Rose Kennedy Greenway

Interesting, don't know if anyone's mentioned this proposed project in Louisiana.

Lafitte Greenway linear park progress derailed, but fresh start promised
By Molly Reid, The Times-Picayune

As Mayor Mitch Landrieu's administration finishes its first week on the job, supporters of the Lafitte Greenway, a proposed linear park following the 3.1-mile French Quarter-to-Lakeview footprint of a former railway, are looking for answers about the fate of the project's stalled design and construction.

Today, the annual hike of the proposed greenway, led by the advocacy group Friends of Lafitte Corridor, will have a markedly different tone from last year's event.

"We were pretty pumped up" at the 2009 hike, said the group's president, Bart Everson.

And why not? The city had recently allocated $11.6 million in federal Community Development Block Grant money for the project, which aims to turn the former railroad right of way into a public park and path for pedestrians and cyclists. The city was beginning to gather proposals from design firms for the project's planning and construction.

"We were really excited about that, and we were hoping that by this year we could have a groundbreaking," Everson said.

The 2009 hike attracted more than 200 participants, "which was a first for us and really confirmed our hope that the project was really blossoming in terms of public support," said Daniel Samuels, a founding member of the Lafitte group.

Soon after the city inked a contract in November with the Austin, Texas-based firm Design Workshop, however, the project fell apart.

According to Dubravka Gilic, a grant administrator for the city, the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development began scrutinizing all city projects using CDBG money. HUD was questioning two aspects of the Nagin administration's policy for awarding city contracts: one concerning points awarded for bidders with local offices, the other regarding the mayor's ability to select outside the four most competitive bids.

Though it wasn't clear there was an issue with the Design Workshop deal, which had the support of the Lafitte group, "the city decided to pre-emptively rebid some of the projects in question," Everson said.

The city terminated the Design Workshop contract in January and sent out a new solicitation. The bid window closed in mid-April, but the Nagin administration did not award a new contract, Gilic said.

"I can't convey how frustrated and heartbroken we were when we took this giant step back," Samuels said. Design Workshop "basically had the rug pulled out from underneath them."

Complicating the issue was shifting oversight of the project, which originally belonged to the Office of Recovery and Development Administration and was then handed over to both the City Planning Commission and the Department of Public Works. After the contract was rebid, oversight went to Nagin aide Kenya Smith, who left City Hall last week, Gilic said.

The Landrieu administration said Friday that Cedric Grant, one of six deputy mayors in the reconfigured City Hall, will oversee the project.

"Mayor Landrieu is committed to seeing the Lafitte Greenway project through," said spokesman Ryan Berni. "It's an important project from an urban planning perspective and is a valuable recreational green space that can be utilized and enjoyed by the entire community."

Design Workshop principal architect Steven Spears said the firm resubmitted its bid and "would be honored to work with the city again."

Once the new contract is awarded, the greenway's design and "phase one" construction, consisting of the basic path and green space rehabilitation, could be finished in less than two years, Everson said. He hopes that today's hike would remind residents that, despite the past year's glitches, the corridor is worth the wait.

"If people can come out and see this land in its raw state and see the potential, they can envision what it could be," Everson said. "We really feel like this could be a transformative project for New Orleans."
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http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2010/05/lafitte_greenway_linear_park_p.html

From last year's tour: http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/06/tour_shows_what_planned_lafitt.html

More on the Friends of Lafitte Corridor: http://folc-nola.org/
 
That sounds more like the Minuteman Bikeway or the Cambridge-Somerville Community Path than like the Rose Kennedy Greenway.
 
From the South End News today:

No more Greenway Conservancy funding without accountability
by Shirley Kressel
contributing writer
Tuesday May 11, 2010

The private corporate lobby calling itself the "Greenway Conservancy," cultivating its "struggling nonprofit" image, keeps up its drumbeat - MORE MONEY - despite its already huge taxpayer subsidy. Some in the press have started to expose its overstuffed bureaucracy, and at this budget season, there are many questions for our state government to ask before another public dollar goes to this group.

Why does Conservancy maintenance for the ten-acre Central Artery median-strip park require a budget half the $15 million that Boston?s Parks and Recreation Department spends for 2,500 acres? And why did this group of private business interests get all the state funding it requested, $2.5 million in FY09 and $3 million in FY10, just for the asking, while the state Department of Conservation and Recreation, caring for almost a half-million acres, was cut by 23 percent last year and stands to lose another eight percent this year, as Boston Park Advocates reports?

Why is the Conservancy being allowed to continue using operating policies that have not received the legally required state approval? The Conservancy says its park use guidelines are just awaiting state i-dotting and signing. But in fact, the state objects to the Conservancy?s park user fees and limited "free speech zones," and evidently these issues remain unresolved.

Why is the Conservancy demanding another $2.6 million from the state for the coming fiscal year, without having provided the detailed reports on revenues and expenditures required by its enabling legislation? By law, "... 3 months after the close of the calendar year, the conservancy shall prepare an annual report ... detailing all revenues and expenditures of funds for the prior year, regardless of source." Where is all this information? The state should withhold funding until it is all provided - and thoroughly analyzed.

Instead of opening its books, the Conservancy is trying to convince the state that it is actually operating with too little money, by doing a "benchmarking" study comparing its per-acre expenditures to those of parks they selected as "comparables." The Conservancy?s budget, proposed to climb to $8 million next year, is slated to ultimately reach $11 million - about $1 million per acre annually. Yet, the study report, without revealing the parks? data or the analysis, concludes that the Conservancy is under-spending. There is no credibility to this "finding." In fact, the Conservancy report itself says that a "regular park" costs $15,000 per acre a year to maintain - and that?s far more than the City?s $6,000 per acre expenditure. New York?s Central Park, the most iconic and heavily visited park in the world, operates on $25 million, or $30,000 per acre, annually. In any case, no secretive studies are necessary to find out how much this park care really costs; MassDOT should simply issue a request for competitive bids. This is a basic good-management procedure, one that the Conservancy has always refused to allow, in order to obfuscate its massive over-spending.

Most of the money is going to its burgeoning administrative staff; the latest job posting is for an assistant for the executive director and the staff of "20-25" employees. The Conservancy refuses to reveal its maintenance contract with Work, Inc., a government-subsidized organization that arranges work for disabled people, so no one can see how little the basic work actually costs. Why should a contract for state park maintenance be kept secret? How can this be tolerated by MassDOT, which is providing the funding? Shouldn?t this be a public record?

The Conservancy has now managed to get the City sidewalks across the street into its scope, so it can expand its nominal acreage by fifty percent to dilute the per-acre cost, and is already lamenting how expensive it is to maintain sidewalks. It will also, as explained at the recent public meeting, include the Chinatown Mary Soo Hoo Park, now being refurbished, in its empire, to justify yet more funding and to increase its power base.

The Conservancy?s constant crying poor has predictably drawn flak onto Mayor Thomas Menino, and he has again stepped into the picture (he has already given it over a million City dollars). According to Boston Redevelopment Authority reports at the last Conservancy meeting, Menino is saying that he will give the Conservancy some money - but only if the state puts in the legislated 50 percent or more of its proposed budget. Note to state: Do not take him up on this "offer." This is a political ploy to squeeze money out of the state, and will lead to yet more over-funding of this boondoggle. And why does he have money for this, but not for libraries? Or teachers? Or even City parks?

It is unconscionable that so much money has gone to one park - or rather, to its operators. The Conservancy is an arm of the politically wired Artery Business Committee, a group of real estate and other business interests who engineered this takeover of the park over the course of many years. They manufactured a crisis, making everyone believe that the state couldn?t afford to take care of the park and promising to "rescue" us with private funding - which they later "discovered" was impossible. After all the promises, the state will, as the enabling legislation allows, end up paying $5.5 million a year for work that should cost a couple of hundred thousand dollars - and losing public control over the land as well.

Yet, no matter what the Conservancy does, all is forgiven and it gets more money and power. This group is evidently beyond accountability. What is going on? Who is lobbying for this money? What legislators are protecting this private Conservancy? Every official in the city and state should be outraged; yet, this flies under the radar while urgently needed public services are slashed. Governor Deval Patrick eliminated the hundred-year-old Ferguson Industries for the Blind, putting 37 people out of work, to save $800,000 a year. Yet he has millions available to give to this profligate organization, where the top handful of administrators take home that much, led by an Executive Director paid $225,000 a year.

Fiscal-year funding time is here again, and MassDOT should halt this gravy train - now.

Write to your state legislators, especially to Representative Aaron Michlewitz (rep.aaronmichlewitz@hou.state.ma.us), representing most of the park area, to Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz (sonia.chang-diaz@state.ma.us), representing the Chinatown portion, and to Jeff Mullan (jeffrey.mullan@state.ma.us), head of MassDOT, and demand that all funds be withheld from the Conservancy until we get "check-book level" detail for every dollar that has gone into and out of this organization since it began to get public funding in 2004.


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.
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If this isn't a full-blown denial, I don't know what is:

Greenway planners shifting approach
Simplicity, open vistas finding favor, as major building projects fail
By Casey Ross, Globe Staff | May 16, 2010
As first envisioned, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway was to be adorned with a series of ultramodern buildings ? a garden under glass, museums, and a gleaming YMCA ? that would bring crowds to a welcoming open corridor traversing Boston?s core.

But four years later, with none of them yet built, park planners and local leaders are coming to an unexpected realization: The failure to build may prove a blessing. They increasingly believe the Greenway works without bulky new structures, offering expansive views of the city and its waterfront. Even the gleaming ribbon of traffic emerging from the web of cables of the Zakim Bridge only to disappear again beneath the park?s surface is mesmerizing in its way.

?Now that people can walk and experience the Greenway, I?m not sure that putting buildings there is necessarily the best thing to do,?? said Kairos Shen, chief planner for the Boston Redevelopment Authority. ?We have to ask what is the impact of having structures in these critical locations.??

Shen and others are coming to appreciate a building-free Greenway for another reason: It is much harder and more expensive than they initially thought to get the cultural and community institutions built.

The key problem is the buildings were slated to go over the ramps that bring traffic to and from the submerged highway. That means platforms would have to be built to support them, at much higher cost to the developers.

In 2006, the state set aside $31 million for platforms at three parcels, for the Boston Museum, the New Center for the Arts and Culture, and a new YMCA. But a recent analysis of the Y?s project determined its platform alone would cost $25 million.

?We?re just now learning the full extent of the costs here, and we haven?t come up with a plan to deal with it yet,?? said Peter O?Connor, head of real estate for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, which last year took over responsibility for developing over the ramps from the now-defunct Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

With its budget problems, the state doesn?t have money for these increased construction costs, which have also added to the fund-raising problems of the developers of the buildings. The backers of the New Center have scrapped their project altogether, while the Boston Museum team is exploring a nearby site, off the Greenway. And the YMCA, the only one of the three still in play, has scaled back its proposed building to lower costs.

Despite the new thinking about keeping the Greenway open, YMCA officials said they are still trying to raise about $20 million for a four-story, 75,000-square-foot building over the ramps along North Washington Street. But they are well short of the goal.

?I?m surprised by the lack of interest by the big foundations and corporate Boston in supporting this project,?? said John Ferrell, president of the YMCA of Greater Boston. He said some of the reluctance may be because of the slow economy, but that there seems to be something else at play: ?I guess it?s the legacy of the Big Dig,?? Ferrell said. ?No one wants anything to do with it. I don?t know what other organizations have found, but that?s what we?re finding.??

For now, state and city officials support the Y. But they are moving in a parallel process to examine whether the Greenway would be better off without any new buildings to clutter it.

O?Connor, for example, said state and city officials should now solicit public input over what to do next: ?Do we keep working in this direction or think about another way of covering those ramps???

The ramps cannot be left as is. Under the terms of the Big Dig permit, the state is legally obligated to cover them. Moreover, they create gaping holes that disrupt the flow of the Greenway, in places forcing pedestrians to detour around them and showering the park with traffic noise.

State Representative Aaron Michlewitz, whose district includes the North End, has filed legislation that would provide public funds to defray the costs of building over the ramps. But even if no buildings get built, he said, the state must find a way to cover the ramps.

?It?s a noise thing and an aesthetics thing for the people of the North End,?? said Michlewitz.

Some of his constituents are tired of waiting.

?For years I listened to public officials say, ?If we can?t find developers to build, we?ll cover over the ramps,?? said Nancy Caruso, chairwoman of the North End Waterfront Central Artery Committee. ?So to me, that would be the honorable thing to do. But what?s honor today? Maybe I?m too old-fashioned.??

Meantime, the nonprofit conservancy that manages the Greenway for the state is exploring its own solutions. For example, on the parcel near Faneuil Hall that was to host the Boston Museum, the conservancy is proposing to plant a half-acre tree nursery, and paint a mural to liven the concrete walls of the ramp there.

The nursery would have more than 150 trees, selected for their ability to thrive in urban environments. Once old enough, the trees would be harvested incrementally and relocated to schools, community gardens and neighborhoods streets around the city. State and Boston officials have indicated early support for the nursery, but would need to give formal approvals.

Conservancy officials are also preparing to plant additional trees and other landscaping in the space between High Street and Seaport Boulevard where the New Center for Arts and Culture was to go.

Those additional plantings, as well as the nursery, are intended to be interim improvements. But conservancy officials said if they prove popular, the parcels could permanently become park space.

?I think people?s reaction to these parcels as open space should inform the question of what should happen to them in the future,?? said Nancy Brennan, executive director of the conservancy. ?This is a time to reframe our vision of the Greenway and what it should be. It?s a chance to get it right.??
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http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2010/05/16/greenway_planners_shifting_approach/

This is pretty much: "Oh we weren't able to fund and construct everything we promised to do, but the park will be better without them. Just trust us on this." < insert salesman wink and smile here >
 
^ That's called "sour grapes."

Kairos Shen is either an idiot or a lackey (probably the latter).
 
Are you kidding me? No. No, no, no. Please tell me this is a joke.

This is how incredibly detrimental zoning laws are made.

Please, State Street. Libery Mutual. Bain, Fidelity, Chiofaro, for chrissakes SOMEONE give the Y money to build

Fucking Parcel 9. That would have been great.

A nursery?! Really?!

This is a dark, dark day for Boston's development scene.
 
Developers have the balls to stand up to the Menino and Shen.

Why can't architects, who have presumably attended years of education to learn how successful buildings are designed and how functional, livable cities are made, stand up? Surely they realize what a crock Shen is. Why don't they say anything? They've got nothing to lose - Menino can't simply block developers from choosing certain firms.
 
kennedy said:
Why can't architects, who have presumably attended years of education to learn how successful buildings are designed and how functional, livable cities are made, stand up? Surely they realize what a crock Shen is. Why don't they say anything? They've got nothing to lose - Menino can't simply block developers from choosing certain firms.
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Architects serve at the pleasure of their masters. They have plenty to lose.
 
Their masters are their clients, no? Clients surely aren't pleased by the ridiculous methods by which the city restricts development. So wouldn't the "pleasure of their masters" entail critique of zoning laws and development policy in the city?
 
kennedy said:
Developers have the balls to stand up to the Menino and Shen.

Why can't architects, who have presumably attended years of education to learn how successful buildings are designed and how functional, livable cities are made, stand up? Surely they realize what a crock Shen is. Why don't they say anything? They've got nothing to lose - Menino can't simply block developers from choosing certain firms.
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Shen is an architect....but he sure isn't a knowledgeable one.
 
The suburbanization of the city continues.

The "planning" coming out of the BRA isn't worthy of Rt 128 office park. Can Menino actually be this oblivious or is he just modelling the whole city after his beloved suburban Readville?
 
This city used to build entire neighborhoods out of fetid tidal marshland, reshape entire rivers and bays, regrade massive hills, create miles of rich linear pastoral parkland which was the envy of the world, build massive bridges across vast expanses, propose creating entire islands........ etc etc.

Now the city can't even keep a library open, build a single tower over a hole downtown, or plant a few trees anywhere near Olmsted quality on one of the most visible thoroughfares in the city.

As far as expecting Architects to save the day:

Urbanism is dead at the hands of the Corbusian, Sertian, Koolhaus cult of worship. And the 'new' urbanists (which are really the old City Beautiful urbanists whom got silenced decades ago) unfortunately are too obsessed with style, building new tract developments rather than fixing existing fabric, and harping on the automobile as the greatest evil ever, to see the bigger picture.

The indoctrination of disdain for the public and their tastes by the theory obsessed hacks in academia has also been a contributing factor towards the failure of the profession to further the public good. No major published architecture firms wants to be viewed as still dumb enough to make a building something 'nice looking' in general, rather than aiming to impress his handful of like-minded architect peers while disdaining the general public and its tastes.
 
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kennedy said:
Their masters are their clients, no?
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Yes.

Clients surely aren't pleased by the ridiculous methods by which the city restricts development. So wouldn't the "pleasure of their masters" entail critique of zoning laws and development policy in the city?
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It would entail that, but the masters are mostly interested in not rocking the boat. This goes as far as keeping architects out of important meetings with the BRA and other authorities.

Never know what they'll say.
 
Damn them.

Why can't the "theory obsessed hacks in academia" start theorizing on how to create better cities?
 
Too much education.

The problem ain't that folks are ignorant; the problem is they know so much that ain't so.
 
kennedy said:
Damn them.

Why can't the "theory obsessed hacks in academia" start theorizing on how to create better cities?
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That would require academia to revisit all the pre-modernist theories of architecture and urbanism to adapt the historically successful ones to contemporary use. Since academia has spent a century discrediting and instilling disdain of all this stuff in their students, the chances of that happening are slim to none.
 
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