Insider baseball

Part 2

by Dan Kennedy

It's no secret that Harrington, like Kraft, would prefer a glittering new facility on the South Boston waterfront, near the convention center that Menino hopes to build. Such a stadium would solve a number of problems. First, the Sox have pledged to put $200 million of their own money into the deal; they'd be able to raise a lot of that money by selling the Fenway Park real estate, and they'd like the city to give them the land for a new ballpark, or at least to let them have it for a bargain price. Second, the South Boston site would allow for parking and better traffic flow than is possible in the cramped streets that surround Fenway.

Yet as the Patriots' experience illustrates, neighborhood opposition can be an insurmountable obstacle. And there's no sign that the Red Sox can overcome that opposition, even if they handle it with more delicacy than Kraft did.

State Senator Stephen Lynch (D-South Boston), who along with Boston City Council president Jim Kelly led the fight to keep the Patriots out of Southie, makes it clear that, if anything, his community would view the arrival of the Red Sox with even more alarm than it did the Patriots, since the Sox play 81 home games a year compared to the Patriots' 10. "There would be tremendous opposition," Lynch says.

Nor would other neighborhoods necessarily be more welcoming. In the past, there's been talk of building a stadium in Roxbury, at or near the former South Bay incinerator that abuts the Southeast Expressway near Mass Ave. But State Representative Byron Rushing (D-Boston) says it would be a mistake to think his largely minority district would want the Red Sox to move in, asserting that residents deserve better than seasonal, low-level jobs selling popcorn or cleaning seats. "They're not the kind of jobs we need," Rushing says, adding that he expects the land -- a toxic-waste site being cleaned up at a cost of $20 million -- to attract stable employers offering good jobs.

Ask around, and a few other sites are sometimes mentioned. Allston Landing, near the Genzyme facility on Soldiers Field Road and the entrance to the Mass Pike. The Boston Sand & Gravel property near North Station, encircled by the loop ramp connecting I-93 with Route 1.

The consensus, though, is that the Sox are going to keep playing in the Back Bay Fens for many years to come. Menino wants them there. Lynch wants them there. Rushing wants them there. And since the neighborhood has been living with the Red Sox since Fenway Park opened its gates, in 1912, it's unlikely that the team would run into the kind of local opposition it would encounter anywhere else.

Not that the Fenway is necessarily an easy solution. Essentially there are two basic plans that have been put forth, both of them complex and sure to have an enormous impact on the neighborhood. Streets and businesses would be wiped out. Traffic would be rerouted and, without proper planning, become more snarled than it is already. And rather than fitting into the neighborhood, as Fenway Park does, a new or refurbished stadium could become the centerpiece of a garish new commercial district that entices outsiders but alienates those who must live with it every day.

The first plan, drawn up by the Boston Redevelopment Authority, calls for Fenway Park to be rebuilt and expanded from 34,000 to 49,000 seats, which is the magic number Harrington says he needs to be able to compete with other American League teams. The BRA plan would require the relocation of Van Ness Street 140 feet to the south; construction would take place for several years during the off-season. Harrington has expressed skepticism about this plan's feasibility, but it certainly would be the least disruptive option, if not the most creative.

The second, initially proposed by the Cambridge architectural firm of Lozano, Baskin, and Associates, calls for an entirely new stadium to be built north of Fenway Park, literally over the Mass Pike and adjacent to Kenmore Square. Upon completion of the new stadium, Fenway Park would be replaced with -- or redeveloped into -- an entertainment complex that presumably would include the Lansdowne Street clubs displaced by the new stadium. In its grandest iteration, the Lozano, Baskin proposal also calls for a new hotel next to the stadium, an expanded Hynes Convention Center, and a store-and-restaurant-lined aerial walkway connecting the two.

Given the realities of neighborhood politics, and the need for government assistance in the form of land-taking and/or the right to build over the Pike, would the Sox be able to pull off either of these alternatives? No doubt it would be difficult, but neighborhood activists say they'd be willing to listen.

"We're not looking to stand in anybody's way or jump on anybody's back or crush anybody's plan, but there are some real serious issues here," says Karen Boxer, president of the Fenway Civic Association. Number one on her list: traffic. But equally important to Boxer is that a new ballpark be an aesthetic enhancement, and not the anchor of what would essentially be a gigantic shopping mall -- a clear danger of the Lozano, Baskin plan that the principals themselves say they are determined to avoid. Says Boxer: "It goes so far against what Boston is. It's people from the suburbs trying to remake Boston in the image of the suburbs."

City Councilor Tom Keane, whose district includes the Fenway, agrees that the top issue for the neighborhood is traffic. If a ballpark project were to include parking garages accessible only from the Mass Pike and improvements to public transportation, Keane thinks the neighborhood could be persuaded to accept it. "It's kind of nice to have the Red Sox in your backyard," says Keane, who also warns that if the team were to leave, Fenway Park might well be redeveloped into something "dramatically more offensive."

Part 3

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