02.18.2022

Hounding the housing slackers | Labs, labs, labs | New MassGOP lows | About Contrarian Boston |

Boston Olympics foe vows to take on municipal housing slackers

Chris Dempsey torpedoed the half-baked push to bring sports’ costliest extravaganza to Boston with his No Boston Olympics campaign in 2015.

Now Dempsey, a former state transportation official, has thrown his hat in the ring for state auditor, a low-key post that comes with a staff of 200 and lots of potential to make a splash pursuing all sorts of investigations.

True to form, Dempsey is already thinking outside the box when it comes to the state auditor’s role.

If elected, Dempsey told Contrarian Boston he’ll keep a close eye on whether cities and towns are truly complying with new state regulations aimed at spurring construction of hundreds of thousands of apartments, homes and condos near T stations.

Dempsey contends it’s well within the purview of the auditor to look closely at whether local officials are complying with the MBTA Communities law, or simply finding new ways to block housing.

With officials in Newton and other suburbs already discussing ways to dodge the new rules – as detailed in Wednesday’s edition of CB - it has already become a concern.

“I think the zoning is the critical issue here,” Dempsey said. “We have not had enough Democrats who are willing to say we need more housing growth, in addition to robust affordable housing programs.”

BTW: Dempsey also pledged a thorough review of the troubled State Police bureaucracy, a major concern among Democratic Party activists right now.

More on that in Monday’s Contrarian Boston.

Labs, labs, and more labs

Forget about new offices, apartments and shops. Pretty much the only thing developers want to build these days are labs, labs, and more labs.

There are now more than 80 different biotech conversions in the pipeline or in construction across Massachusetts, says Bob Coughlin, managing director of JLL’s life sciences practice.

Some of the conversions involve owners of empty office buildings looking to jump on the life sciences band wagon, while others involve new projects still in the planning stages.

It’s a number that has likely doubled if not tripled over the past few years, said Coughlin, former head of the Massachusetts Biotechnology Council, and, before that, a top state economic development official and state lawmaker.

“Office buildings up and down Route 128, once known as America’s Technology Highway, are being converted to life sciences research and development, and, in some cases, manufacturing,” he said.

MassGOP turmoil and finances hit new lows

Chances for a truly competitive governor’s race this fall are getting slimmer by the day.

The state Republican party should be focusing its energies finding a viable candidate to go up against the Dem party’s likely nominee, state Attorney General Maura Healey.

Instead, the GOP’s beleaguered moderates are fighting what appears to be an uphill battle to oust hardline Trumpie Jim Lyons, the state party chairman who’s driving what’s left of the MassGOP into the ground.

And the infighting has escalated, according to this Globe piece.

The lowlights? Well, for starters, the state party can barely pay its bills, let alone help finance a gubernatorial campaign, with just $75,000 in its coffers.

Meanwhile, Lyons is now suing the party’s treasurer, Patrick Crowley. His offense? Crowley refused to authorize any more payments, citing a lack of quorum at state committee meetings after walkouts by moderates looking to force Lyons out.

Apparently, at the state committee’s last meeting in January, things got so heated that “Lyons threatened to have more than one state committee member ejected by security,” the Globe reports.

Ouch.

Can the governor’s race truly be over before it even really begins? The way things are going on the Republican side of the aisle in Massachusetts, that’s a distinct possibility.

Quick Hits

The New Yorker has a piece on soon-to-retire NYT editor Dean Baquet and the unprecedented growth of the newsroom during his reign. He can partly thank Donald Trump for some of that growth, considering how NYT online subscriptions zoomed during Trump’s White House years.

Move over San Francisco, New York and Boston. We have a new king of expensive cities: “Miami Now Least Affordable Housing Market in U.S.” (CBS Miami).

What is Contrarian Boston?

I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.

Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.

For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.

An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.

Our focus is:

·      Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;

·      Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;

·      The media and why it does what it does;

·      Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;

·      And whatever else catches our fancy.