Celebration today to mark progress as Greenway work enters final phase
By Michael Levenson, Globe Staff | July 22, 2007
Four workers lowered a slender red maple into a hole in the sidewalk outside Quincy Market. Near a glass office tower in the Financial District, workers on their hands and knees used padded mallets to tap granite slabs into place, creating a walkway around a fresh field of grass. Under the 36-story headquarters of State Street Corporation near Chinatown, water bubbled from a fountain as workers spread sealant on a stone terrace shaded by bamboo.
Seventeen years after officials said the Central Artery in downtown Boston would be replaced by shady boulevards, babbling fountains, and quiet lawns, they are finally making good on their promise to build the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. This fall, the project's three major parks -- near the North End, Wharf District, and Chinatown -- will open, potentially transforming the look and feel of the city.
Office workers cooped up in cubicles, tourists strolling Faneuil Hall, and neighbors who have endured years of fist-shaking traffic and late-night jack-hammering will be able to grab a sandwich and relax on the mile-long expanse, which stretches from North Station to Chinatown.
"It finally seems to be looking good," said Bob McAleer , an engineer who has watched the parks being built from a third-story window in his office on High Street. "There's actually some green in the Greenway."
Today, on what would have been the 117th birthday of Rose Kennedy, matriarch of the political dynasty, officials will throw a party to celebrate the milestone with face-painting, dancing, and hip-hop on Christopher Columbus Park near the North End.
"Every day as you go by the Greenway you see improvements -- new bushes being planted, brickwork being done," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said. "And if you come back and don't see it for a week, you see the real progress being made in the planting and landscaping of the Greenway."
Tourists heard as much from the driver of their Duck Tour, who bellowed his praise as he drove near South Station last week. "I can't tell you how excited we are about this," the driver crowed over the loudspeaker. "Actually, it opens up a whole different part of Boston."
The idea for the Greenway was hatched in the 1970s and honed in the 1980s when state officials began formalizing plans to bury the elevated Central Artery. Officials envisioned a thriving ribbon of green like Las Ramblas in Barcelona or Battery Park in Manhattan that would reconnect downtown with the city's historic waterfront. But as the decades passed, the vision fell prey to squabbling over who would fund, design, and control the parks -- the city, the state, or the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
"It was 10 years before we got cracking on it," former governor Michael S. Dukakis said. "Responsibility should have been assigned right from the beginning. It's caused unnecessary delay and unnecessary controversy."
The Interstate 93 tunnels had already opened in 2003 when officials created the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy, a private, nonprofit corporation to manage the parks in 2004. That year, they dismantled the Central Artery and set about building the Greenway.
Over the past several months, workers planted 1,300 trees on either side of the Greenway, varieties such as red maple and London plane that will survive car fumes and sea breezes. They covered 27 acres with loam and grass seed, serpentine walkways, day lilies, lavender, and boxwood.
Last week, much of the Greenway still looked like a construction site, surrounded by Jersey barriers and chain-link fencing, and strewn with backhoes, trash barrels, orange cones, and litter.
But come August, Turnpike officials say they will cart away the mess and open the first park -- a one-acre stretch in Chinatown. The Asian-influenced park features a giant red gate, a rough-hewn fountain and a promenade planted with bamboo, willow, Chinese cherry, ginkgo, azaleas and peonies.
Soon after Labor Day, they will open the parks near the North End, spaces designed to look like the porch on an Italian villa with vine-covered pergolas, a fountain, and cafe tables and chairs. Soon afterward, the largest, most complex parks, spanning five acres in the Wharf District, will open.
They feature a central fountain that shoots columns of water, a dozen illuminated sculptures called light blades, and a granite seawall that once marked the city's shoreline and was excavated during the building of the I-93 tunnels.
"These are bamboo trees -- fancy, huh?" said George Wong , 72, pointing at the Chinatown park from his parking attendant's booth on Essex Street. "It's very nice. I just hope they keep it up."
By 2014, officials say, at least three new buildings will rise on the Greenway: a YMCA near the North End, a history-themed Boston Museum near Quincy Market, and the New Center for Arts and Culture, an exhibition space near Rowes Wharf to be designed by the architect Daniel Libeskind.
The biggest hurdle facing officials is what to do with a large swath near Congress Street, where plans for a "garden under glass" collapsed for lack of funding. Workers have covered the land with grass, shrubs and walkways while the city, state, Turnpike and Conservancy debate a final design.
Officials are also deciding what to do with a half-acre parcel near Commercial Street where officials shelved plans for a memorial to the Armenian genocide. Menino said the memorial would encourage others to build their own memorials on the Greenway.
Supporters of the Greenway also worry about its upkeep, if, as they hope, thousands come to the parks to stroll, picnic, and play.
The Conservancy has raised $16.5 million toward a goal of $20 million for events and maintenance. But some say that might not be enough. And officials have not decided which agency will pick up trash, patch holes in the grass, and fix broken benches and sidewalks.
"The long-range issue is the maintenance -- who will maintain the Greenway?" Menino asked. "Who's going to do the work that's necessary to maintain the beauty? That's a question that has yet to be resolved."
:wink: