New England Revolution Stadium | 173 Alford Street | Boston-Everett

Under the legislative proposal, the property at 173 Alford St. would no longer be considered part of a designated port area, thus helping open it to non-maritime uses.
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The amendment also would exempt the property from any “height, setback, open space or other dimensional limitations and requirements” under state tidelands law solely “for the purposes of a sports, recreation or events center.” The exemption would be in effect only if the facility is permitted for construction within three years.

“It’s a fairly dramatic change,” said Bruce Berman, strategy and communications director for the environmental group Save the Harbor/Save the Bay, who has 25 years of experience in municipal harbor planning. “But in a way, it seems somewhat inevitable given the success of Encore.”
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Not everyone in Everett welcomed the possibility of a soccer stadium. Fred Capone, former Everett city councilor who was narrowly defeated by DeMaria in last November’s election, said he has “serious concerns” about a potential stadium further jamming an already congested area with cars.
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www.bostonglobe.com

Mass. lawmakers have cleared the way for Robert Kraft to build a new soccer stadium for the New England Revolution in Everett - The Boston Globe

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft has spent years looking for a new home for his New England Revolution soccer team, and it may have found it in Everett.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
 
Maybe the articles are just copying each other, but a lot of the news articles are really emphasizing the " Without floor debate or public input, lawmakers added language to a wide-ranging, multibillion-dollar economic development"

To me, that gives an automatic red flag that "that is bad".

But personally, I do keep thinking its time we figure where to put the stadium. This is not in a place that displaces any people. But the backdoor was to get it pass the regulations doesn't seem right. Though he been trying to do this for decades so it's not like he just bust through all the right procedures and getting us to pay for the whole thing too like some other stadiums in this country.

If it does happen, I do think it means ideas of road dieting the area needs to be recalculated again. I also think the area should get a train station - and I don't mean a commuter rail stop that I remember F-line kept saying it's not possible with the current alignments. I mean an Encore-Stadium-Everett should get a rapid transit line and the engineering required for it to exist. Of course, going by GLX, I'll be dead by the time it even starts so I don't know why I evener both writing this sentence.
 
ant8904 said:
If it does happen, I do think it means ideas of road dieting the area needs to be recalculated again. I also think the area should get a train station - and I don't mean a commuter rail stop that I remember F-line kept saying it's not possible with the current alignments. I mean an Encore-Stadium-Everett should get a rapid transit line and the engineering required for it to exist. Of course, going by GLX, I'll be dead by the time it even starts so I don't know why I evener both writing this sentence.
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Agree on the road dieting. As far as a separate transit line, not going to happen in our lifetimes as you noted, but something that could be thrown in for mitigation is the krafts having to build the bridge from the orange line station across the mystic. That would bring direct transit access in to the site and is something that could actually get done.
 
stick n move said:
Agree on the road dieting. As far as a separate transit line, not going to happen in our lifetimes as you noted, but something that could be thrown in for mitigation is the krafts having to build the bridge from the orange line station across the mystic. That would bring direct transit access in to the site and is something that could actually get done.
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Dedicated BRT lanes on the Alford Street Bridge to the OL Sullivan station would be a quickly doable transit option, although it would cut general traffic capacity by 50%. A new BRT bridge across the Mystic would be better but take decades for planning and implementing.
 
king_vibe said:
Everett is a dump. Build the stadium in the city core or not at all.
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I would prefer that, but Everett is hungry and willing to fast track the approval process, whereas Boston would, I suspect, be a lot slower and difficult (NIMBYS etc.).
 
Everett north of Rt. 16 isn't a dump. It's a working class city but if you go around the business or residential area that is largely north of Rt. 16, you will struggle to find dilapidated homes or vacant storefronts. It's not full of glamourous shops, but thriving small businesses, a few gems, and homes that are generally kept in good state of repair. Of the cities in MA people have called "dumps", Everett does not seem to have the same level of dysfunction that you can see in the buildings or the streets (though politics is more debatable).

South of Rt.16 (and north of the Mystic) is the industrial area and yes, that's the dump (edit: though industrial zones is an economic necessity). An absolute no man's land that separates the continuity of urbanity (or semi-urbanity) between Charlestown and Everett.

I don't imagine the soccer stadium would knit the two areas. I mean it would do as much as Encore or the Gateway Center. Which isn't much. But both are upgrades of being polluted industrial land (or fallowed industrial land) and so would the stadium. Especially if "city core" means booting people out.
 
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king_vibe said:
Everett is a dump. Build the stadium in the city core or not at all.
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The idea - from an urbanist perspective - is to expand the core. This would help to do that.

Hell, Fenway Park was in the middle of an empty swamp when it was first built. You might have said the same thing about that if you were around when it was built.
 
Traffic over there is going to be a real problem... the Assembly OL station is a bit of a hike
 
393b40 said:
The traffic patterns for a casino are very different... it doesn't have rushes of 10-20k people coming in for a single start and end time.
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I’m pretty sure that they’ll figure out the traffic pattern. They wouldn’t just drop a stadium in that part of Metro Boston without a traffic mitigation plan. Especially given how much energy it has taken to get this far.
 
Any municipality in Zone 1A meets my definition of “urban core.”

Relatedly, I think that it has been shown that stadiums are active too infrequently to be good for the central business district (CBD)…which in Boston would be focused on North, South, and Back Bay stations

so I think a place on the periphery of the CBD would be ideal (i liked Ruggles, Andrew, Sullivan, Assembly Fenway/Kenmore )

True, particular parcels or neighborhoods might be non-urban or off the transport grid.

How walkable to Sullivan could Everett site be? Seems a no brained to put a Casino-Stadium stop in the Silver Line as it extends Chelsea-Sullivan- (and Probably hits GLX & Red)
 
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Anyone have a map/graphic for where this new proposed site would be?
 
This could be a decent location, assuming the Alford/Broadway corridor becomes the entertainment district that the Winn Co. wants it to be. But it's going to need better transit connections. Extend the Silver Line from Chelsea to Broadway, then put center running BRT from there to Sullivan, and make the Krafts and Casino kick in a decent chunk of change to support the investment.

ant8904 said:
To me, that gives an automatic red flag that "that is bad".
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Language like that can certainly sound alarmist, but the reality is a lot of good legislating is done this way. Imagine if every line in the state budget involved the kind of public process required to change a window treatment in the South End. We'd just as well eliminate the legislature all together if that were the requirement.
stick n move said:
something that could be thrown in for mitigation is the krafts having to build the bridge from the orange line station across the mystic.
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It might help, but that would be about a mile walk from Assembly to the stadium site, with the bridge. The bridge definitely puts transit at the Casino. Not sure it's enough to consider Assembly as serving this stadium site.
 
JS38 said:
Anyone have a map/graphic for where this new proposed site would be?
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173 Alford St (the Exelon Mystic Station) is what the article mentions. Course being the Globe they gloss over the fact that isn't even Everett. I think the Krafts are talking about the tanks site just north of the power plant.
 
You can cultivate a young, intensely loyal following by building an urban stadium near transit. This is the opposite.
 
I'm going to say this and then duck: the state needs to either run legit rail into this area, or build a spur off of 93 - both monumental, near impossible tasks. The current infrastructure is woefully unprepared for the additional residential components off of 16, the casino, and a new stadium with it's own adjoining future development (think of an urban Patriots Place).

This is a promising part of metro Boston that deserves additional public infrastructure investment after decades of neglect.
 
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