Greenway budget calls for $13.2m
By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | March 5, 2008
In its first full year of control over the city's new corridor of parks, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy plans to spend $13.2 million for maintenance and operations and to complete elements left undone by the cash-strapped Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.
That planned spending, for fiscal 2010, will include $3.7 million to finish the parks - including installing signage and building maintenance facilities - and $3 million for park operations. The rest will go for administration, public and education programs, and other expenses.
The three-year-old conservancy yesterday issued its first-ever business plan at its monthly board meeting, but the budget is contingent on pending legislation that would provide $5.5 million a year of state funds for Greenway purposes, as well as make changes in the makeup of the current 10-member board.
The first public hearing on that bill, introduced last year by House Speaker Salvatore F. DiMasi, is scheduled for next week.
Asked what would happen to the business plan if the funding is not approved, conservancy board chairman Peter Meade said: "Back to square one."
The conservancy is a private nonprofit group that was created to assume maintenance, operational, and event-planning responsibility for the Greenway. The Greenway is 13.2 acres of green and open space in a 30-acre corridor downtown where the Central Artery stood, before it was replaced by underground tunnels in the $15 billion Big Dig project.
Meade has said from the outset that the conservancy, as long-term steward of the Greenway, would need to raise an endowment of $50 million to maintain it sufficiently and to make it - as is the organization's goal - "open, green, excellent, and welcoming to all." Meade said yesterday he still believes that much will be needed, and the conservancy has a goal of raising another $17 million or so over the next four years.
It raised $20 million by the end of last year, as it was required to do in its bylaws; about $7 million of that came from the Turnpike Authority.
Nancy Brennan, executive director of the conservancy, said the staff studied 23 organizations with responsibility for parks before deciding what was right for the Greenway. Standards for upkeep will be even higher than for the Boston Public Garden and Post Office Square Park, she said, and it will be maintained in an environmentally friendly manner.
A grand inaugural celebration of the Greenway parks is planned for the weekend of Oct. 4.
The costs of operating the Greenway will work out to more than $5 per square foot, Brennan said, because of the complicated path the corridor covers: It crosses 12 side streets as it courses from Causeway to Kneeland, has complex fountain and computer-driven lighting systems, needs maintenance facilities, and faces an intense schedule of events from May through October.
The conservancy will begin taking responsibility for the parks gradually - starting with the Chinatown Park in fiscal 2009, which begins June 30. In 2010, it will take over the other two regions as well, the four-block Wharf District and two blocks of elaborately designed parks in the North End.
The budget for fiscal 2009 is set at $7.5 million. For each of the fiscal years 2011 and 2012, the budget is set at $8.6 million. That is less than 2010's budget of $13.2 million because the conservancy will have completed the parks by then.
The $13.2 million in 2010 will come mostly from the state, private support, and $3.5 million of borrowed money.
