Hairbrained Menino Schemes

Is Menino a Flake?

  • Yes

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • No

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0
S

sidewalks

Active Member
Joined
Oct 10, 2006
Messages
700
Reaction score
103
It seems like every time I turn around Menino is making a grand announcement about a monumental initiative to transform or redevelop a part of the city...lately we've had Tommy's Tower and the relocation of City Hall. In the past, there was the abandoned plans to redevelop City Hall Plaza. I vaguely remember him calling for a pedestrian overpass to be built across Cambridge Street. It seems that he is allowed to make these sweeping plans, do nothing, and not be held accountable by anybody. Am I the only one who feels this way? Can you think of other wild-eyed schemes that were abandoned after a week or two?
 
Don't forget his new plan to change Boston into a biking mecca, complete with public showers.
 
Two Others...

I thought of a couple other initiatives that were, or appear to have been, abandoned:

Boston 400: According to a summary on the Kennedy School of Government's website it was "A comprehensive long-term planning document for all the city's neighborhoods carried out by the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The planning process entailed hundreds of community meetings and much discussion about the future of the neighborhoods and the city....the report was never published"

Crossroads: Remember this one? What has become of the crossroads initiative? Broad Street doesn't seem to have changed much to me over the past two years.
 
I think Crossroads was something that could only start when the Greenway parks were finished.
 
Downtown Crossing

How could I forget downtown crossing. The ultimate 'lipstick on a pig' project. I get lame flyers from the BRA every couple of months trumpeting the wonderful changes that are taking place as a result of city initiatives. Have you seen those 'heart of Boston' banners on the lampposts? They look like retreads from the mid-1980s. It has been at least four years and the city's contribution to the area has been a failure to get a BID instituted and an initiative that brings art exhibits to abandoned store-front windows. Are you kidding me? This is leadership?
 
Green Space

Here's a gem and a classic example...a grand announcement regarding an Open Space Plan that will create new parks and improve existing ones. It's a joke. The Boston parks budget has been slashed over the past five years. The only parks that look half way decent are those that aren't old enough to have deteriorated completely. Look at the green space in Copley Plaza. It would be an embarrassment of a suburban backyard.

Menino dedicates trees as step to increase open space in Boston
Jane Han
Issue date: 4/28/03 Section: News
PrintEmail Article Tools Page 1 of 1 Mayor Thomas Menino launched a new Open Space Plan last Friday for Boston to make park improvements and expand more green areas.

At the Boston Common, Menino emphasized the importance of preserving and improving the nature and trees in Boston.

?I love trees,? he said. ?It is important that we do our best to maintain what we have.?

Menino said he was proud of the city?s largest park and the nationally renowned Boston Common.

?We invested a lot of money into the park for the past years,? he said, ?and we all can see the outcome today.?

With the new Open Space Plan, there will be more parks created throughout the city and existing ones will be further improved. The new plan will ?work as the blue print for the next five years,? the mayor said.

The future parks are designed to be built above the Central Artery tunnel in downtown Boston, which will ?provide a new signature open space,? according to the plan statement made by Commissioner Justine Liff.

The Harbor Islands will also be activated within the next five years as a National Recreation Area. With the opening of the Spectacle Island by the Department and the state?s Department of Environmental Management, this new plan will come under way.

Another important factor Menino stressed is the protection against the overuse of parks through sports, celebration, and other everyday events. These plans are strongly needed in the Boston Common, Copley Square and a few other locations, such as the Franklin Park, he said.

?I know we are facing the tough economy,? Menino said. ?It?s not going to be easy, but we have to get through these budget times.?

The mayor awarded 20 participants of the ?A Tree Grows in Boston? contest for growing the top best trees. The award recipients, including Elizabeth Taylor, Mark Ciomo, Rosanne Foley and others, attended the mayor?s speech and planted a tree at the park after the awards ceremony.

?Boston has been designated as the tree city for seven consecutive years,? Menino said. ?Having trees in our city is definitely a quality-of-life issue.?
 
And of course...

How could I forget Mayor Quixote's plan for a windmill on City Hall Plaza?Is there a filter between his brain and his mouth. Does he wake up from a nap on Sunday and decide to call the Globe with his latest Save the City scheme?
 
He does have a filter, it's just in the form of an audio filter and not a content filter.
 
IMHO he's one of the best mayors Boston has ever had. What's wrong with a visionary? All visionary people float ideas - some work, some die. Many die due to the timidity of others not because they were bad ideas. The city has flourished under Menino. What's wrong with a guy who wants a better city hall, preservation of what's worth preserving, more height, world class amenities and great city living? So what if he mumbles.
 
I agree Menino will be remembered as one of the better mayors of our city. When I first rented an apartment in 1986, I had to compete for housing with thousands of college students. Now the problem has been pretty much solved and students and citizens alike have much better rental options because of all the dorms built during this administration. Crime is way down, population loss has been reversed and the parks are in much better shape. The Harbor is cleaner, the port is alive again, the airport is greatly improved and much more accessible.

Did you know that Atlanta will probably run out of drinking water in 3 weeks? Not here in Boston because we fixed the pipes coming from the Quabbin, ending the daily updates of how many feet below normal we used to have every day on the TV news back in the 80's.


Granted the fish farm idea was a flop but I could go on and on about the improvements this city has seen in the last 15 years or so.
 
VISIONARY

Tom Menino is many things, I would argue that he cares deeply about the city and the people of Boston. I think he is a very good and well intentioned man, but Tom Menino is NOT a visionary.

Implying that Tom Menino had anything to do with the Boston Harbor cleanup is absurd. The parks are an absolute disaster. Please, go to another city like NYC or Chicago or San Francisco and tell me that we have well maintained parks.

The Seaport has LANGUISHED for his entire administration because he is unwilling to support real development efforts in fear that certain constituencies might be upset with him. Innumerable development projects have languished in community reviews because he refuses to assume a leadership position. The 'community' is always right in Menino's administration. This is not visionary this is pandering to the political wind.

If you want real visionary leadership go to Chicago or SF or NYC, but don't tell me that we have it here in Boston. I give him credit for his support of the convention center (the design is a monstrosity but at least he put his neck on the line for a risky proposition).

Tom Menino is an urban mechanic, by his own admission. He is not a visionary.
 
dorms

One more thing...please don't tell me that Menino has exerted real leadership regarding college dorms. Ask Suffolk University or Northeastern or Boston College administrators in private what kind of support they have received from the mayor.

There is an adage about the rooster crowing as the sun rises. The rooster does not make the sun rise. Similarly Menino has been the beneficiary of an urban renaissance that has swept the nation during his tenure. The same can be said of university expansion or the drop in crime or...the Boston harbor cleanup. These were not initiatives that were borne by the wits of Mayor Menino.
 
New York City's parks? Have you actually been to NYC? People still fear going past the reservoir in Central Park. Ever drove down the Cross-Bronx? Alot of the city is so ugly you would not wish to walk down the street never mind enter a park. Chicago is in the middle of a major financial crisis. San Francisco has its own issues. There is certainly nothing as fucked up as the Castro here.

How about comparing it to Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia and a number of other formerly thriving industrial cities that were forgotten by our leaders after WWII and sank or swam under their own power?

You may not like the mayor but the actual taxpaying citizens do and keep electing him for some strange reason.

One more thing...please don't tell me that Menino has exerted real leadership regarding college dorms.
Click to expand...

Yes he has. How do you explain the thousands of units of student housing that was not built under any other mayor? I specifically remember that being his idea and it being a good one.
 
The parks in New York seem much consistently maintained than Boston's, even in the Bronx. You sound like you haven't spent much time in New York lately, or at least the outer boroughs. The number of widely-acknowledged "dangerous" neighborhoods is extremely limited.

As for the Castro, it's a highly gentrified part of SF.
 
I was in NYC many times before you were even born, sonny boy.

So you are saying that people don't fear parts of the world famous Central Park? That is silly, if you cannot even control your signature open space then you are not IMO an example Boston should follow.

Also perhaps, NYC should clean up its waterways and be more like Boston.
 
nyc

Actually I have lived in both Manhattan and the Bronx...Central Park makes our crown jewel, the tiny Public Garden, look slovenly.

As for leadership regarding student housing, the Suffolk University experience at 20 Somerset Street is illustrative of how whimsical mayoral leadership has been during this administration.
 
IYHO, that may be so but people certainly aren't afraid of it. Years ago they wouldn't go to the Public Garden or linger around the Park Street area of the Common but that has changed.
 
The mayor wasn't responsible for the harbor cleanup - it took a federal judge to make that happen.

Better water from the Quabbin? You have the MWRA to thank, not the mayor.

A bustling port? You have good economic times and the hard work of Massport to thank, not the mayor.

A giant windmill on City Hall Plaza? Now, that's a good one, mayor.
 
At least he was bold enough to suggest the construction of a 1000 foot tower. If it wasn't for him we will still be squabbling about how Boston doesn't have the guts to get a supertall.
 
If you saw Boston from the 50's until today (like I have) you would think something miraculous happened. Menino isn't responsible for all of it. Some of what came before him was really terrible, but much of it was needed just the same. Harbor cleanup started way before his time. The seaport has languished since the 40s and 50s and is only now starting to look something like an inhabited area. Lack of college dorms was at upsurd levels until the last 10 years or so. Moving city hall is a good idea in the opinions of many. Maybe the SBW is the wrong place, but the existing building and plaza have been disasters from inception and still are on virtually every level. Menino tried to build around the plaza and improve it but was thwarted by the FEDS and NIMBYs. Boston doesn't have the resources of NY, Chi, or SF but but competes amazingly with them well in spite of the loss of corporate headquarters and high paying jobs. Menino is a visionary. He has big ideas and isn't afraid to express them and try to make them reality. In this era it's radical social reactionaries like Shirley Kessel and greedy corporate raiders like Kilts who make it there life's work to thwart progress and return Boston to the provincial backwater it was 50 years ago with languishing business, dilapidated buildings and cityscapes, and antique infra-structure, not the Mayor.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top