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NEWSBOXES
Grab this paper, quick!
BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

This Friday, they’re coming to take your Phoenix — or your Barstool Sports, your Bay State Banner, or even your daily paper, if you pick any of them up in the downtown financial district.

It already happened once, on April 25, when Boston’s Public Works Department cruised through the area and hauled away dozens of newsboxes that Boston Inspectional Services (BIS) had tagged with green violation stickers three days earlier. They including 10 Boston Phoenix boxes, as well as boxes for Stuff@Night, the Weekly Dig, the Boston Herald, the Boston Globe, Employment News, and the Boston Center for Adult Education.

"We were never notified," says Eric Seamans, publisher of Boston Sports Review. His downtown boxes got the green tags, but the paper’s quick-acting delivery driver took them off the street long enough to avoid Monday’s confiscation. Owners of boxes that did get scooped up had to pay $25 plus a daily storage fee to get each one back from the city.

Seamans had better have his driver keep vigil. "[April 25] was a clean-up day," explains Anne Meyers, president of the Downtown Crossing Association (DCA), which has 90 member companies. "There’s another one coming this Friday," she says. City officials could not confirm this as of press time.

Apparently the DCA has grown envious of the Back Bay Architectural District, which clamped down on what it viewed as creeping-newsbox syndrome, and the group has enlisted the city’s aid to do the same for its neighborhood. The city appears happy to help: the newsbox confiscation was part of Mayor Thomas Menino’s Downtown Crossing Economic Improvement Initiative, launched in November and spearheaded by the Boston Redevelopment Authority. A more positive part of the project saw the unveiling of five Boston Art Windows installations, also April 25.

"A couple of walk-throughs in the business district" helped Initiative participants identify a variety of impediments to beautification, including trash, improper signage, and code-violating newsboxes, says Lisa Timberlake, spokesperson for BIS. But only a few of the violations were for damaged, graffiti-covered, or perpetually empty boxes; most were for the group offense of too many boxes in a row — the max is five. The city apparently believes that more than five boxes together creates an eyesore that keeps people away from shopping downtown. Meyers of the DCA certainly thinks so.

But the city doesn’t distinguish between the legal first five and the late-comers. So the Public Works Department just took them all, without warning — even though an ordinance requires the city to mail a warning at least 10 days in advance.

 


Issue Date: May 6 - 12, 2005
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