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GAIETY THEATRE
And now, to crush the Glass Slipper
BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN
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The City of Boston’s campaign to kill off Boston’s fabled Combat Zone is inching toward success. After trampling on theater buffs, historic preservationists, and neighborhood groups from nearby Chinatown, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) won the right to raze the Gaiety Theatre (see "Strike Three for a Historic Landmark," This Just In, January 14). Now the Glass Slipper, one of the last "sin bars" on LaGrange Street, is on the BRA’s hit list. The city plans to seize the Glass Slipper by eminent domain, in the service of "the public good" — which in this case is a 30-story high-rise luxury-condominium development called Kensington Place. By quietly authorizing and issuing a letter of intent last week (so quietly, in fact, that the Glass Slipper’s attorney was unaware of it until contacted by the Phoenix this Tuesday), the BRA set a 30-day clock ticking. On or about February 20, the city can officially take ownership by filing with the registry of deeds, BRA spokesperson Meredith Baumann explains. The city will then hand it over to Kensington, which will tear it down. There are still some details to be ironed out. Baumann confirms that the BRA has begun the market-value assessment of what Kensington will give the Glass Slipper’s owners as compensation. The club intends to challenge the BRA’s authority to take its property, says Glass Slipper lawyer Kenneth Tatarian. And there is still the open question, brought by a host of the development’s critics, of whether the entire Kensington plan runs afoul of city zoning laws. The Glass Slipper, in fact, is challenging the legality of the plan, in a trial set to start in mid March — which makes the timing of the BRA’s seizure notice especially curious. If the BRA succeeds in seizing the Glass Slipper before the trial starts, the strip club’s owners would no longer own a property abutting the proposed Kensington development, and would no longer have standing to bring the lawsuit. The BRA and Kensington would be able to move forward with the project regardless of its legality, because literally nobody would have the right to ask whether the project is legal. Baumann insists that the timing is benign, and that the letter of intent is merely the next step in an ongoing process. "We are proceeding with the assumption that we are in the right," she says. And if they do proceed, it might not matter whether they are.
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