GIVE ME MORE
Boston Globe
Author(s): Chris Reidy, and Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff Date:
June 15, 2003 Page: J1 Section: Real Estate
By one count, the June 5 presentation was the 120th public meeting in 28 months on Columbus Center, but there's still a way to go before the developer can begin construction on the controversial 35-story mixed-use project over the Massachusetts Turnpike in the South End.
At the meeting, developer Roger M. Cassin gave an eye-popping virtual tour of his $400 million vision in an effort to win over local residents. Thanks to a digitally animated video that cost more than $100,000 to produce, viewers were taken on a stroll from Arlington Street to Clarendon Street. They could see buildings, town houses, and a grocery store that one day may span the turnpike. There were virtual cars, virtual pedestrians, even a virtual dog out for a walk. Like a hostage bartering for his release, Cassin also promised the neighborhood one of the most comprehensive packages of benefits Boston has seen. It includes parks, subsidized rent for small businesses, 50 units of on-site affordable housing, $800,000 for job training and housing funds, a new enclosed Orange Line entrance on Clarendon Street, shuttle buses to the airport, more than 500 subsidized MBTA passes, 10 Zipcar spaces, secure storage areas for 150 bicycles, and more than 200 new parking spaces for Bay Village and the South End.
Critics who say the current design is just "too big" were not won over. But later, a citizens' advisory group voted to endorse the project, which would be built using leased turnpike air rights.
Afterward, Cassin described himself as shellshocked and likened the arduous negotiations to a food fight. "I don't know what more we could have done," he said. "Process - sometimes there's too much of a good thing."
And maybe the community benefits are also too much of a good thing, some critics say. Now part of the cost of doing business for a Boston developer, these benefits take a variety of forms, ranging from sidewalk landscaping to subsidies for scholarships, small theaters, even a bait shop for recreational fishermen.
The process works this way: In return for permission to build, a developer promises to provide the government and the host neighborhood with amenities that "mitigate" the negative impacts of the project. In a perfect world, all sides are happy, and the project moves forward. But in a city with a reputation for making development difficult, it rarely works out that way. At times, neighborhood requests for mitigation benefits have all the subtlety of a ransom note. And as the city's budget shrinks, neighborhoods have become more dependent on developers to finance and maintain their sidewalks, street lights, and parks. One way for neighborhoods to demand more benefits from developers is to hold up their projects, either through lawsuits or seemingly endless public meetings.
Urban designer Shirley Kressel, a frequent critic of Boston's development process, said negotiations between a developer and a neighborhood are often a "benefits bazaar."
Benefits get swapped for permission to build a taller tower, and debate focuses more on the wish list of amenities than on the merits of the project. In this scenario, neighborhoods aren't so much hostage-takers as supplicants pleading with developers to give them what they once got from the city.
Developer Dean Stratouly of Congress Group Ventures is sure of one thing: Those who want to build things in this city face increasing demands.
"We've seen a constant upping of expectations," he said, adding, "If you want your project permitted in a reasonable amount of time, you have to satisfy the community group or regulatory agency. So you get caught in a vicious cycle, a regulatory process combined with special interests, and at the end of the day, the solution is money."
Politically wired South Boston got plenty of money when it perfected the art of bargaining with developers. In the late 1990s, it negotiated directly with waterfront developers, and critics cried foul. The benefits were excessive, they complained, and other neighborhoods were left out. Changes were made, and the result is a process that is more "consistent, predictable," and "transparent," said the Boston Redevelopment Authority's director, Mark Maloney.
But with fewer financial resources available to the city, the process has also had to evolve. "We have to be more creative and ask developers to balance the impact of their projects with the current needs of the neighborhood," Maloney said.
For those trying to get the most benefits, stalling tactics remain highly effective. Above all else, developers crave certainty. Anything that drags out the process adds to their uncertainty and expense.
"If a community wants something, the best strategy is to raise a political stink," said Peter Catalano, a Fenway activist who has opposed big projects in his neighborhood. Catalano is no fan of mitigation, a wonk's word for community benefits; to Catalano, mitigation is "a bribe that allows a developer to do something that is not in the community's best interest."
Yet mitigation isn't the only way to squeeze a developer. In one recent case, a private citizen used legal action to get results in a most unusual way. Stevan Goldin, who was displaced from Boston by urban renewal and now lives in Rockport, said the BRA failed to deliver on promises made to honor the memory of the West End, a cause he holds dear. To prod the BRA, Goldin challenged a proposed project the BRA had endorsed, a mixed-use complex on D Street in South Boston. Rather than risk years of delay, the project's developer, Joseph F. Fallon, agreed to donate $25,000 to a building fund for a West End museum several miles away and $10,000 toward a study of air pollution in Boston Harbor, another Goldin interest. Goldin then withdrew the challenge.
"A clever fellow filed a last-minute lawsuit, which would have slowed down the project," the BRA's Maloney explained. "And Joe [Fallon] - wisely, I think - settled it to avoid delay."
A lawyer who represents developers, Matthew J. Kiefer of Goulston & Storrs, said clients have sometimes asked him about the legality of the demands for benefits that neighborhoods have made.
"A developer says, `They're asking for this. Is it legal?' I say, `Yes.' I say, `You can have a project or a lawsuit. Which would you rather have?' "
In some quarters, there is a perception that development takes too long in Boston and that developers are asked to do too much, both in providing community benefits and in changing their designs.
"We're going to get to the point where a developer will walk into a public meeting with a blank piece of paper and say, `What are we allowed to do?' " said Meg Mainzer-Cohen, president of the Back Bay Association, a neighborhood business group.
But state Representative Byron Rushing said developers who listen long and carefully to neighborhood concerns ultimately design the best projects.
"If developers don't want to talk to anyone, they should build in the middle of nowhere," said Rushing, a Democrat who lives in the South End. "If they want to be Daniel Boone developers, then they have to go find a wilderness."
Meanwhile, remarks made by the BRA's Maloney last year suggest it isn't just the neighborhoods that have grown more dependent on developers; it's also the city. With budgets tight, the city wants developers to assume many jobs it once performed, especially in areas where the infrastructure is modest, such as the South Boston Waterfront.
"Roads and parks and sewers - we can't pay that," Maloney said, referring to Fan Pier. "We're making them [developers] pay for it. That's the way the city does development now."
And so plans for the Fan Pier project, a $1.2 billion mini-city that would be jointly developed by Hyatt Development Corp. and Spaulding & Slye Colliers, include plenty of sidewalks and sewers, along with a marina and a recreational fishing area with a bait shop. There's also an agreement to provide a long-term land lease for the Institute of Contemporary Art.
Fan Pier won't be the first project to be a patron of the arts. Atelier- South End condominium project from the Druker Co., includes an adjacent pavilion that will house two spaces for live theater.
Not everyone is comfortable with developers becoming the go-to guys for so many community needs. To pay for all these extras, developers may have to expand their projects so they bring in more revenue. Shifting civic responsibilities onto developers will result in costly trade-offs, warned Fred Mauet, a resident of the Back Bay who has served on several project review panels.
"At the end of the day, if they're being asked to do a laundry list of things that government said they don't have the will to do anymore," Mauet said, "the net effect is going to be larger, bigger projects."
Chris Reidy can be reached at
reidy@globe.com; Thomas C. Palmer, at
tpalmer@globe.com.
