Globe Article on Waterfront

[itchy]

Fluff.

A somewhat under-detailed, overly positive article on the waterfront, IMO. That's not to disparage the strides that have been made. However, it is ludicrous to claim that the BRA has done such a bang-up job with the waterfront that it will "exorcise [the] ghosts" of the West End / Charles River Park: Thanks to the BRA, the "Seaport" waterfront today is planned to be an essential repeat of CRP, with its uniform architecture, superblocks and superfluous parks.

Originally Posted by Boston Globe

The Boston waterfront has arrived



By Tom Keane | MAY 11, 2012

Boston’s waterfront has exploded in the public consciousness. It feels like the newest, coolest, and most vibrant part of the city, pulsating with activity, suddenly crammed with tourists — and even longtime Boston residents — who marvel at newly discovered delights around every corner of its 47 miles.

That’s right: 47 miles. The waterfront stretches from the southernmost tip of Dorchester through South Boston, to downtown, the North End, Charlestown, and finally to East Boston. Eighty-five percent of the shore is pedestrian-friendly, part of the groundbreaking public way known as the HarborWalk. New apartments and condos are popping up everywhere, notably in South Boston, but also, hopefully, East Boston. And the list of attractions along its course is staggering. There are the marquee names (the USS Constitution, the Aquarium, the soon-to-reopen Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum, the Children’s Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum), parks galore (including the launching point to one of the most stunning of them all, the Boston Harbor Islands National Recreation Area), and myriad smaller amusements (tasting room of Harpoon Brewery, anyone?). And, of course, there are the retailers and restaurants that stretch its length, upscale and everyday, famous chefs and casual cooks. More are slated as eager businessmen and women, sensing money to be made, realize that the waterfront, no longer ignored and neglected, has arrived.

It’s been a long time coming. When road builders in the 1950s erected the “highway in the sky” — the elevated expressway — the land they chose lay right along the edge of the harbor. “Waterfront simply wasn’t valued,” says Richard Dimino, Boston’s transportation commissioner from 1985 to 1993 and now head of the business association A Better City. By 1988, the region’s abuse of Boston Harbor — widely known as “the dirtiest harbor in America” — was a national story, an attack line used by Vice President George H.W. Bush that helped derail the White House ambitions of Governor Michael Dukakis. “Two hundred years ago, tea was spilled in this harbor,” Bush said on a chartered boat in Boston that year. “Now it’s something else.” He was, sadly, correct. The harbor was little more than the metropolitan area’s sewer, a dead, stinking zone that repulsed anyone who got near.

But even as Bush was beating up on Dukakis, things were changing. A series of lawsuits brought in the mid-1980s resulted in a decision by US District Judge A. David Mazzone forcing a cleanup. Many years and more than $4.5 billion later, things are different. Since the new Deer Island sewage treatment plant began going online in 1995, the harbor has been restored by measures obvious (smells and floating feces) and not-so-obvious (water quality and the return of marine life). It has become today, almost unbelievably so, what the Environmental Protection Agency called “a great American jewel.”

But making the harbor into a place folks could love didn’t mean they could actually enjoy it. The elevated expressway, unregulated development, and years of mistreatment had left the waterfront almost inaccessible. And landowners along the way had built right up to the water’s edge. So even if people could get to the water, there weren’t many places they could go without hitting a dead end.

On a Monday night in late April, several hundred folks gather at the Boston Harbor Hotel at Rowes Wharf for a fund-raiser on behalf of The Boston Harbor Association, one of many advocacy groups that for years fought often lonely battles on behalf of the harbor. The association’s signature issue was the HarborWalk, a project that had its genesis under Mayor Raymond Flynn and focused on one simple goal: Make the entire waterfront accessible to the public.

The plan had an element of the quixotic to it (who even cared about the harbor?), with proponents often belittled as they harangued landowners over something that seemed so inconsequential. But that’s changed, as evidenced by the heavyweight guest list for this event, one that features financiers, developers, and senior government officials. The fund-raiser, billing itself a “celebration,” bubbles with the enthusiasm of those who see a long-sought objective within reach.

On a bright Saturday afternoon, I walk portions of the waterfront with the association’s president, Vivien Li. The HarborWalk is filled with pedestrians and bicyclists. Families picnic. Couples stroll hand in hand. Li points out the new headquarters for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, two 18-story buildings under construction near the ICA; empty sites ready for hotels and housing; and the location of the $5.5 million Boston Innovation Center, which would have its groundbreaking on May 1.

The HarborWalk is one critical piece of infrastructure that helps make the waterfront accessible, but certainly not the only one. The most visible efforts, in fact, were the tearing down of the elevated expressway in 2003 and 2004 and the construction of the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Where once there was a huge, green barrier (Mayor Thomas Menino used to call it “Boston’s other green monster”), now clean water beckons, aided by the city’s own “crossroads initiative” to reconnect its streets to the shoreline.

Then, too, there is the much-mocked Silver Line, a mass-transit link between Logan International Airport and South Station. The stations on the South Boston Waterfront initially seemed oversize and unneeded. Now, as cranes loom above them, they are better understood as a lure attracting billions of dollars in investment.

There are still risks. Development is concentrated on the South Boston Waterfront, but while the money is largely in place, another financial crisis like the one in 2008 could derail everything. The city has big ideas for new dwellings in East Boston, but they are still dreams that depend, in part, on a successful rollout of a water shuttle that would connect Maverick Square to Fan Pier. And there is a kind of chicken-and-egg problem that confronts the creation of any neighborhood. People are attracted to areas where there are basic amenities — supermarkets, for example. But those amenities won’t open until there are actually new residents. Residents and retailers both need to make a leap of faith.

Nevertheless, it seems clear that Boston’s center of gravity is shifting, moving away from Back Bay and downtown and toward the harbor. There is something about the water that stirs the soul, and it is remarkable how for so long Boston had figuratively turned its back on that water. Today, the city is reorienting itself.

None of this happened by accident. While many players had significant roles, the waterfront’s revival was fundamentally driven by good government — a phrase you don’t hear much these days. It is, argues former city councilor Lawrence DiCara, a shining example of how “activist government triggers economic development.” The story is a complex one, but the shorthand version is that it required the leadership of a succession of politicians and agencies — federal, state and local. That roster included, notably, Menino and the city’s planning agency, the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The aim was to do it right — there wouldn’t be second chances — so everyone took a long and measured view. “We could have done it earlier,” says Menino, “but we were choosy.”

The BRA has suffered its slings and arrows; it is still, one BRA planner laments, “haunted by the West End,” the tragic decision to demolish an entire neighborhood during the 1950s era of urban renewal. The waterfront, a series of new neighborhoods unfolding before us, may well exorcise those ghosts.

How much did it cost?

A back-of-the-envelope accounting of the public investment in the waterfront.

$3.8 billion:

$860 million:

Building the Deer Island Sewage Treatment Plant and its related systems.


Other work to improve water quality in Boston Harbor.

$15 billion:

The Big Dig, including dismantling the elevated expressway, excavating the tunnels, and building the Greenway.

$7 billion:

Estimated interest on the Big Dig’s bill, set to be paid off in 2038.

Tom Keane is a regular contributor to the Globe. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/...ryL/story.html

[BussesAin'tTrains]

What parts of the Boston waterfront are "crammed with tourists"? Long Warf/Commercial Warf and maybe the Children's Museum and Charlestown Navy Yard are the only touristy areas of the waterfront that I can think of...

Also funny how the the division of the Greenway with excess cross streets was actually a city initiative to reconnect the streets with the harbor...

[BostonUrbEx]

The only place even close to "crammed" is the Aquarium.

This guy probably should have walked the whole "47" miles first.

[JohnAKeith]

tl;dr

[czsz]

Has way more to do with the waterfront's transformation from industrial wasteland to recreation zone, which has occurred over the last half-century, than the much more recent efforts at the Seaport. In that sense, it's more old news than off base...the waterfront "arrived" as somewhere that wasn't a group of decaying piers filled with shifty longshoremen decades ago.

[Ron Newman]

Tourists are also at Christopher Columbus Park, Rowes Wharf, Castle Island, and the JFK Library.

[Shepard]

Out of curiosity, assuming many tourists do not bring a car (stats?) how do they get to JFK Library (shuttle bus from red line?) or Castle Island?

[underground]

I don't know how you could call the article fluff. Maybe a little overly optimistic, but the waterfront, taken in it's entirety (aka, not just the Seaport, which still, generally speaking has a ways to go) has done a complete 180. If you think just the Aquarium is crowded, you need to spend more time out there. From Charlestown down through the North End, Fort Point Channel, and the new Jimmy's, the area's packed with people.

[czsz]

Originally Posted by Shepard

Out of curiosity, assuming many tourists do not bring a car (stats?) how do they get to JFK Library (shuttle bus from red line?) or Castle Island?

I have vague recollections of taking some kind of shuttle bus when I've been out to JFK Library. I think it's UMass-owned and stops in campus too?

I don't know how you could call the article fluff. Maybe a little overly optimistic, but the waterfront, taken in it's entirety (aka, not just the Seaport, which still, generally speaking has a ways to go) has done a complete 180.

Yes, a 180 from where it was in 1965, but that was already the case decades ago. The relatively small number of successful changes since 2000 is not really newsworthy or more worth celebrating than those that were completed and already celebrated in the 90s.

This article is the equivalent of celebrating the fact that "Boston has finally turned the corner from car culture" because of the freeway revolts in the 60s-70s and the construction of the Silver Line.

[underground]

The continued transformation of the Navy Yard, gentrification of the North End, development through downtown thanks to removing the artery, development around Fort Point Channel, the ICA, Jimmy's Harborside, and the Boston Harbor Islands parks are all either recent developments or are things that are still developing. "Decades Ago" there was basically the Harbor Hotel, India Wharf, the Aquarium, and that's it. And even that's stretching the definition of "decades."

[datadyne007]

Originally Posted by underground

I don't know how you could call the article fluff. Maybe a little overly optimistic, but the waterfront, taken in it's entirety (aka, not just the Seaport, which still, generally speaking has a ways to go) has done a complete 180. If you think just the Aquarium is crowded, you need to spend more time out there. From Charlestown down through the North End, Fort Point Channel, and the new Jimmy's, the area's packed with people.

A recurring problem on this board is that people who don't even live in Boston are commenting on current urban conditions they are not even experiencing.

[KentXie]

The Navy Yard is never really packed. It attracts crowds but not as much as you guys are making it. Maybe during the Tall Ships and maybe during the 4th of July.

[underground]

It's one of my jogging routes, and it's packed every time I go through there on the weekend. With people going to the museum, the Constitution, the water fountain (sorry, can't remember the name), Tavern on the Water, Courageous Sailing Center, etc., etc, I think it more than qualifies as a success.

[czsz]

Let's take this piece by piece.

The continued transformation of the Navy Yard,

A long-term process that began long ago. When did the Navy Yard close? When did the USS Constitution open? There's been development there, sure, but it hasn't really seemed to have much of an impact in terms of making this a real neighborhood. I first visited this area in 1996ish and the last time I was there it didn't seem dramatically more busy.

gentrification of the North End

I'm not sure why we're celebrating this? The North End is one of Boston's cultural treasures, and gentrification is turning it into Beacon Hill / Back Bay with narrower, twistier streets.

development through downtown thanks to removing the artery

This is not only very slow moving, it's one block removed from the waterfront and has arguably taken focus / effort / money /recreational use away from it.

development around Fort Point Channel, the ICA, Jimmy's Harborside, and the Boston Harbor Islands parks are all either recent developments or are things that are still developing.

The Fort Point Channel area has clearly changed a lot architecturally, but I'd argue that, with the exception of the implementation of Harbor Walk, it actually has less of a variety of lively uses than it once did. The area suffered setbacks when the Tea Party museum burned and had to be rebuilt, when James Hook burned, and when the Computer Museum got swallowed by the Science Museum. The terrace out behind the Intercontinental has yet to take off as a popular public place, and it's too soon to tell for Atlantic Wharf.

I don't know how you can acknowledge that the Seaport doesn't deserve this level of praise and then go on to sing the virtues of the ICA and Jimmy's Harborside. An improvement? Yes, but this area is still wildly in flux and saying it's "arrived" is a bit of a stretch.

The Boston Harbor Islands are way too removed from the urban waterfront to really count for anything here.

"Decades Ago" there was basically the Harbor Hotel, India Wharf, the Aquarium, and that's it. And even that's stretching the definition of "decades."

Okay, maybe I should revise this comment. This all seems like old news to me, and it is by at least 3-5 years, particularly in the case of the Seaport, and maybe "decades ago" was a huge stretch. I do think though that this article could have been published in 2007 without many changes (though it would still be inaccurate with respect to many of the changes' impact) and wonder why it's coming out now.

Originally Posted by datadyne007

A recurring problem on this board is that people who don't even live in Boston are commenting on current urban conditions they are not even experiencing.

Weren't you just commenting on Boston's current urban conditions while living in Berlin?

[datadyne007]

Originally Posted by czsz

Weren't you just commenting on Boston's current urban conditions while living in Berlin?

For 3 months? Nothing even finished while I was gone.

[czsz]

Sorry; I thought you'd been there way longer. Still, it's not as if people who don't live in Boston can't, you know, visit and see things with their own eyes as well. And it's not as if people who do live in Boston get out to every neighborhood in the city and experience its (re)development first hand on a constant basis. I know I barely ever visited the Seaport over several years living in Cambridge.

[underground]

Originally Posted by czsz

And it's not as if people who do live in Boston get out to every neighborhood in the city and experience its (re)development first hand on a constant basis.

But I, ironically enough, live one block from the Waterfront, and am up and down it from Charlestown to the BOA Pavilion regularly. I'm not trying to be mean here. I'm just letting you know that, based on my first hand knowledge, you're view from afar is incorrect.

The North End isn't now and won't be any time in the near future like Beacon Hill or the Back Bay, and it's the influx of new residents combined with the old that's turned it into the destination it is today. You've got some rose colored glasses on there. Joe Tecce's was never that good. Especially compared to what you can get today. The terrace at Atlantic Wharf are already a major success, the James Hook never left, and new restaurants are springing up in Fort Point Channel all the time. The Seaport deserves cautious optimism, but Jimmy's is bumping every weekend night and the ICA is mobbed with people on the weekend. They are indisputable successes. Don't know why you think the Harbor Islands aren't part of the discussion. We're talking about the waterfront and they're definitely a part of it. The pavilion and ferry terminal are also right downtown, are done very nicely, and draw a ton of visitors.

[Ron Newman]

The JFK Library and UMass-Boston together run a free, frequent shuttle bus from JFK/UMass station.

People who are commenting that the article is not 'news' are somewhat missing the point. This is a feature article in the Sunday roto magazine, not a front-page news article. It is not written for those of us who use the waterfront daily or weekly, but more for the much larger number of readers who live far from it and may not have gone there in years.

[itchy]

Originally Posted by underground

I don't know how you could call the article fluff.

It's not fluff because it's necessarily wrong; it's fluff because, right or wrong in its thesis, it consists of no real analysis, no numbers to back up its claim, and relies instead on a few anecdotes.

If you're going to avoid making a quantitative, fact-based case and instead want to rely on impressionist snapshots, the piece should at least be a bit longer and more in-depth (this is all of, what, 10 paragraphs?). And where are the interviews, aside from Vivian Li, the BRA and a few not-disinterested city pols (who are all obviously going to say the waterfront is seeing a renaissance)? In short, it's not very good reporting.

Most importantly, there's this:

Originally Posted by Boston Globe

None of this happened by accident. While many players had significant roles, the waterfront’s revival was fundamentally driven by good government — a phrase you don’t hear much these days. It is, argues former city councilor Lawrence DiCara, a shining example of how “activist government triggers economic development.” The story is a complex one, but the shorthand version is that it required the leadership of a succession of politicians and agencies — federal, state and local. That roster included, notably, Menino and the city’s planning agency, the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The aim was to do it right — there wouldn’t be second chances — so everyone took a long and measured view. “We could have done it earlier,” says Menino, “but we were choosy.”

The BRA has suffered its slings and arrows; it is still, one BRA planner laments, “haunted by the West End,” the tragic decision to demolish an entire neighborhood during the 1950s era of urban renewal. The waterfront, a series of new neighborhoods unfolding before us, may well exorcise those ghosts.

Menino and the BRA are dropping the ball in the Seaport/"Innovation District," and badly. The BRA is not redeeming itself from the West End; it's repeating the exact same monolithic-superblock-and-parks mistakes. It's had a bad name for years, and keeps proving why its reputation is deserved.

I don't understand why the author felt the need to write an apologia for the BRA, to make an argument in an "objective" feature piece (it's not an op-ed making the case for the BRA) without any scrap of evidence to show why the BRA now deserves our plaudits. You'd think he was trying to get on their good side in order to gain some zoning variance, to butter them up to go around the intentionally too-strict ordinances -- the main way things get built in Menino and the BRA's Boston.

[Ron Newman]

Depends whether you think the 'mistake' of the West End is the demolition or the subsequent construction. If the former, the Seaport is not comparable because there was no existing neighborhood to demolish.