| Wellesley housing snob | Globe’s 80s flashback | Walsh pipe dream? | Suburban political battle | O’Brien/HYM eyes Roxbury | About Contrarian Boston |
Boston’s development momentum shifting to the neighborhoods?
Possibly. With Mayor Michelle Wu shaking things up, there’s definitely a renewed focus on projects beyond downtown Boston, where most of the action has been for the past two decades.
We’ll get a key indicator on Wednesday, when bids come due on P3, a key and long dormant Lower Roxbury development site across from the Boston Police Department headquarters.
In a sign of changing times, HYM Investment Group, a major downtown developer, will be among those submitting bids for the city-owned site.
HYM is thinking big – 273 condos and apartments, along with 700,000 square feet of life sciences space. The housing would be “truly affordable” for “low- and middle-income families and individuals,” with plans for retail and open space as well, the developer’s pitch states.
Headed by Tom O’Brien, a former City Hall development chief, HYM has teamed up with a neighborhood partner, Rev. Jeffrey Brown of the nonprofit My City at Peace, in its bid.
The 7.7-acre site has sat empty for six decades since it was cleared to make way for an urban renewal era highway that, thankfully, never got built.
Will things finally work out this time for the star-crossed P3? The interest by HYM, which is transforming the old Government Center garage into the $1.5 billion Bulfinch Crossing project, is a good sign.
Stay tuned.
Shocker: Dems face competition in state Senate race
The western suburbs are likely to see one of the few competitive local races in the state come fall.
While being a Democrat and incumbent is typically enough to coast to victory in Massachusetts, state Sen. Becca Rausch is far from a sure bet to win reelection.
Rausch faces a formidable challenge from state Rep. Shawn Dooley, a member of the beleaguered moderate wing of the MassGOP.
The Norfolk Republican is benefiting from an interesting decision by the redistricting gods on Dem-dominated Beacon Hill, who all but gave Dooley a hand-delivered invitation to challenge Rausch.
Rausch’s newly redrawn Senate district now includes nearly all of the smaller and more politically middle-of-the-road House district Dooley has represented for years – Wrentham, Plainville, Norfolk, and parts of Medfield, Millis and Walpole.
Rausch’s base, by contrast, is in the northern part of the Senate district in more upscale and dark blue towns like Wayland and Needham, where she lives.
Dooley, who commissioned a poll, also claims he now has relatively better name recognition, at 19 percent of voters in the district compared to 17 percent for Rausch.
“It is much more of a common sense, old school New England centrist moderate district,” Dooley contends.
We’ll see.
Wellesley lament: More apartments will hurt home values
The fact that Wellesley has hired a consultant to study ways to build a few affordable apartments in the uber expensive suburb apparently isn’t going over too well with some people in town.
An article on the study in the Swellesley Report triggered a lengthy diatribe in the comments section from one anonymous homeowner who clearly feels rental properties will wreck real estate values in town.
“What would be the impact of a higher proportion of the housing stock within the “affordable” range be in the values of the existing Wellesley properties? Of course it would drive all property values down.”
The facts paint a much different picture. Studies, including this one by Redfin, have failed to find much if any correlation between the development of affordable housing and home values.
But frankly, anyone worrying about the impact of a few affordable apartments on home values in Wellesley is desperately need of a reality check.
So, here’s one: The median home price in town hit $1.7 million in January, up 27 percent from a year ago, according to The Warren Group, publisher of Banker & Tradesman.
Pipe dream? Walsh considered $540 million ‘recovery campus’
Aspirational: With that one word, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu deftly dismissed a proposal for a massive treatment complex on Long Island drawn up under her predecessor.
The old Walsh administration master plan, which calls for an 11-building, 500-bed treatment complex on the island in Boston Harbor, is an “aspirational vision” that is “on the shelf,” city officials told the Boston Herald.
The $540 million price-tag didn’t even include the cost of replacing the bridge to the island, the Herald reports, having obtained the planning document through a public records request.
File under: Good reporting.
Globe story on ‘Star Wars’ nuke defense a throwback to the 80s
Ronald Reagan’s missile defense system, derisively dubbed ‘Star Wars,’ really doesn’t work after all.
Gee, who knew?
The “US military has spent more than $200 billion in the nearly four decades since working to make that science fiction a reality,” the story notes.
Hmm …
It has been pretty well reported that the focus for years now has been on intercepting missiles from a rogue state like North Korea. You have to go all the way back to the Reagan years to find anyone talking seriously about building a missile defense system that could thwart a large-scale nuclear attack by Russia.
As for the $200 billion, that sounds like a bargain given the stakes - especially compared to the $8 trillion forked over by U.S. taxpayers to finance the 20-year war in Afghanistan.
Quick Hits:
We couldn’t agree more. From the Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy: “Tom Brady’s attention-grabbing act has become tiresome and annoying.”
Brave soul in Russia: “Employee bursts onto live Russian state TV to denounce war: “‘They are lying to you here’” (Washington Post)
Expensive, but worth it: “Fixing early ed system could cost $1.5 billion a year” (CommonWealth Magazine)
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.