Fenway fiasco

The team and the fans deserve a new park, but the Sox' plan causes more problems than it solves

The Red Sox' plan to build a ballpark-hotel-office-entertainment complex on Brookline Avenue and Boylston Street, next to the existing Fenway Park, is misconceived. The team and the fans should have a new facility, and from an architectural point of view the proposed complex is certainly dramatic. But to state it simply, it's an appealing plan for the wrong area.

The addition of 10,000 seats means that, over the course of a standard 81-game season, a good 800,000 more people will pack the already congested Kenmore, Fenway, and Audubon Circle neighborhoods. That will cripple the already overburdened MBTA, gridlock already snarled traffic, and further compromise already questionable air quality.

Until a few years ago, the Sox management reportedly wanted to relocate Fenway, preferably near the waterfront. But Mayor Thomas Menino killed those plans. Despite the political, financial, and logistical challenges involved, a sports/convention- center megaplex on the cusp of the waterfront and downtown districts would have been an inspired stroke. But that opportunity appears to have been lost.

The Sox and the city may come to regret that. For despite all the hype artfully orchestrated by a band of politically wired consultants, serious questions abound about the new Fenway -- even about whether it's to be called that.

Where will the private funding come from? How much public money will be needed? Will a state legislature that drove hard bargains with the FleetCenter and the Patriots roll over for the city and the Sox? Will the city council raise a fuss? Will regulatory agencies like the EPA weigh in? Will the Red Sox -- who, sentiment aside, are in the sports business to make money -- be allowed to take so much private property by eminent domain? At what cost? And will the inevitable legal battles tie the project up for years, further inflating costs that are now estimated to run at $545 million?

Several years ago, it looked as if the mayor would throw his lot in with the preservationists and support restoration of the existing Fenway Park, a plan that would please fans but would not financially benefit the cash-strapped and land-poor Red Sox. It appears a compromise was reached. The preservationists were thrown a bone: the Green Monster will stand. But the Sox were given the okay to expand far beyond the confines of the park. (Which calls to mind words spoken more than a year ago by Boston Redevelopment Authority director Thomas O'Brien: "This," he said, "is a real-estate transaction, not a baseball transaction.") And by pushing the plan into the politically vulnerable Fenway neighborhood, which lacks the clout of South Boston, the Menino administration hopes to maximize citywide kudos while minimizing opposition.

Sox chief John Harrington is a minority shareholder in the team. And though he may sit at the same major-league table as moguls Steinbrenner, Turner, and Murdoch, he can't pony up the cash they can.

Harrington controls two charitable trusts left behind by the late owner, Jean Yawkey -- accounts brimming with tens of millions of dollars. But state law prohibits him from using the money on a ballpark: 55 percent of all profits must go to charity. The land upon which Fenway sits is Harrington's most valuable asset. And since Menino wouldn't let him sell it to relocate near, say, the Fort Point Channel, or the convention center, or even the much-argued-about South Bay site near the old incinerator, Harrington will have to enlist the mayor's aid in wresting control of his neighbors' land. It is an insidious and aggressive use of eminent domain.

So now the public is confronted with an admittedly sexy set of plans that will be a financial boon to the Red Sox and an ego boost to the mayor, but will punish the residents and businesses of the Fenway neighborhood, rob the city of an opportunity to reconfigure itself, and -- we predict -- burden city and state taxpayers with obligations that will run to the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Phoenix has a clear interest in defeating this project. If the Sox' plans go forward, our building -- along with other Fenway businesses, most smaller than ourselves -- would be swallowed up. After investing millions of dollars and a dozen years in the neighborhood, long before others were willing to do so, it is an unmitigated affront to have this plan unveiled with no prior consultation by the Sox and the city. (Indeed, it's an affront to all neighborhood businesses.) And it raises questions about where the more than 300 jobs now provided by the Phoenix and its subsidiaries will go.

But our special interest also gives us the benefit of insight and perspective. We live with the crowds, the traffic, the double-parked cars, the shut-down streets, the post-game litter that the Sox (perhaps among the most high-handed and insensitive neighbors in the city) feel no obligation to clean up.

We've also watched and participated in the transition of what was once a marginal neighborhood. The restoration of vibrancy is not complete -- in large part because of uncertainty over the Sox' plans -- but it is well under way. It has been an organic, not an artificially forced, process.

Restaurants like Boston Beer Works and establishments like the Boston Billiard Club have opened and flourished. The Harvard Pilgrim health center and other institutions have brought jobs and foot traffic to the area. Major renovations have taken place, and others are on the drawing board waiting for a resolution to the Red Sox situation.

Most significantly, the Landmark Center, now under construction in the old Sears building, is going to add 930,000 square feet of office, retail, and entertainment space, attracting, serving, and providing employment for more than three thousand people.

It's worth noting that Landmark's 1800-space parking garage is barely adequate to handle its own needs, let alone the projected needs of the proposed Sox complex. In an irony perhaps lost on city planners, Landmark's developers were forced to reduce the amount of space available to outside parkers and severely limit the number of spaces available to fans on game days. Although the Red Sox claim there will be a net increase of 300 parking spaces, the reality is that the parking crunch will be even worse than it is now.

The city and the Sox want to bring 800,000 more people a year into the area, but as of yet they have no way to route the traffic, increase public-transportation capacity, or park the cars. It's telling. We'll be exploring these and other shortcomings of the plans in the weeks and months to come.

What do you think? Send an e-mail to letters[a]phx.com.