On Wednesday at 5 p.m., hours after the Phoenix had gone to press, the Back Bay Architectural Commission was scheduled to hold yet another public hearing on its bid to ban news boxes from that neighborhood. The hearing was to be held in Room 801 of City Hall.

The commission had already banned the boxes earlier this year. But after the owners of affected publications, including the Boston Phoenix, claimed as part of a lawsuit against the city that they had not been properly notified of the meeting at which the ban was originally passed, US District Court judge Douglas Woodlock urged the city to hold another hearing and to vote again (see "Media," This Just In, October 12).

Fighting the ban on First Amendment grounds is a coalition of publications that depend almost entirely on street-level distribution, including the Phoenix and its sister publication Stuff@Night, Editorial Humor, the Improper Bostonian, the Weekly Dig, and the Real Estate Guide.

The publishers have said they would accept a ban in the residential section of the Back Bay as long as they could keep their boxes in the commercial district bounded by Boylston Street, Mass Ave, Newbury Street, and Arlington Street. That points the way to a possible compromise — but it wasn’t clear before Wednesday’s vote whether the commission was inclined to go along.

Without such a compromise, the publishers’ lawsuit could go to trial as early as January.

A report on Wednesday’s hearing and vote will be posted in the "Today’s Jolt" section of bostonphoenix.com.

Issue Date: November 29 - December 6, 2001

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