Steve Bailey's latest anti-development diatribe. He's so old and out of touch with the modern city. I can't wait for the money-hemmoraging Globe to finally ax him.
And love him or hate him - how cool is Don Chiafaro???? Check out the swipe he takes at lil' Stevey at the end!!! I wish more developers would stand up to this whining little turd.
Greenway sanity
By Steve Bailey, Globe Columnist | March 7, 2008
Don Chiofaro. Ted Raymond. Pay attention, please. This is about you.
We know that our mayor, Tom Menino, likes to make news when he appears before the wall-to-wall crowd at the annual meeting of the Municipal Research Bureau. Two years ago Menino made page one headlines with his call for a dramatic 1,000-foot tower that would "symbolize the full scope of this city's greatness." Today, speaking in the same ballroom at the Seaport Hotel, Menino will again make news: This time he will call not for taller towers but shorter - at least on the city's new Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.
As always, the devil is in the details - and the follow-through. This is a mayor who has rarely seen a big building he doesn't like. An 800-foot building is shorter than a 1,000-foot building, but neither fits on the Greenway. So it is encouraging that Menino is now directing the Boston Redevelopment Authority to pursue a comprehensive zoning review of the Greenway, tightening height and density guidelines.
Menino's point: The public has invested billions, and it has a right to protect that investment from overly ambitious development. Tough talk for a mayor not known for being tough on developers. We will see.
Unlike the critics - my friend Tom Keane, for instance, who in the Globe Magazine recently suggested we would be better off filling in the Greenway with buildings - I remain encouraged. Stand on one end of the Greenway and look to the other and what you see is blue sky and an expanse of open space. That is priceless - except we have paid more than enough for it. The Greenway remains a work in progress; we are too impatient. We will get it right, and it will become a new signature for the city.
One measure of the Greenway's success is the rush to build all around it. Developers understand that value. Russia Wharf is ready to begin construction. Chiofaro, builder of International Place, has paid handsomely for the enormous, ugly garage beside the New England Aquarium. North Station and the Bulfinch Triangle are hot. Developers would like to get moving around South Station and Chinatown. The credit crunch is the big inhibitor.
All good things. After $15 billion in public investment, private investment was supposed to follow. What we don't need is a series of Manhattan-like towers obscuring the sky above the Greenway. Or more mediocre Houston knockoffs like the InterContinental Boston hotel. Height is appropriate in some places, not in others. The Greenway is a place for special care. Building better, not bigger should be the measure.
Some developers are suffering from Greenway madness. Chiofaro, for instance, has shown a model of his proposed project at the aquarium that approaches 1,000 feet, says one person who has seen it. Raymond, whose projects include Trinity Place in Copley Square and Flagship Wharf in the Charlestown Navy Yard, has floated a vision for the Government Center garage that includes an 800-foot tower, a 600-foot tower, and two smaller towers. Situated at the intersection of the Green and Orange lines, Raymond's site is intriguing. The issues are how big and where does the height belong? Hint: Away from the Greenway.
In an interview yesterday, Raymond said he "shares the mayor's passion for the Greenway," and expects to make his plans public shortly. Chiofaro, apparently in a very long meeting, didn't call me back. But in an "open letter" after my "Greenway Madness" column in December, Chiofaro said I got it wrong when I said he was considering as much as 60 stories on his garage site. "A major factual error," he called it. But he didn't say how big he wanted to build. My error, if there was one, may have been in underestimating the size of his ambition.
"First off, Steve-from-Poughkeepsie, this is my town, too," Chiofaro wrote. "I was born in Boston, I've lived nowhere else, I've chosen to make my career here, and I care about this city intensely. The Chiofaro Company has indeed developed International Place as the largest office complex in the Financial District - sometimes size does matter.
"The Greenway presents an unprecedented opportunity for the city," he went on, "and it comes with commensurate responsibility." On that we do agree, Don.
Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at
bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902.
http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/03/07/greenway_sanity?mode=PF
