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

TheRatmeister said:
The problem is that it hasn't been studied enough, or that traffic isn't taken into account, it's that ultimately a major stakeholder, Everett residents, are largely unsatisfied with the proposal. So long as that remains true it's probably not happening. Planning is an inclusive process, and as much as it's frustrating sometimes, you can't just decree that a stadium will go somewhere, this is a democracy.

The solution here isn't to study, it's to imagine new possibilities for the area beyond a stadium and make designs that account for this. It's the largest essentially blank slate you'll find in the region, there's plenty of room for new ideas and solutions that can work, or at least be acceptable, to most people. Things that could be included to fit this criteria:
  • New housing
  • New higher paying office/biotech jobs and not just low-pay stadium ones
  • Better transport links to Everett proper
  • More green space
The current proposal does (as far as I can tell) essentially none of these. Residents have no real reason besides the abstract promise of tax revenue to back the project, and plenty of reasons not to.
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A dose of development reality is needed here.

The properties along the Route 99 corridor are all heavily contaminated. The industrial uses have made them a nightmare for a developer to take on. The reason why Encore is the first major cleanup in the area is because casinos literally print money. Wynn could afford the cleanup for that reason.

Other uses in the corridor are going to require similar scales of return for investors to take on the cleanup expense. And the process of indemnifying the developer from hazardous waste issues is a bad move. You just end up with lower return on investment housing or commercial built on poorly capped hazardous waste, with toxic shit leaching into the basements, poisoning residents. (Check out Edgewater, New Jersey along the Hudson for an object lesson in what not to do).
 
JeffDowntown said:
The industrial uses have made them a nightmare for a developer to take on
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I would therefore argue that it has, at this point, become a public issue. Future development would need to be tied to state/federal funding and cleanup efforts. While more risky than private enterprises would likely prefer to take on, I'd argue that the value of the land, especially with added transport connections, would allow for a significant recouping of cleanup costs and would, in total, bring more economic benefit that it would cost. Until that happens, it will continue to essentially be dead weight for Everett, stadium or not.
 
JeffDowntown said:
A dose of development reality is needed here.

The properties along the Route 99 corridor are all heavily contaminated. The industrial uses have made them a nightmare for a developer to take on. The reason why Encore is the first major cleanup in the area is because casinos literally print money. Wynn could afford the cleanup for that reason.

Other uses in the corridor are going to require similar scales of return for investors to take on the cleanup expense. And the process of indemnifying the developer from hazardous waste issues is a bad move. You just end up with lower return on investment housing or commercial built on poorly capped hazardous waste, with toxic shit leaching into the basements, poisoning residents. (Check out Edgewater, New Jersey along the Hudson for an object lesson in what not to do).
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EPA and State Brownfield programs exist for this exact reason though. Large grants are out there to provide cleanup funds, and this would be a highly competitive site for those grants. The remediation is also going to take multiple years and is a perquisite for any development. I don't see why the remediation process can't be moved forward simultaneously with a master planning process.
 
JeffDowntown said:
A dose of development reality is needed here.

The properties along the Route 99 corridor are all heavily contaminated. The industrial uses have made them a nightmare for a developer to take on. The reason why Encore is the first major cleanup in the area is because casinos literally print money. Wynn could afford the cleanup for that reason.

Other uses in the corridor are going to require similar scales of return for investors to take on the cleanup expense. And the process of indemnifying the developer from hazardous waste issues is a bad move. You just end up with lower return on investment housing or commercial built on poorly capped hazardous waste, with toxic shit leaching into the basements, poisoning residents. (Check out Edgewater, New Jersey along the Hudson for an object lesson in what not to do).
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Sounds like something that should be heavily subsidized by state and city governments (maybe the feds too?) What could be more environmentally friendly than decontaminating an old industrial site and making it useable and climate resilient?
 
Patrick Winn said:
Sounds like something that should be heavily subsidized by state and city governments (maybe the feds too?) What could be more environmentally friendly than decontaminating an old industrial site and making it useable and climate resilient?
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Chelsea and Everett jointly applied for a $50M Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) Grant through FEMA for the expressed purpose of improving coastal resiliency along their waterfront. Developers coming to the table in Everett (i.e. Revs, Davis Co., Wynn) have been tasked with committing/identifying funding for decontamination of these old industrial sites as well, which would be a tremendous cost saving to taxpayers if they're able to pull it off. City and State are otherwise committed to cleaning up these sites--that much is apparent.

1703708037818.png
 
dshoost88 said:
Chelsea and Everett jointly applied for a $50M Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) Grant through FEMA for the expressed purpose of improving coastal resiliency along their waterfront. Developers coming to the table in Everett (i.e. Revs, Davis Co., Wynn) have been tasked with committing/identifying funding for decontamination of these old industrial sites as well, which would be a tremendous cost saving to taxpayers if they're able to pull it off. City and State are otherwise committed to cleaning up these sites--that much is apparent.

View attachment 46151
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This is the project description.
The Island End River Coastal Flood Resilience Project is a hybrid grey-and-nature-based flood resilience solution to address coastal flood risks in the disadvantaged communities of Chelsea and Everett. More than 500 acres in these communities are at risk of flooding because of the area’s topography and hydrology. This project combines vegetated berms, floodwalls, flood gates and living shoreline to protect an industrial district and residential neighborhoods from coastal flooding by 2070 for 2% storms. Also, by 2070, protection will reach the 1% storm once the larger regional resiliency plan is in place.

When the project is complete, it will protect environmental justice neighborhoods, critical regional food distribution, and energy infrastructure from coastal flooding. It will also create much-needed waterfront access, community open space and a restored living shoreline.
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Apparently, no award was made for this project in calendar year 2023. (The Federal government is now in fiscal year 2024, which began October 1 2023.). Applications for the next round of awards were due this past October. I do not know whether Chelsea / Everett's application was carried over, or whether a new application is required. The dollars available are rather limited, around $700 million nationally for the next round of BRIC projects, so I suspect that Chelsea / Everett is not going to receive $50 million for its project.
 
The BRIC grant would be a great win for the region and is a clear sign of a commitment to the area, but to be clear it’s a separate (and larger) project than the actual environmental assessment and remediation, which BRIC wouldn’t be the avenue to fund it with.
 
TheRatmeister said:
The problem is that it hasn't been studied enough, or that traffic isn't taken into account, it's that ultimately a major stakeholder, Everett residents, are largely unsatisfied with the proposal. So long as that remains true it's probably not happening. Planning is an inclusive process, and as much as it's frustrating sometimes, you can't just decree that a stadium will go somewhere, this is a democracy.

The solution here isn't to study, it's to imagine new possibilities for the area beyond a stadium and make designs that account for this. It's the largest essentially blank slate you'll find in the region, there's plenty of room for new ideas and solutions that can work, or at least be acceptable, to most people. Things that could be included to fit this criteria:
  • New housing
  • New higher paying office/biotech jobs and not just low-pay stadium ones
  • Better transport links to Everett proper
  • More green space
The current proposal does (as far as I can tell) essentially none of these. Residents have no real reason besides the abstract promise of tax revenue to back the project, and plenty of reasons not to.
Click to expand...
I agree that these elements sound nice. Arguably, there is more green space included in this proposal. But ultimately, I think it's a mistake to require that every project satisfy all of these needs. Can a developer of a parcel that's more than a mile away from the rest of Everett really create transportation? Is this the best place for housing? What makes it the best option for jobs if it isn't going to be that tightly connected to the rest of the community? This is an edge property, requiring expensive environmental mitigation. People might consider tax revenue abstract, but it is the path by which some of those more concrete goals can be achieved.
 
HenryAlan said:
I agree that these elements sound nice. Arguably, there is more green space included in this proposal. But ultimately, I think it's a mistake to require that every project satisfy all of these needs. Can a developer of a parcel that's more than a mile away from the rest of Everett really create transportation? Is this the best place for housing? What makes it the best option for jobs if it isn't going to be that tightly connected to the rest of the community? This is an edge property, requiring expensive environmental mitigation. People might consider tax revenue abstract, but it is the path by which some of those more concrete goals can be achieved.
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My argument is that if you want to build a stadium, you hire a property developer. They will get you a stadium, and not much else. That is their job, after all. But that shouldn't be the target here, the size and scope of this area means that we should be hiring urban planners/designers to plan an entire district, which will then guide future development of smaller parcels in line with a master plan. Again, this place is 2.5x the size of Assembly, we're not particularly short on space. We should be thinking of a scaled up Assembly Sq, one of the most successful TOD projects in the region, which was a cooperation between property developers, businesses, the city of Somerville, and the MBTA (For the infill station). This is the kind of top-down planning you need for complete, cohesive, and inclusive developments.
 
Patrick Winn said:
Sounds like something that should be heavily subsidized by state and city governments (maybe the feds too?) What could be more environmentally friendly than decontaminating an old industrial site and making it useable and climate resilient?
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The funds are going to have to come from a lot of sources. The cleanup price tag at Encore was $68 million. And we are talking about many times that area still in need of remediation. Also it is important to keep in mind the environmental remediation adds years to the timeline for any project -- further increasing costs to developers. The remediation at the Encore site took 18 months -- months when no construction could take place.
 
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For the Salem Harbor generating plant (coal and oil were used as duel) the cost of remediation and demolition were estimated prior to the construction a natural gas powered generating plant.

According to published comments by TRC Solutions general remediation and demolition
costs can run from $5 - $20 million for projects ranging from 100 MW to very large projects
more on the scale of 1GW, depending on the salvage value as well as levels of required
remediation. In comparison, the Site Assessment Study estimated the demolition of the
existing structures and the cleanup costs specific to the 65 acre site. The cost for site cleanup
was estimated to be in the range of $5 - $20 million, while building demolition costs are
estimated to be in the range of $80 - $85 million. Including a credit for the salvage value of
materials of $20 - $25 million, the study estimated that the building demolition cost would be
reduced to a net of $55 - $60 million. The study concluded that the total cost of the site cleanup
and demolition would likely be in the range of $60 - $80 million.
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https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2016/08/uy/full-task-force-report.pdf

My recollection is that the actual remediation cost came in under estimates, as the contamination was less than expected.

Also for Everett, the plan is to cap the existing site with gravel and other fill material, and build the stadium on top of what, in effect, would be a giant berm to protect against sea level rise and storm surge. I'm not going to go back and look at the height referenced in the Memorandum of agreement but I believe it would be 10-15 feet above Mean Higher High Water. (The MOA uses a slightly different datum, the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) which is the official vertical datum of the United States.)

One can get away with capping a site depending on planned use. Capping might not be feasible is the planned use is residential property. Capping may be feasible if the planned use is a parking lot.
 
TheRatmeister said:
My argument is that if you want to build a stadium, you hire a property developer. They will get you a stadium, and not much else. That is their job, after all. But that shouldn't be the target here, the size and scope of this area means that we should be hiring urban planners/designers to plan an entire district, which will then guide future development of smaller parcels in line with a master plan. Again, this place is 2.5x the size of Assembly, we're not particularly short on space. We should be thinking of a scaled up Assembly Sq, one of the most successful TOD projects in the region, which was a cooperation between property developers, businesses, the city of Somerville, and the MBTA (For the infill station). This is the kind of top-down planning you need for complete, cohesive, and inclusive developments.
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Here we have a polluted industrial hellscape that I'm guessing will cost $70 million + to just cleanup. We also have an economically challenged working class community (Everett) that sorely needs an economic infusion, including more housing, shopping, schools, everything basically. I can't see stalling this stadium project indefinitely, and probably killing it off, to get some area plan that supposedly lays out every aspect of development of not just this parcel, but surrounding parcels. Just building this stadium alone will urbanize and improve not only the stadium site, but will stimulate the redevelopment of that entire part of Everett, including new housing and new retail. Why hold all this up for a nice looking area plan? It's not worth jeopardizing the project and all the benefits it would bring to Everett
 
Charlie_mta said:
Here we have a polluted industrial hellscape that I'm guessing will cost $70 million + to just cleanup. We also have an economically challenged working class community (Everett) that sorely needs an economic infusion, including more housing, shopping, schools, everything basically. I can't see stalling this stadium project indefinitely, and probably killing it off, to get some area plan that supposedly lays out every aspect of development of not just this parcel, but surrounding parcels. Just building this stadium alone will urbanize and improve not only the stadium site, but will stimulate the redevelopment of that entire part of Everett, including new housing and new retail. Why hold all this up for a nice looking area plan? It's not worth jeopardizing the project and all the benefits it would bring to Everett
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You make very good points. My hesitation, though, is that if a stadium goes up without a TOD master plan for the whole area, then it might naturally end up being surrounded by wide stroads, huge parking lots, and other car-centric developments, which could be hard to roll back for a very long time. Demolishing blighted industrial buildings to build TOD (a la Assembly) is one thing, but grafting TOD onto newly-paved lots around a nice, new, busy stadium sounds like another.

I could be totally wrong. Maybe we need to Just Build It and then worry about the surrounding area later. Are there any other recently-build urban stadiums we could look at as case studies?
 
Charlie_mta said:
and all the benefits it would bring to Everett
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Would it really benefit Everett and its residents though? It would be disconnected from the rest of the city and not frequently used, especially by working class residents. Without good transport links it would have to be surrounded by parking lots, like Gillette is, and this could end up holding back development in the area, not advancing it, and because it would be used so infrequently it likely wouldn't get good transport links. New shopping that's purely meant to accompany a stadium would also probably look a lot like Patriot Place, big box stores right off 93 and Rt 1 for rich suburbanites to drive to, not for local residents. New jobs would mostly be minimum wage, fairly menial work, not something that would bring a ton of value.

Looking at Gillette, Foxborough's income per capita isn't significantly different than that of Mansfield, Wrentham, or Walpole, nor are their schools significantly better. Has the stadium really done much to enrich the lives of residents? Why should we expect a stadium in Everett to be different?
 
I would think proper zoning around the stadium area should control parking lot proliferation and the type of development. The Seaport district didn't have much of an area plan, that I'm aware of. Yet it has developed into an outstanding urban neighborhood, which took leadership at the city government level, public input, and private parties willing to invest in development of the area.

I see the greater stadium area in Everett as something similar. Here's how I see the stadium area developing. First to be built, the stadium. This improvement will spur interest by private parties to develop nearby parcels. In this will be residential apartment/condo developments, and some retail to serve those new residents as well as attendees of stadium events, The density and shape of those developments (urban vs. suburban) will be controlled by Everett's zoning and permitting process. It boils down to public input and city government leadership to shape the zoning of these parcels to ensure urban type development instead of suburban sprawl. I don't see the inevitability of a new stadium causing a sea of parking lots and big box stores.
 
TheRatmeister said:
It's not the whole thing, but a pretty sizable area around Courthouse was planned together. I believe Fan Pier was also done this way.
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Going back even further, all the post-big-dig Seaport redevelopment was guided by a SBW Public Realm Plan. BPDA's document finder sucks on mobile so I can't actually find the final plan, but here's a 1997 draft of it back from when it was still officially called Seaport.

To @Charlie_mta 's point, though, it does seem like the BCEC was authorized before the master plan was finalized.
 
What I would recommend is to approve and build the stadium in a timely manner, and then while it is under construction, the city of Everett complete an area plan that would control the types of development in the areas surrounding the stadium. There would be a moratorium on development outside the stadium site until the plan is completed.
 
stellarfun said:
For the Salem Harbor generating plant (coal and oil were used as duel) the cost of remediation and demolition were estimated prior to the construction a natural gas powered generating plant.


https://www.mass.gov/files/documents/2016/08/uy/full-task-force-report.pdf

My recollection is that the actual remediation cost came in under estimates, as the contamination was less than expected.

Also for Everett, the plan is to cap the existing site with gravel and other fill material, and build the stadium on top of what, in effect, would be a giant berm to protect against sea level rise and storm surge. I'm not going to go back and look at the height referenced in the Memorandum of agreement but I believe it would be 10-15 feet above Mean Higher High Water. (The MOA uses a slightly different datum, the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) which is the official vertical datum of the United States.)

One can get away with capping a site depending on planned use. Capping might not be feasible is the planned use is residential property. Capping may be feasible if the planned use is a parking lot.
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In many ways the stadium use is one of the easiest to remediate for.
 
Charlie_mta said:
What I would recommend is to approve and build the stadium in a timely manner, and then while it is under construction, the city of Everett complete an area plan that would control the types of development in the areas surrounding the stadium. There would be a moratorium on development outside the stadium site until the plan is completed.
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If we could do this then that would be reasonable, but from the perspective of the stadium developer, why would I take a several hundred million dollar risk on a stadium where I can't build significant amounts of parking, am uncertain about how transportation in the area will pan out, don't know what the surrounding future development would be, and can't plan my own development or retail space to try and reduce some of the uncertainty? That's an insane amount of risk you'd be mad to take on as a business.
 
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