Columbia Point (JFK/UMass) Infill and Small Developments

Kennedy steps up plans for institute at UMass
Group seeks $50m for Boston center
Email|Print|Single Page| Text size ? + By Matt Viser
Globe Staff / August 12, 2008

Senator Edward M. Kennedy and several of his closest friends have accelerated plans to build an institute near the John F. Kennedy Library that will be dedicated to research and education about the US Senate and that will use Kennedy's lengthy political career as a case study.

The group has formed a nonprofit organization, the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, and is planning an aggressive fund-raising campaign that aims to raise at least $50 million and will be spearheaded by prominent Boston businessman Jack Connors.

"We're getting together a mission statement and brochure and letter and materials appropriate for captains to ask their natural constituents to help," Connors said. "I hate to lead with my chin, but I have to say it's one of the easiest sells I've been involved in."

Designs are still being drafted, but planners hope the institute will include classroom space, research rooms, exhibits, and, most prominently, an exact replica of the US Senate chambers.

The center will be a shrine to the Senate, with homage to Kennedy, just as the building next door is a showcase for the presidency, with the focus on his brother John.

Plans for the institute have been in the works for several years, but kicked into a more aggressive phase recently, in part because of Kennedy's brain cancer diagnosis in May. Kennedy has been in Hyannis Port as he undergoes cancer treatment and is hoping to return to the Senate in the fall.

"It is the single most important thing, other than family and health, that Senator Kennedy is focused on," said Paul Kirk, a former Kennedy aide and chairman of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. "He will be gratified if things go forward as a salute to him and an institution he loves, at a place he loves."

Planners hope the institute will include a training program for incoming US senators to learn about parliamentary procedures used in their chamber, how to organize their staff, and ways to preserve their paperwork.

The institute will also have museum and exhibit space that will showcase excerpts from great US Senate speeches, videos of historic hearings, and a broadcast of the US Senate floor in real time.

Actual designs have not been drawn, but officials envision a 40,000-square-foot building, with construction beginning as early as spring 2009.

"The United States Senate is one of our forefathers' most brilliant democratic inventions," Kennedy said in a statement provided to the Globe. "To preserve our vibrant democracy for future generations, I believe it is critical to have a place where citizens can go to learn first-hand about the Senate's important role in our system of government. . . . I'm looking forward to getting the institute up and running soon."

Planning for the institute is being coordinated with the Kennedy Library and the University of Massachusetts. It will be housed on a 4-acre plot on Columbia Point that is owned by UMass.

Kennedy, who has spent 45 years in the Senate, wanted to house the center at UMass-Boston because its students are mostly from working class backgrounds, advisers said. He ruled out other interested universities, including Harvard, where he was an undergraduate and where his family has close ties.

The center, expected to have closer links to UMass-Boston than the presidential library, will help boost the stature of a campus that has long sought to establish a distinct identity, apart from its reputation as a commuter school.

"To have an Edward M. Kennedy Institute on a UMass campus is very exciting, very exciting," said Jack M. Wilson, the UMass president, who was first approached about the center in fall 2003. "This has its closest analogy in the presidential libraries, but those cover a four- to eight-year period. This is a lot longer time period, and it's a completely different style of politics."

Kennedy is planning to give his papers to the Kennedy Library, but some of them will be on display at the institute. He is currently participating in an oral history of his life that is being conducted at the University of Virginia, where he went to law school. The results from that project will be housed in Virginia, as well as the institute in Boston.

Connors said that in the spring, about two weeks before the senator's cancer diagnosis, Kennedy called and asked him to head up a fund-raising effort. Connors has held several meetings to identify about two dozen "precinct captains" who will raise money. So far, the fund-raising group includes John Sasso, a veteran Democratic consultant; Thomas P. Glynn, the chief operating officer of Partners HealthCare; John Fish, president of Suffolk Construction Co.; and Kenneth R. Feinberg, a Washington lawyer and former Kennedy aide who ran the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Connors said the group is also considering tapping Kennedy's colleagues in the US Senate, asking them to call key political donors in their home state to raise money for the institute.

"It'll be bipartisan," said Lee Fentress, president of the institute and longtime Kennedy friend. "We'd like to have Republicans and Democrats on an advisory board. We'd like to have lectures from senators on both sides of the aisle."

There are several other centers dedicated to studying and educating the public about the legislative branch, and several of them house papers for former politicians. But none appear to be solely focused on the US Senate.

"Everybody wants to see this go forward," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said. "It really is a model about government, the presidency of John F. Kennedy, and the Senate career of Edward M. Kennedy. This will be a model in perpetuity that will remember the short time we had President Kennedy and the many years we've had with Senator Kennedy."

Matt Viser can be reached at maviser@globe.com.
 
Columbia Point needs less institutional uses - not more. This is a stupid monument to a flawed man's hubris. They are going to build a replica of the Senate for what? Incoming Senators (perhaps 5-7 people every two years) can come and learn the Senate? For field trips? For people to study the Senate?

I wish the cocktail-party crowd would throw their $50M behind something that might actually help the people of the Commonwealth. There are so many non-profits hurting right now, and $50M could go a long, long way.

In a way, it's fitting. If you want to study the Senate then you go to the JFK School of Government at Harvard. And if like Teddy, and you are expelled from Harvard for being a cheat, then you can go to Teddy Kennedy's Senate Experience at UMass Boston. A fitting homage.

COlumbia Point needs more retail, residential, office and commercial space. It needs less institutional space.
 
pelhamhall said:
...the cocktail-party crowd...
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I wonder if Chivas Regal will make a leadership donation.

pelhamhall said:
There are so many non-profits hurting right now, and $50M could go a long, long way.
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Quoted for truth.

pelhamhall said:
In a way, it's fitting. If you want to study the Senate then you go to the JFK School of Government at Harvard. And if like Teddy, and you are expelled from Harvard for being a cheat, then you can go to Teddy Kennedy's Senate Experience at UMass Boston. A fitting homage.
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Maybe the imagineers at Disney could help? Call it "The Hall of the Unfit to be Presidents." They could have animatronic exhibits on Richard Nixon, Gary Hart, and John Edwards.
 
I don't mind institutional expansion at Columbia Point, but undergraduate dormitories would be a much better use.
 
Ron Newman said:
I don't mind institutional expansion at Columbia Point, but undergraduate dormitories would be a much better use.
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i'm usually with you, but I don't agree with you there, Ron.

UMB is a unique institution that gets a lot of its uniqueness from three things:

- a significantly older student body
- a sizable fraction of the students working full-time or near full-time
- being a commuter school

Adding dorms to UMB would do almost nothing to make the character of the school like that of the more traditional private universities in Boston, but it would tend to move UMB further away from its reason for being: workforce improvement and equal-opportunity social mobility through education.

my 2 cents.
 
I think that this is the best place to put this, didn't want to start another UMass thread without any specifics.

UMass trustees back $2.5 billion capital campaign

By Peter Schworm, Globe Staff

Trustees at the University of Massachusetts today approved a $2.5 billion capital spending campaign over the next five years to fund a building boom across its five campuses.

The plan, which is contingent on substantial state and federal support, would finance new academic and research facilities and renovate aging structures. The plan calls for the university to borrow $1.4 billion and receive almost $800 million from the state government, which would represent a sharp increase from previous contributions.

Of the $1.7 billion the university has spent on construction and renovation during the past eight years, the state funding covered just 16 percent, the university said. But this year's $2 billion higher education capital bill and the $1 billion life sciences legislation, which combined will steer well over $1 billion to the university, has sparked hope for expanded spending.

"By ushering these two critical bills into law, the Governor and the Legislature make two things very clear: how important state-of-the-art facilities are to UMass and the critical role that the University plays in fueling and shaping the state?s innovation economy," University of Massachusetts President Jack M. Wilson said in a statement.

The plan features a $100 million science building and $53 million student recreation center at UMass Amherst; a $152 million science complex and $100 academic building at UMass Boston, $75 million in student housing renovations at UMass Dartmouth; a $90 million emerging technologies center at UMass Lowell; and a $333 million new science building at the Medical School in Worcester.

The plan, approved today by a finance committee, comes to a vote of the full board of trustees Sept. 26. The plan was proposed by Wilson in collaboration with campus chancellors.
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LINK
 
Columbia Point plans, nearly complete, hit roadblock

http://www.dotnews.com/Columbia Point plan.html
February 19, 2009
By Pete Stidman
News Editor

Plans to create a neighborhood feel amid developments being planned for Columbia Point hit a potential roadblock last week when both the MBTA and the state's Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) voiced opposition to a new side street envisioned by the Boston Redevelopment Authority's urban planners.

Greg Dicovitsky of Transit Realty Associates, the MBTA's semi-independent real estate wing, said last Thursday the T would not allow a future street to cross part of what is now the JFK/UMass Station's busway. The street, on draft plans for months now, is a crucial link, a "main street" into a massive development proposed by Synergy where Shaw's supermarket, Harborpoint Liquors and other buildings stand today.

The street would also help make possible the closure of two frontage roads flanking Morrissey Boulevard, which could then be converted into DCR-owned open space.

"The way they found to make [the MBTA site] work is by including state-owned land in the site," said Dicovitsky at the Feb. 12 Columbia Point Master Plan Task Force meeting. "We very recently learned that the inclusion of that land is not possible. We don't want to limit the creativity that can be brought to the table. But just to hold the developable area on the site, we would probably have to stay away from this whole road idea."

Dicovitsky's comments stem from a recent revelation within DCR that a proposal for a 25-story "Point Tower" to replace the current JFK/UMass Station would by necessity encroach on the current path of one of Morrissey Boulevard's frontage roads - eliminated by the plan. Expanding the site would make room for the new side street that would run next to the Red Line and Commuter Rail tracks nearby.

"There's an Article 97 issue there," said DCR Director of Planning Julia O'Brien. "State-owned land generally has a purpose attached to it. To have that purpose changed requires a two-thirds vote of the Legislature and replacement of the land? The roadway is owned by the Commonwealth as parkland."

The irony, of course, is that the DCR - charged in part with protecting the state's natural resources - is by a legal technicality now protecting a paved road from a plan that would ultimately create over 9 acres of leafy green open space by eliminating the frontage roads and "the chute" - a connector between Mt. Vernon Street and Day Boulevard. The road removal is also thought to be a way to separate local and regional traffic, thus easing congestion.

Members of the task force, many of them politically savvy and connected, didn't see an act of the Legislature as a unclearable hurdle.

"Why not take a look at what the remedies would be," asked task force chair Don Walsh. "If you need a two-thirds vote, get a two-thirds vote. I'm hearing that there's a roadblock that's not really a legitimate roadblock."

"You can't just say 'No, we can't do it.' There are ways to get it done," added task force member Paul Nutting.

But the DCR's objections take in more than just the JFK/UMass Station site, according to Boston Redevelopment Authority project manager John Read.

"They expressed to us some serious concerns about Morrissey Boulevard and the chute," he said at the meeting, adding: "Those plans are not necessarily off the table. I think we'll be looking at a variety of options. There's not a single proposal."

"Their proposal is a radical departure from DCR's own plan for Morrissey Boulevard which went through a public process years ago, and which did not involve removing the frontage roads," said DCR spokeswoman Wendy Fox. "The DCR is going to need a lot more data before DCR can even begin to think about it. It's just so different than anything that's been planned before."

Synergy CEO Dave Greaney was not given to melodrama over the new kink in the plan, even though it could fundamentally change the footprint of his company's proposed development - some 700 residential units, 180,000 square feet of retail space and 500,000 square feet of office space. Instead, he chose to take the long view.

"In my perspective it's the first roadblock and it won't be the last," said Greaney Tuesday. "We just need to work together to overcome it. It's too early in the process for anything to be off the table. I've reached out to the folks at DCR and over the coming weeks we're going to meet to try and understand what exactly this means."

In addition to the development in the works for the land they already own, Synergy is also in a position to be a top bidder to build on the MBTA property. The company would have a natural motivation to develop it as a gateway to their planned neighborhood shopping area from the T station and the other side of the Southeast Expressway.

At this confusing time, the task force's planning process is entering its final phase. At its next meeting on March 26, members will discuss and comment on a draft version of the final master plan, most likely choosing from multiple options created by the BRA's design consultants. After a series of meetings, including one more large community gathering, the task force will vote to approve the plan, if all goes well, on May 21.
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