^How does anything you are saying disprove shmessy's statement: "Vertex doesn't move to the Seaport without the Big Dig occurring."
Access to Logan was abysmal before the big dig, and lest not forget all of the other access improvements (not related to I-90) that the big dig provided which aided getting to Logan (e.g., I-93/O'Neil/harbor tunnels interface).
Look upthread for a lively discussion on how MHT airport to the northwest lost ~3million passengers/year after the big dig was done...very likely, at least in part, because it was easier to get to Logan.
Yes, Whigh, government investment in infrastructure can make an impact on business vitality / geographic distribution of business.
Of course none of these things are completely independent and its impossible to ascribe all change to one decision made at some time in the past. This is true of everything that happens. Indeed there once was a PBS Series hosted by James Burke, a Brit with a penchant for the history of science and technology called "Connections." He would start the particular episode with something obscure in history and draw a series of plausible connections to something with which everyone was familiar. I remember in particular the episode beginning with the invention of the Stirrup leading seemingly inexorably to the Atomic Bomb.
In our case the origins of the explosive growth of the Seaport are much more recent [at most a couple of hundred years ago] when filling of the mudflats near to Fort Hill began to create more City on the Shawmut Peninsular side of today's Fort Point Channel. Fast forward to the extensive filling in the late 19th Century that created the Railroad Fan Pier and Commonwealth Pier, Fish Pier, and the Boston Edison Plant, NECCO, Boston Wharf Co.. Then skip to the WWII Era that gave us the Army Base [Design & Innovation Center and Black Falcon Terminal], expansion of the Navy facilities from Charlestown to Southie, the Commonwealth Flats. Other key bits in the early / mid 20th C was the creation of the
"World Shaving HQ" on land in part once owned by NECCO.
This vibrant industrial era [both in the Seaport & contemporaneously in Kendall] was followed by the decay that set in post WWII marking the Era of the Dead and Derelict Seaport [and contemporaneously Kendall] when the only reason for anyone who wasn't a fisherman or longshoreman to go to the Seaport was the Seaman's Chapel or to view the grand architecture of the Commonwealth Pier Head House.
Then finally came the gradual beginning of reuse and reconquest highlighted by Anthony Athanas' acquisition of the land that has become the Court House and Fan Pier development and the Papas family importing business. However while nothing today would have been possible without the above -- the recent pace of change is unprecedented and totally unexpected.
I wasn't around to witness the above preface to the story. However, I've watched the changes in the Seaport [and Kendall] since I was an undergraduate at MIT in the early 1970's -- and when walking around in the Seaport and much of Kendall was risky [especially at night].
The seaport in the past 50 years has experienced even more unprecedented changes than what happened just behind MIT in Kendall Square.
Technically, and Scientifically both redevelopments in the past 50 years owe their existences to:
- Sputnik and the creation of NASA
- JFK and the NASA Electronics Research Center which cleared the old Kendall industrial complex and then quit
- Richard Nixon
- Volpe Transportation Research Center -- consolation for losing NASA
- War on Cancer -- leading to the Human Genome Project and Biotech
- last phase of Vietnam leading to Draper Lab off Campus
- MIT & Tech Square
- ARPANET
- AI Alley
- 3rd & Bent and AT&T
- all the land at our back door available for a song -- location, location, location
- Microsoft
- Google
- Biogen
- Genzyme
- Novartis
- Big Pharma, etc
- Fidelity for several reasons
The Big Dig [as in the Tip] made a difference for people in places like Cambridge to get to Logan. The Big [as in the Ted] made a huge difference for people in places like Lexington and Newton to get to Logan No arguments there at all.
However, what was actually expected in the Seaport was stuff that took advantage of the proximity of Logan for shipping. Everyone expected there to be a proliferation of warehouses and possibly even a "Free Trade Zone" for light manufacturing and reshipping of stuff such as which says
"Assembled in the USA out of Globally Sourced Components" .
No one at all expected what has happened after Vertex moved. Why Vertex moved might be ascribed to the availability of a piece of land situated in place of high visibility from Logan [a place to plant there flag unmistakably -- but access to Logan from the Seaport vs Cambridge was not the principle reason for moving a biotech trying to join the league of Big Pharma.