Are any of these moves, land-swaps, etc. contingent on actually getting the 2024 Olympics? In other words, is this all theoretical?
Or will there be shovels in the ground even before the 2016 referendum?
Not necessarily, because this could've been done years ago during any of the umpteen other other times the state or city has licked its chops at relocating the FM. The problem was all those other times you had somebody like Menino inserting himself into the process agitating to get them put out in the boonies at Readville at the ex- Stop & Shop warehouse or something like that, which is as good as a death sentence for some of those vendors who rely on the easy Haul Road/93 access for their shipping rates. That's where it always fell apart with mutual mistrust and finger-pointing. For good reason, as we'd be paying even higher food prices if "somewhere I don't ever have to lay eyes on them" were the only political consideration for a relocation site.
These Seaport parcels on the northwest side of the Marine Terminal parcels already support the big Legal Sea Foods warehouse on Seafood Way, the seafood wholesalers immediately across the street, and the others scattered around the block in the Harpoon Brewery complex. In much more space-efficient fashion than the asphalt sprawl around Widett with its single vehicular access point to Widett from Frontage Rd. NB that bottles up the trucks from being able to disperse in orderly fashion. And frankly, given how over-optimistic some of Massport's Marine T. plans are at attracting other intermodal there, a more reliable use for greater % of the acreage. Since the seafood wholesalers are already economically "proven" in their own right, with Legals' big investment in its facility "proven" at attracting new business. We'll never be Halifax at attracting general-purpose intermodal; the scale Southie provides will never be good enough, and Massport will have to butter too much subsidy all-around to attract biz to justify its Marine T. redev investment. It's more reliable use from a revenue standpoint to infill that NW portion of the site with more food wholesaler consolidation, because they've at least proven they can hack it here without living off gov't largesse to exist at all onsite or stay for the long-term.
Here they would be able to infill another +1-2 blocks of parcels here for equivalent-or-better space, and:
-- Go more vertical than Widett with second-floor facilities if the buildings were built with high-capacity freight elevators. Or build cold storage space on the upper levels instead of requiring an acreage-intensive warehouse like AmeriCold Logistics @ Widett.
-- Top it off with more office space on top than the FM allows.
-- Do more orderly truck-loading berths.
-- Possibly reconfig the road access for straight shot into the Northern Ave./Haul Road rotary for far better and more inocuous traffic flow than Widett's constrained access point.
-- Tie it into the Massport rail spur construction to Marine Terminal, and reactivation of the docks there. Right now even the seafood places are doing more trucking from other docks than they truly need to, and would benefit on both overhead costs and volume/revenue by being able to take front-door deliveries.
-- Possibly consolidate some of the fresh produce deliveries that come daily by boat to Everett Terminal, then go out by rail to Framingham for supermarket delivery. That's New England Produce Ctr. on the north-facing side of Everett T., visible on the other side of the trees from commuter rail trains. Also a very space-inefficient operation with less-than-awesome truck access to Route 1 where their margins could be improved by a relocation to the Haul Road.
You get the point. Other cities have done a lot more planning on state-of-the-art wholesale food distribution than Boston has, none moreso than NYC with its massive Hunt's Point Market complex. That's decades of the BRA's and City Hall's intransigence on using prime real estate for anything but "pretty" things, regardless of what land use wrings the most revenue out of the land. City's been set in its provincial mindset on that ever since Kevin White evicted the FM from Faneuil Hall 40+ years ago, right down to chasing the S&S Warehouse out of town because of the truck bans in/out of Readville. Other cities of comparable or bigger size have taken it upon themselves to modernize their meat-packing districts with more efficient facilities in the right locations. Not that food prices in NYC aren't insane enough, but Hunt's Point was necessary for sustaining 20 years of boom times without putting every mom-and-pop restaurant out of business with crippling wholesale price spikes. It's sort of one of those mundane things you have to take care of on the planning front if you want to sustain growth of a world-class city and destination point.
Really shouldn't take an Olympics bid to force stubborn-to-their-own-detriment parties to the table to have that conversation, but here we are. Something very good can come out of it even if the Olympics never happen and the FM parcels sit vacant for years post-relocation. We get more flexible wholesale prices out of the deal for sustaining growth of the local restaurant and local foodie industry. And it helps the margins of the seafood industry greatly now that they're dealing with the--permanent--extra overhead of declining fish stock and needing to spread out further afield to get their catches. Any efficiencies they can gain on lower shipping rates, easier/faster shipping of fresh catch, faster/more-modern processing facilities, better dockside and rail access, and the "safety in numbers" from having every other wholesaler situated in the same place taking advantage of the same shipping efficiencies greatly helps one of New England's signature industries survive as they cope with their new sustainability reality. It's way overdue.
Still doesn't change anything about the Olympic challenges with Widett (or, more specifically, the intrusion over Cabot). But sort of need to look at this in isolation. Even if Widett stays underutilized, maxing out the (currently very inefficient) operations of the FM with a thawing of relations and updated consolidated facilities is a Very Good Thing™ for the city long-term.
