning forward, chopping the air with his hands to make a point. Though combative when hearing a question whose premise he didn't like, hizzoner was clearly in good humor.

Q: How will the depression of the Central Artery change the life of the city?

A: It will reconnect the city to the waterfront. Boston has not done a good job over the years in using its waterfront. But soon you'll be able to walk from Government Center, down the Plaza, through Faneuil Hall, and right to the water with no obstructions. That's what it's all about.

One of the things we have to be mindful of is the open-space commitment that was given to us by the state. That means 73 percent of the land should stay as open space: passive parks, green space, trees. The Horticultural Society is planning to develop three lots at South Station, which I think is a great idea. It's going to be beautiful.

Q: What lessons does the urban-renewal era of the 1950s and '60s hold?

A: We have to plan better. We can't be as aggressive as we were in the past. We have to keep the uniqueness of Boston. The decisions we make now will affect our children and our children's children. As we go forward on development, it all has to be in keeping with the uniqueness of Boston, with the size of our city. We can't "Manhattanize" our downtown, put towers that go 80 stories high. It might work for other cities, but not for Boston.

Q: In Providence, Mayor Buddy Cianci is trying to make his city an affordable place for artists to live and work. In Boston, loft space is expensive and difficult to come by. How can Boston become more artist-friendly?

A: We've worked hard to maintain the artists' living spaces in the Fort Point Channel area. We try to keep them affordable. But we lost rent control. That's a big issue. There's no magical way. It's a marketing thing. You don't own the buildings. You have to work with landowners.

Take some of those buildings down in Jamaica Plain. Some of those buildings could become loft spaces. Maybe get some subsidies, some city money, to make it affordable. We will do those things. We've done them in the past, we will do them in the future. It's nice to have some other cities catch up with Boston and what we've been doing for the past 10 years.

The arts community means a lot to us. It bring's more economic opportunity to our city than all the professional sports teams. That's why we have to work with artists, encourage them, support them, and help them grow.

Q: What can be done about the historic isolation and fractiousness of the city's neighborhoods?

A: That's an impression people have if they don't know the city. East Boston, in the past, was 90 percent Italian. Today there are a lot of Brazilians and Latinos. South Boston has changed. Mattapan has a major Haitian population, and they've been great for that community, bought homes, raised families. All the neighborhoods have changed. The Cambodians, Vietnamese all over Dorchester. Jamaica Plain is a United Nations. I see a different city today as mayor in 1997 than I did see when I got elected in 1983 as city councilor. A much different city.

When I was growing up in Hyde Park, where I still live, we never had minorities, or gays and lesbians. But it's happened, and it's happened naturally. It's wonderful. I think the city is much better for it.

Q: One urban expert we interviewed envisions converting Storrow Drive into an urban boulevard that reconnects the Back Bay with the riverfront. Any chance of that and similar projects happening?

A: That was originally what it was, you know. The state came in and bought up all that property in the middle of the night.

You have to think about transportation, how you get people around the city. We dream about these things. Will they happen in your time as mayor? Maybe, but probably not.

One of the things I envision is continuing Copley Square Plaza right up to the front door of the Boston Public Library -- make a grand plaza there that would rival any in the world. With the development of the Sears building, in the Fenway, I insisted that the final link of the Emerald Necklace be given back to us.

I think green space really helps the quality of life, the environment of a city.

Q: How does your proposal to build a hotel on City Hall Plaza square with your goal of turning what you've called a "wasteland" into a "public showcase equal to any of the great squares of Europe"?

A: The hotel is going to help fund the redevelopment of City Hall Plaza. Initially, it will pay $5 million. Then it will pay a grant every year to the City Hall Trust.

Q: What's your ultimate goal for the Plaza?

A: I think you've got to have a recessed stage in the front. You have a fountain there, which is going to work this summer for the first time in 20 years. I'd like to bring back Yo-Yo Ma's proposal to put in some kind of music garden. You could converge the two MBTA stops in the middle and have a train station there, as well as a connection to the airport and maybe a dropoff for luggage that would come right to the airport. Some greenery, as much as we can.

Q: One of your top development priorities is a new convention center for the South Boston waterfront. Make the case to the skeptics.

A: It will bring in, I think, approximately $468 million in revenues to the state, 6800 jobs, 6500 on a daily basis. So many conventions will not come back to the city. Attendance is great, but they lose money because of the lack of exposition space.

Q: You want the Red Sox to build a new stadium on or next to Fenway Park. What's your message to that neighborhood?

A: We have to work with the neighborhood. Deck the Turnpike for parking, so it's not all over the neighborhood, like it presently exists. Lansdowne Street can be an entertainment zone.

We have to make some accommodations if the Red Sox are willing to expand at their present location. They're an institution of our city, and they've been there for many years.

Q: Your predecessor Kevin White used to talk about a commuter tax. Any chance of that happening?

A: I'd love to do it if we could do it. You're going to tell me a person in Winchendon is going to vote for a tax for Boston? You can't do that. You have to use the resources you have. You have to get your fair share back from the state, which it's not giving us right now.

The state should be paying more of our county-jail costs. We should be getting more local aid. We will continue to go up to the legislature and ask them to give us our fair share back.

Q: People sense that the Boston Public Schools, under Superintendent Thomas Payzant, are finally improving. But is change taking place fast enough?

A: We're not going to change it in the 18 months that Tom Payzant has been here. But you'll notice that middle-school scores went up considerably, elementary scores went up a little bit. High school is still a problem. We're going to get there. We're investing our money in our schools and in the physical plants, which we've neglected for so long. Teachers have gone in for training. We've got technology in the schools.

We have to be patient, because 25 or 30 years of neglect can't be unmade overnight.

Q: How can we continue to make progress on race relations?

A: By getting people involved around the city. You look at my boards that I've appointed, they've all been racially integrated, and that's important. Me being out there with them, getting them involved, making sure they get their fair share of city services. Getting jobs for their kids. Making their neighborhoods safe. They want safe neighborhoods in the minority community just as much as Beacon Hill does.

Q: Minority communities clamor for political power, but in Boston they don't really have the votes to win elections. What could be done to change that?

A: They do have the votes -- if they voted. It's education. Telling them how important it is to vote, that if they get involved they could change the system. We've seen a little bit of change. I think the churches in those communities have done a fabulous job of involving people.

Q: For the first time in memory, there may not be enough candidates for a preliminary election in Boston this year. What does that say about political life in the city?

A: I think Watergate has had a big effect on the political atmosphere in this country. Your whole life's an open book. And you don't have a real opportunity now to really move things along like you did in the past. It's unfortunate. Boston was the farm team for national politics. It isn't anymore.

Q: It's sometimes said that you lack vision, so let's close with this: what's your vision for Boston's future?

A: People get mad when I say this, but visionaries don't accomplish anything. You have to have an idea of how you want to move the city forward.

I'll just give you a small example. I'd like to see a family who lives on a street, say, in Allston or Brighton be able to walk their kid to a school, get a good education in that school, the mother and father have a job in the city, and to be able to go to a playground at night that's safe. And that's my vision for families. That means the economy is working for the city, it's a safe city, and the schools are working. All those things are important to me. That's how I look at Boston. Those are my goals.

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