| Fiona Hill’s chilling warning |Harbor pollution battle | Targeting the RMV |NIMBY math | About Contrarian Boston |
Waterfront development shift: Fading appetite for new luxury apartments, condos
The Massachusetts Port Authority’s long-term plans for East Boston’s decrepit Pier 1 appear unlikely to include another luxury housing development.
The state authority recently released upscale apartment builder Roseland from its lease for the old pier, with the New Jersey developer facing sticker shock over the cost of replacing the pilings - $50 million and maybe even more given runaway construction prices.
The New Jersey developer had talked about building a large residential and hotel complex on Pier 1.
But Massport, which, along with operating Logan controls large tracts of harborside acreage in both East and South Boston, isn’t racing to find a new luxury housing developer.
John Nucci, vice president of external affairs at Suffolk University and a Massport board member, said he would like to see “something that working families could have a chance of owning.”
In fact, the state authority is doing just that as it sketches out plans for affordable housing on a site it controls across the harbor from Eastie on D Street in the Seaport, with the potential for an 18-story tower with as many as 200 units.
Still, given the cost of rebuilding East Boston’s Pier 1, affordable housing would likely be a tough sell for developers, with luxury condos or apartments the likeliest way to recoup those infrastructure costs and turn a profit.
That said, if housing isn’t feasible for one reason or another, Nucci, a lifelong East Boston resident, said he would also be open to green space on Pier 1.
The moves by Massport come in the wake of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s decision to refocus city planning efforts on East Boston’s waterfront, effectively deprioritizing development plans along the harbor in downtown Boston.
That, in turn, is likely to further delay Don Chiofaro’s plans for a $1.2 billion deluxe residential tower near the New England Aquarium and Rowes Wharf.
The project, though, does not exactly appear to be a big priority for Wu, to put it mildly.
Embattled RMV faces scrutiny from state auditor candidate
Her rival in the state auditor’s race made waves with his pledge to launch a review of the scandal-plagued State Police.
Now state Sen. Diana DiZoglio has found her own troubled state agency to rake over the coals, the Registry of Motor Vehicles.
And unlike her rival, fellow Democrat and former state transportation official Chris Dempsey, DiZoglio doesn’t have to wait to get elected in order to make good on her pledge.
DiZoglio is pushing for a Senate oversight hearing to probe allegations the RMV’s Brockton office doled out 2,000 licenses over two years to drivers without requiring road tests, the Boston Herald reports.
The state senator said she is particularly incensed at how the RMV has compounded matters, sending letters to drivers who actually took the tests with threats to suspend their licenses.
“The situation is an all-around calamity and the RMV has been frustratingly vague in providing the public with answers,” DiZoglio told the paper.
File under: Smart move.
Battle brewing over Boston Harbor pollution
The Conservation Law Foundation is threatening to go to court over what it contends are dozens of discharges of industrial pollutants into Boston Harbor.
CLF contends that state authorities over the past five years have failed to take enforcement action in 70 different cases of industrial discharges, 15 of which were deemed to involve “significant noncompliance.”
“Many of the violations” involved chemicals known to “harm water quality and endanger wildlife and human health,” including mercury, zinc, and pH pollution, the environment group wrote in a letter delivered to the head of the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority.
“Boston’s coastal waters are at risk of dangerous, toxic pollution,” said Heather Govern, a vice president at the environmental group, in a statement.
CLF has given the MWRA 60 days to respond before it files a lawsuit in federal court.
Stay tuned.
‘It’s spreading:’ Suburban opposition grows to Baker housing push
The idea of hundreds of thousands of new condos, apartments and townhomes is apparently too much for some suburban officials to handle.
Opposition to Baker administration’s MBTA Communities is spreading, with officials in a number of towns caught out discussing whether to ignore the new regulations and shrug off the loss of some state grants.
As reported here, a Newton city councilor wound up on the hot seat on Twitter after a clip appeared of him weighing whether to ignore the new state rules given the “very small amount of funding at stake.” Now similar discussions have been reported in Milton, Belmont, Arlington and Northborough.
Under the new law, cities and towns deemed “MBTA communities” are required to create a multifamily housing zone of at least 50 acres within a half mile of their local T station that is large enough for several hundred units.
“Our members are sharing as they hear things.… It’s spreading,” said Jesse Kanson-Benanav, executive director of Abundant Housing Massachusetts, adding that thanks to the Newton incident, “other people with bad intentions are catching on.”
For more on this, check out my weekly Banker & Tradesman column.
In Boston, Fiona Hill delivers chilling Putin warning
Yes, the former top White House advisor on Russia went there, comparing Putin to you know who.
Hill, an interview with WBUR, compared Putin’s apparent designs on Ukraine to Hitler’s takeover of the Austria in 1938.
“If you take away all things we know and look at the facts of what he did, and Anschluss with Austria on the same premise that Austria was part of Germany because of language and culture and history … there is not much difference there,” Hill told the radio station.
In town for a panel discussion at Tufts, Hill said she was also “chilled” when listening to Putin’s rhetoric.
“He is now moving into the realm of Adolph Hitler,” Hill said.
Hitler and Nazi comparisons have been widely abused over the decades, used to justify all sorts of folly, from Vietnam (domino theory and fear of appeasement) to Iraq (axis of evil), so it makes sense to be skeptical.
Given the tragic events unfolding now in Ukraine, Hill’s warning resonates.
Quick Hits
This is really big. From the BBJ: “Eli Lilly to launch $700M RNA research center in Boston's Fort Point.”
The previous business model obviously wasn't working. From Universal Hub: “From Revere hotel hopes to re-open as a hotel, not as a place to send Boston drug addicts.”
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.