Building a better Boston

The year just past saw a lot of spats over construction projects. Consider it a warm-up for what's to come.

by Neil Miller

As the New England economy continues red-hot, Boston is poised for some of the greatest changes to its physical appearance since the Back Bay was filled in 150 years ago. And the Big Dig isn't the half of it.

You won't wake up and see a totally different city come the New Year, or even come New Year's 2001. A year, as one Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) official notes, is just "a speck in time" when it comes to development. But change is happening. "We have the waterfront developments moving forward, lower Washington Street is being developed, Fenway Park is on the drawing board," says Mayor Thomas Menino. "You can't just look at downtown. You also have to look at the neighborhoods."

It's downtown, though, where the most high-profile development is occurring, where Menino's dream of Boston as a "world-class city" is starting to take shape. It's also the scene of controversy, as green-space activists worry about the "Manhattanization" of Boston, the mayor dukes it out with the Turnpike Authority, community groups spar with developers, and developers spar with each other.

The fact is, a little controversy isn't a bad thing. Often ideas that look good on a drawing board or sound convincing at a planning meeting turn out to be very different once reality bites and the bulldozers and the pile drivers begin their work. And Boston's track record in recent decades doesn't inspire much confidence. Think of City Hall Plaza, that vast, underused wasteland of brick and mortar. Think of the West End, where a vibrant neighborhood was demolished in the name of "urban renewal." And across the Charles, think of Kendall Square, where an urban -- or even, one might say, suburban -- office park replaced a traditional neighborhood.

No neighborhoods will be bulldozed this time around, but as Boston engages in an orgy of millennial self-congratulation, it seems fair to ask some questions. How tall is too tall? How much Manhattan is too much Manhattan? How many offices and luxury condominiums and cinema complexes playing the same movies does Boston really need? And how does all this make life better for the rest of us?

A tale of two Millenniums

The complicated -- and questionable -- nature of downtown development is dramatically illustrated in the two projects in the works from the New York development firm Millennium Partners. The first, Millennium Place on lower Washington Street, promises to transform one of downtown's most troubled areas, the Combat Zone. It is standard Millennium issue: a 400-foot tower that includes a Ritz-Carlton hotel, a luxury condo development on the upper floors, extended-stay apartments, a health club, retail space, and 19 movie theaters. (Virtually every development project in Boston seems to boast a large number of movie screens; when the building boom is over, we may well have more movie theaters per capita than any other city in North America).

Millennium Place is already under way, with six stories of steel rising near the spot where Washington and Boylston Streets converge, opposite the China Trade Center. It's scheduled to be completed in spring 2001. "The political aspect seems to have been resolved," says Senator Stephen Lynch (D-South Boston). "The problems now are the mechanical stuff -- construction and schedule and steel shipments. It seems to be going well."

One reason this project has gone forward without too much opposition is the nature of the surrounding area. The only neighborhood to be bulldozed here is the Combat Zone, the site of one failed scheme after another. The only abutting area, Chinatown, has been willing to go along with Millennium's plans, if only to send the strip joints and porno theaters somewhere else. Millennium Place is too tall and too Manhattan-like, and whether it will really revitalize lower Washington Street remains to be seen. But, given where it is located and what it is replacing, this particular project probably makes sense.

That's far from the case with the "other" Millennium -- the grandiose proposal to build a 1.1 million-square-foot complex on a platform over the Massachusetts Turnpike at Mass Ave and Boylston Street in the Back Bay. Plans call for a 49-story tower -- reduced from 60 stories -- housing a hotel, retail space, the inevitable luxury condos, and the inevitable cinema complex. (Only the parking garage and some retail space would sit directly on top of the highway; the tower itself would be built on a turnpike-owned parking lot next to it.)

Unlike the Washington Street project, this Millennium scheme casts a shadow (literally) on two residential neighborhoods -- the Back Bay and the Fenway. Opponents contend that the project is grossly out of scale with the surrounding buildings and would wreak havoc on already congested Mass Ave. "It's a drastic extension of the Pru," says Fred Mauet, a staunch foe of the project who is a member of the mayor's Community Advisory Committee (CAC). "Our big concern is stuffing too much in here without the infrastructure." Earlier this year, the committee issued an interim report rejecting the idea of a 49-story tower and asking the developers to address a variety of concerns ranging from traffic to wind and shadows.

Complicating this controversy is the role of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. The state agency owns the air rights over the Pike and is demanding an up-front payment from Millennium of somewhere between $18 million and $30 million, plus rents. (Bob Ruzzo, chief of real-estate development for the Turnpike Authority, insists the figure is "really closer to $18 million.") Many, including Mayor Menino, argue that this demand is forcing the developer to build a taller structure than it otherwise would in order to make a profit. "The air rights are so expensive that it forces the developer to go higher," the mayor says.

Community activist Mauet calls the Pike's financial demands a "significant factor" that gives the developer "less leeway" to build something that the neighborhood could accept. "The Turnpike Authority is hanging a `For Sale' sign over the Pike," he says. And he suggests that Pike officials are trying to get "blood out of a stone" to help finance the Big Dig.

Menino goes so far as to suggest that the Turnpike Authority forgo the money altogether. "If you want to do this easy, the air rights should basically be given away," he says. He contends that the state would still get plenty of revenue through meals, sales, and payroll taxes from the jobs the project creates. The result would be a "win" for the state.

It is doubtful that the Pike will go along with this suggestion, though. The demand for payment is "right in the middle of being reasonable," says Ruzzo, and "not the key thing" that is holding up the project anyway.

Millennium's Back Bay proposal will undergo state and city environmental reviews over the next several months. Then the BRA will determine whether to certify the project. Senator Lynch suggests that a possible compromise might involve dropping the number of stories dramatically and spreading the development over two parcels of land. Mauet says the neighborhood might accept a deal that called for half the current proposed square footage and a tower with a number of stories "in the upper teens."

How it will all turn out is anyone's guess. "It's up in the air at the moment," says Mauet. But it's hard to disagree with him that the whole thing was "drastically misconceived" from the beginning.

On the waterfront

As ambitious as the two Millennium projects are, they are dwarfed by the utter scale of plans to redevelop the South Boston Waterfront. Closest to downtown is Fan Pier, a 20.9-acre site bounded by the new courthouse to the west, the harbor to the north, Pier 4 to the east, and Old Northern Avenue to the south. There, in an area that today is mostly parking lots with scenic water views, the city will create nine new blocks. On the drawing board are residential, hotel, and office space, plus the new site of the Institute of Contemporary Art, a public skating rink, and a public marina. Development is mostly in the hands of Chicago's Pritzker family, owners of the Hyatt hotel chain. Next door is Pier 4 -- current site of Anthony's Pier 4 restaurant and its parking lot -- where developer Steve Karp holds sway. And farther on is the World Trade Center and the rest of the South Boston Waterfront.

The Pritzker plan for Fan Pier is reaching the end of its comment period, and many of the comments haven't been very positive. With good reason. First there is the planned height of many of the buildings -- approaching 300 feet. There is the distinct lack of greenery -- state regulations say that the area must be 50 percent open space, but the existing plan makes up most of that with sidewalks and streets. The street design itself is another problem. Under the current plans, it has a lot more in common with the office-park landscape of Kendall Square than with the intimate formality of the Back Bay. Stephen Lynch notes that the streets have been "designed by highway engineers" with little concern for pedestrians. It could take a pedestrian seven to 10 minutes to cross one of these streets, he says.

Lynch suspects that the buildings' heights will eventually come down, that they may be set closer to the street (creating a more intimate, traditional neighborhood), and that the area will be more pedestrian-friendly. But he adds, "80 percent of what Pritzker has on paper is going to happen. There is 20 percent of change left in the picture." And that is alarming.

For his part, Mayor Menino says, "We never thought Fan Pier would be like Back Bay. That is a dream by some developer who never put a plan forward." He suspects that eventually some heights will be reduced. "We are still in the process," he emphasizes. "Nothing is confirmed. Nothing is approved yet. We are still going through the planning process."

Lynch emphasizes that how Fan Pier turns out -- Back Bay or Kendall Square or something in between -- will have a major effect on what happens farther down the waterfront. "If we had an anchor parcel that was going to set the tone for the rest of the South Boston Waterfront, this would be it," he says of the Pritzker parcels.

That became evident recently when developer Frank McCourt, who owns an L-shaped 25-acre property across Northern Avenue from Fan Pier and Pier 4, criticized the Pritzkers and Karp for proposing buildings that were far too tall for the area. "What I feel from those projects is a wall," he said. And to make matters worse, he threatened to make the buildings on his abutting properties even higher: "If we're feeling blocked out, we're going to go up [in the height of the buildings] to get over that." McCourt's comments caused consternation, although some viewed them as a mere tactic to get Pritzker and Karp to lower their building heights.

While the debate continues over Fan Pier, the Massachusetts Convention Center is set to break ground on nearby Summer Street, in an area of industrial warehouses and fish-processing plants. At 1.2 million square feet, the size of 13 football fields, it will be the largest building in New England. The design is complete, the last land-takings are happening right now, and site-preparation work begins in January, according to Andy Antrobus, the spokesperson for the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA). Groundbreaking will take place in April, with plans for the $700 million project to be completed by December 31, 2003, about the same time Fan Pier is slated to be finished.

And that's not all. The Seaport Hotel at the World Trade Center is open; the World Trade Center's east office tower is fully tenanted and will be opening in the fall of 2000, according to BRA spokesman Susan Elsbree; and groundbreaking for the west office tower will take place this year.

Elsbree says that there is "a lot of excitement down there. Things are happening." But she cautions that it will take "30 to 40 years to fully build out the waterfront." That, she notes, is about how long it took to create the Back Bay.

The time it takes to build the two neighborhoods may be similar, but if a wall of buildings goes up according to the current plans, the locus of Boston's charm and civility won't be moving from Copley Square to the waterfront anytime soon.

On top of the Big Dig

The Big Dig, of course, will change the face of Boston as much as anything. And no aspect of the giant highway project has attracted more attention in recent months than what will happen to the surface of the Central Artery once the highway is submerged. Plans are for the 27 acres above the buried artery to be filled by a mix of parks, recreational facilities, and commercial space (75 percent of the surface area must be open space, according to Boston zoning regulations). But it's still not clear who will be in charge of the planning -- the city or the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority. Not surprisingly, Mayor Menino thinks he should determine what happens to this chunk of the Boston landscape. Turnpike chairman and Big Dig head James J. Kerasiotes has other ideas.

In September, Kerasiotes proposed the selection of a master planner to oversee the surface project. The city agreed, but Menino, who insists that he has had a plan in place for six years, has been fuming at the Pike for poaching on his turf. "All they care about is development," he says. "Where are the things that have a lasting effect on your city? That's what I'm concerned about. What is the process? All of a sudden they are going to be the planner!"

For his part, the Pike's Ruzzo is trying to play it cool. "Everyone agrees that this [the appointment of a master planner] needs to be done," he says. "You won't find anyone who says a master planner isn't needed. We may not agree on a lot of other things." Ruzzo has his schedule in place: the appointment of the master planner in the first quarter of 2000, followed by a year of preliminary design and another 18 months of final design. "Then it will be 2003 already," he says. And by the end of 2003, some parcels will become available. Everything will be done by the end of 2004. "We are right on target in terms of timing," he says.

Although an independent committee will appoint the master planner, the city worries it will lose control once the planner takes over. (The mayor wants his own chief-of-staff to be in charge.) It appears as if Menino plans to go over the head of the Pike to make sure he isn't left out, and you can't really blame him. "The governor and I will work out these issues over the next several weeks," he says. Stay tuned.

Fenway Park

One development that has the capacity to break Boston's heart is the proposed new Fenway Park. The Red Sox want to build a new park just across the street from the current one, and they made the design plan public earlier this year, to generally positive reviews. Sox management is quick to point out that features of the old Fenway, such as the brick entrance façade, the Green Monster, the infield, and the scoreboard, will be preserved. And everyone wants the Sox to be competitive with the dreaded Yankees -- which means more seats, more corporate boxes, more amenities. Still, the idea of "bulldozing real vintage ballparks like Fenway Park to put up fake vintage ballparks," as Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly put it in a column earlier this year, is awfully hard to accept, even if it makes big-league business sense. (In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that a building owned by the Phoenix would be demolished should the new park be built.)

If it's any consolation for the legions of Fenway loyalists, nothing is going to happen too soon. For one thing, the Red Sox haven't filed an official project-notification form with the city announcing plans to build a new ballpark.

The Sox have been meeting with various neighborhood groups in the famously factionalized Fenway in an effort to sort out some of the most contentious issues, such as traffic and transportation. A particularly thorny issue is the frontage on Boylston Street, where residents want an area to buffer the residential community from the new park. The trouble is, there isn't very much space to play with. "That will be one of the things to watch," says the BRA's Elsbree. And Elsbree notes that anything the Sox propose must be approved by the Fenway Planning Task Force, a group of 20 local residents appointed by the mayor to look at the re-zoning of the entire Fenway. "You can't just look at Fenway Park in isolation," Mayor Menino adds.

Then there is the question of public funding for the new park. So far, the Sox haven't come to the legislature with any specific financial requests. If there is a "legitimate request" -- for, say, transportation improvements -- the legislature might view that favorably, says Stephen Lynch. "But as far as a direct subsidy -- as far as picking up part of Pedro's salary -- we would resist that," he says.

The BRA's Elsbree expects an official filing from the Sox within the next several months. But it's doubtful that neighborhood groups are going to roll over and play dead. And the organization Save Fenway Park!, which is committed to redesigning the current park rather than putting up a new one, is sure to start making a lot more noise. So expect plenty of controversy. "They won't be breaking ground anytime soon," Elsbree says.

Neighborhoods and beyond

As the mayor and the BRA are eager to point out, downtown isn't the only place development is occurring. Take Roxbury, for instance. Long a blighted neighborhood, it's emerged as "the hottest area in the city" -- second only to the waterfront, according to Elsbree. She points to a development on the corner of Mass Ave and Melnea Cass Boulevard that will include a hotel and movie-theater complex. "That is huge for Roxbury," she says. Groundbreaking is slated for this year. Meanwhile, the Department of Public Health recently announced that it will move its offices to Roxbury's Dudley Square. The department plans to rehab the historic Ferdinand Building there and move in two years from now, which would bring 1200 people into the neighborhood every day.

The changes in Roxbury have to be viewed as largely encouraging, but it's another story over in Allston, where the city and the neighborhood are looking at possible development more suspiciously. Eyebrows were raised a couple of years ago when it was revealed that Harvard University had bought up 52 acres of land for $88 million. Harvard is rumored to be thinking of eventually moving some of its graduate facilities across the Charles River to the Allston parcels -- the John F. Kennedy School of Government, the law school, and the graduate school of education, for example. But such ideas have a long way to go. While there is a sense that the Allston parcels "lend themselves to an academic precinct," any such plans are "preliminary and exploratory," says Mary Power, Harvard's senior director of community relations. "The planning process is going on, but it will take some time." Right now, they're in "the `what if?' stage, the conceptual vision stage," she says.

Boston's neighboring cities, too, are affected by the current surge in development. In Cambridge's Kendall Square, the Amgen Corporation, the world's largest biotech company, broke ground in November on an eight-story, 285,000-square-foot research center. Nearby, Vertex Pharmaceuticals began work on a 192,000-square-foot facility. In Somerville, the city is knee-deep in a master-planning process for the Assembly Square area, bounded by Interstate 93 and the Mystic River. Earlier this month, to the dismay of Somerville mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay, developers jumped the gun and announced plans for a new Home Depot there, even before the city finishes its plan. The city is trying its best to tamp down development fever until then.

At this point, it's not yet clear how Boston will change in the next several years. Some of the projects -- such as Millennium Place and the redevelopment of parts of Roxbury -- appear to be good for the city. So do the Fan Pier and South Boston Waterfront ideas -- although not in their current form. As for the Back Bay Millennium project, no fair-minded observer could give that anything but a thumbs-down.

When asked how the average Bostonian benefits from downtown development, Mayor Menino says the answer is simple -- "jobs." But what will happen if the economic boom stalls -- as it is bound to at some point -- and the city is left with a lot of empty office buildings and luxury condos and deserted boulevards of homogenous high-rises? In that case, at least, there will be a lot of movies to go to.

Neil Miller can be reached at mrneily@aol.com.