Re: Liberty Mutual plans major Boston expansion
Don't Screw with Shirley.
Liberty Mutual ?public hearing?
by Shirley Kressel
contributing writer
Thursday Aug 26, 2010
I?ve already devoted two columns (here and here) to the Liberty Mutual (LM) project, and the $46.5 million in city and state taxpayer money that Governor Deval Patrick, Mayor Thomas Menino, and the City Councilors (except Chuck Turner and Charles Yancey) chose to give to the financially flush insurance giant. As I have detailed, this money was given away for absolutely no reason, while library, school, and other human services are being mercilessly slashed. Yet, there was no public outcry. And so, on August 17, LM?s centennial vanity project, a 300 foot-high monument to itself, came to a vote at the BRA?s ?public hearing? (not to be confused with a listening) and was approved. There was never any suspense about the outcome. But there was testimony, and it?s worth thinking about.
City Councilors Bill Linehan, Maureen Feeney, Sal LaMattina, John Connolly and Michael Ross weighed in. They enthusiastically thanked the BRA for being extremely receptive to the City Council. They applauded the tax break as a catalyst for the project. They praised LM for its responsiveness to community input in an exemplary public process. They lauded the project?s contribution to the vibrancy of the public realm (Feeney disingenuously praised the universally detested - even by the BRA -- skywalk, to be built over the street from the tower to the current LM building, as "a bridge connecting new and old"). And they showered LM with gratitude for choosing Boston as a home when it had so many other choices, and for creating so many jobs for Bostonians. None of these statements, of course, reflects reality, except the reality that Councilors want to ingratiate themselves with Mayor Menino and with the construction unions. They will also, next election day, be bragging about how they "created jobs" - also unrelated to reality.
Lamattina, after expressing support for this 300-foot tower in a 100-foot zone, asked the BRA not to "Manhattanize" his North End neighborhood by raising the 55-foot height limit to 85 feet at a Greenway site.
Mike Ross?s aide reported that his consultation with the BRA and his review of the project satisfied him that there was, despite evidence to the contrary, full compliance with state shadow laws protecting the Boston Common. The community and the state representatives weren?t satisfied, but Ross sent his blessings.
The BRA project manager, Jay Rourke, touted the 600,000 square foot expansion of the campus, the 600 jobs for the city, the "thorough and thoughtful" review process, and the lively streets to be created by the project. He also definitively declared the shadow problem non-existent.
The LM defense strategy focused heavily on its corporate philanthropy. Like most big corporations, LM runs a charitable foundation; dozens of small grants create a wide pool of grateful recipients always ready to put in a glowing tribute to the good corporate citizen. Indeed, a half-dozen beneficiary organizations that provide various human services testified in support of the project, to thank LM for its financial help. Some even praised the project for creating jobs that would rescue homeless and impoverished people.
I came to testify about something no one else would discuss: public recourse to the outrageous government action making all this possible.
But first, I felt compelled to debunk the previous comments. In fact: LM had never even considered moving out of Boston, as it explicitly admitted at the City Council tax-break hearing. It is not expanding its workforce to fill this huge tower; it is simply shuffling its employees out of some of its other buildings, which it will then lease out for rental income. The "600 jobs" promise, at 30 jobs a year, is actually 75% less in annual hiring than LM has been doing for the past six years, according to its application documents; and over the course of 20 years, we are talking about 30 jobs a year on average, of which approximately 20%, or 6 jobs a year, on average, will go to Boston residents. I repeat: Six new Boston jobs a year. The number of insurance company jobs that will uplift the aforementioned homeless people is going to be, I estimate, zero. And, as I pointed out, the $46.5 million stuffed into LM?s overflowing pockets by our government officials could have done far more for the homeless, the at-risk youth and others who came to express gratitude for LM?s few thousand dollars in grants.
The public recourse is based on two BRA transgressions. First, the project, at triple the legal zoning height, is being allowed to evade zoning by designation as a Planned Development Area (PDA). But the one-acre size requirement for a PDA has been met by creative geography - including the land under the adjacent Salada Tea building, which LM owns and will remodel to work with the tower. If this were legitimate, any owner of a one-acre existing development could declare it a PDA, and thus redevelop as a zoning-free district.
Second, and more interesting: the BRA has finally outsmarted itself and committed a wrongful act under its enabling legislation as the Boston Planning Board. Zoning, as the BRA itself states in its zoning code, must reflect planning; and planning must be a community process. The Advisory Group established for the community planning process in the project area met for two years while the BRA tried to manipulate them to assent to a huge up-zoning. The three neighborhoods represented on the Group finally submitted a letter demanding, among other things, that the zoning for this site remain unchanged, to protect the small-scale adjacent neighborhood (and that there be no PDAs in the district). When the Liberty Mutual tower was sprung on the public, the neighborhoods were outraged at being blindsided and ignored. The BRA?s solution was to cut the project site out of the planning area. Of course, the whole planning process then vaporized, since it had merely been a fig leaf to legalize this tower.
So: The project cannot be a Planned Development Area because it was officially not planned. And it could not be consistent with the planning for the district as a whole -- because there was none of that, either. Therefore, any aggrieved party, or any municipal officer or board, may bring a certiorari suit in court within 30 days to correct an error of law.
This has never happened before, in my days as a BRA-watcher. It is an unprecedented opportunity to hold the BRA accountable for false planning and for spot zoning. Will anyone act on it? Hello! Is anyone aggrieved?
The development team, including the BRA, sat unperturbed by my words. I assume they were thinking either: "Oh good heavens, she?s right! Let?s obey the law and give back the money!" Or: "Law? Law?? Shall we have steak or lobster at our celebration dinner tonight?"
I wonder what homeless people enjoying corporate charity had for dinner. And whether they were properly grateful for it.
Shirley Kressel is a landscape architect and urban designer, and one of the founders of the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods. She can be reached at
Shirley.Kressel@verizon.net.
http://www.mysouthend.com/index.php?ch=columnists&sc=city_streets&id=109587
