E-Mail This Article to a Friend The Fenway rising, continued
	Related Links Boston Redevelopment Authority The Fenway/Kenmore page includes the rezoning plan that opened the way to everything that’s happening now. It also shows all the development plans under way or under consideration — and will be where to see the next plans when the time comes. Fenway CDC The neighborhood’s nonprofit Fenway Community Development Corporation has been a key driver of development plans. Their site tells you the history of the area, and the CDC board members who keep an eye on it. Samuels & Associates Click here to see renderings of Trilogy and 1330 Boylston, and to learn more about the shape of things to come. Fenway Cultural District Everything you want to know about what’s happening in the Fenway. MASCO The Medical Academic and Scientific Community Organization Inc. represents 21 powerful institutions in the Longwood/Fenway neighborhood. This site gives good info on how important they are to the city.

The impasse between the Red Sox and Rosenthal broke this spring in a sudden burst of cooperative problem-solving, which participants credit in large part to Menino pressuring the two sides to work things out. The One Kenmore Citizens Advisory Committee, appointed by Menino, proposed a surprisingly simple answer: the Red Sox could give Rosenthal the team’s de facto rights to Parcel 7, on the other side of Brookline Avenue near Yawkey Station, to build his high-rises, and he would agree to limit the height of buildings on Parcel 8. Problem solved.

"The Red Sox had been a major opponent of what I was trying to do, and are now a major proponent," Rosenthal says.

Whether it was really that easy or not, and whether everyone is privately as happy with the solution as they claim to be, it ended the logjam. Rosenthal’s architects are drawing up the final plans.

As for Fenway Park itself, it is undergoing a $100 million-plus renovation that will increase seating capacity by 10 percent. The Red Sox’ owners will also continue to improve services and the facilities. "We’re taking it back in time, removing some of what was done in the ’70s and ’80s," says Smith, who is best known for helping develop the Baltimore Oriole’s faux-old-timey ballpark at Camden Yards. The glassed-in .407 Club nee 600 Club disappears this off-season. NESN and Red Sox offices will move out of the building, allowing for wider concourses and additional bathrooms. The so-called "laundry building" behind the bleachers is under renovation, as is the corner building attached to the other side of the park.

With all that expansion, the Sox desperately want transportation improvements: getting to and from Fenway Park was a problem when it seated barely 33,000; by next season capacity will approach 39,000. And they got what they wanted in the state Senate’s $55 million infrastructure proposal, passed earlier this month. Nevertheless, transportation improvements are emerging as one of the few sources of discord among the 800-pound gorillas.

Everyone wants to expand Yawkey Station, and everyone wants something done to improve the incessantly clogged — and confusing — Sears rotary. The consensus also supports sprucing up the Fenway D Line T stop, which is not nearly as dark, dank, and scary as it was before Landmark Center re-opened, but is still barely passable. "People get off at Fenway once, and never again," says Beale.

With everyone agreed on so much, it surprised some, including Rosenthal, when Menino expressed concern about the Senate’s plan. The mayor complained that the Senate’s list of projects does not fully match up with what the Boston Transportation Department and the Kenmore Association say is needed in the neighborhood.

"Some improvements help more than others," says MASCO’s Swartz-Lloyd. She points out that more people come to work in Longwood every day than attend a game on any given day at Fenway Park, and that some two million patients visit the area each year. The Senate package includes, for instance, improvements to Yawkey Way and Ipswich Street bordering the ballpark. Swartz-Lloyd would rather see improvements made to Ruggles Station, and the widening of Brookline Avenue and Boylston Street; the creation of a tunnel from Ruggles Station under Longwood — a first link in an envisioned "urban ring" that would someday allow residents of Somerville, Everett, and Charlestown to commute easily to Longwood — is her dream goal.

The Boston Transportation Department (BTD) has long been working up plans to ease congestion on Brookline, Boylston, Audubon Circle on Beacon Street, and the Sears rotary, says Meredith Baumann, spokesperson for the BRA. The mayor wants the Senate’s package to reflect those plans, which include traffic-light improvements, peak-time parking restrictions, and one-way traffic on some streets.

"We’re looking forward to working with the state on this," Baumann says. Translation: the state does nothing in the city unilaterally, so the Senate will have to accommodate the BTD’s input.

But some neighborhood groups oppose BTD plans to ease congestion, which they fear could turn their streets, including both stretches of Park Drive, into dangerous, noisy, high-speed thoroughfares. "We don’t want Boylston to turn into a six-lane highway," says Bill Richardson, president of the Fenway Civic Association. Richardson and others would like to see just the opposite: "neck-downs" and other means to slow traffic and improve pedestrian access.

Similarly, some neighborhood activists want to discourage driving altogether by providing fewer parking spots. But businesses want more, especially since many surface lots that currently litter the landscape will vanish when new buildings are constructed on those properties. The garage advocates are winning, with plans now including two 900-car garages hidden within One Kenmore, over the turnpike. MASCO, which currently runs shuttle buses to surface lots, will operate those garages. Children’s Hospital plans to build a 650-car garage on a site it owns near Fenway Park.

Despite disagreements on the details, reactions to the Senate plan and the Sox’ behavior have been generally positive — especially in comparison with the old Sox ownership, who successfully finagled an infrastructure plan (though never implemented), at twice the cost to taxpayers, which included snatching property (including the Phoenix building) for the team through eminent domain. "[The new Senate proposal] appears to be infrastructure, and not corporate welfare like the package five years ago," says Koechlin.

The Red Sox certainly don’t want it viewed as welfare. "The $55 million [in the Senate bill] is really justified by virtue of the 84,000 jobs" in the Kenmore-Longwood area, says Smith. As long as the team has a lot to say about how it’s spent.

David S. Bernstein can be reached at dbernstein[a]phx.com.