| Twitter’s favorite Dem | New year, crazier prices | Roxbury development showdown | Schools flush with cash | Jane’s ire | About Contrarian Boston |
Jane Swift stirs pot with harsh tweet on downtown Boston
Maybe the former acting governor thought she was doling out some tough love.
But the Western Massachusetts Republican stepped on it with a Twitter outburst dismissing concerns that hybrid schedules could pose a threat to downtown Boston businesses starved for foot traffic.
“Why do workers “owe” downtown businesses their money? In a market economy shouldn’t they compete?” Swift, acting governor from 2001- 2003, tweeted on Monday. “And isn’t it likely that economic activity is moving elsewhere - I don’t remember passing a law that Boston is entitled to some % of workers’ discretionary income.”
Strangely, the item that seemed to draw Swift’s ire was a wonky and not exactly inflammatory post by Steve Koczela, president of The MassINC Polling Group.
“Every day remote / hybrid workers stay home is a ~20% decrease in the economic activity they used to bring to downtown,” Koczela tweeted.
Now it’s a mystery how anyone could make the jump from Koczela’s tweet to the idea that Boston and struggling downtown restaurants, shops and other businesses have copped some sort of ‘you owe us’ attitude towards office workers.
Go figure.
P.S. Boston Mayor Michelle Wu told GBH’s Boston Public Radio on Tuesday she plans to hold “a big downtown reopening day” to encourage people to come back to Boston.
Twitter trouble for Healey?
Maura Healey’s campaign for governor is going swimmingly in the real world, the Globe’s Matt Stout reports.
The state attorney general and Democrat is piling up endorsements and hauling in loads of contributions.
But she apparently faces tougher competition on Twitter, where her rival, state Sen. Sonia Chang-Díaz, has a big edge thanks to progressive crowd pleasers like her push for free public college, a free T, and single-payer health care.
“You have Sonia as the progressive standard-bearer, the darling of the liberal activists and if the election were on Twitter, that is probably the best primary she can have,” former state Sen. Ben Downing told the paper.
New year, even crazier market: Greater Boston home prices soar, listings drop
It’s definitely not easy being a home buyer right now.
The median cost of a house in the Boston area hit $755,000 in February after a 16.7 percent jump, the Greater Boston Association of Realtors reports.
If that weren’t bad enough, there are also far fewer homes to look at right now. Listings plunged 32 percent in February, with just 658 homes for sale in the 64 communities GBAR tracks.
The average time on market? Just 14 days in February.
File under: Bid first, ask questions later.
Republican has cash edge in sole competitive Senate race
As we noted here Monday, state Sen. Becca Rausch will likely be one of the few Dems in Massachusetts to face a serious reelection challenge this fall.
Rausch’s newly redrawn suburban Senate district now includes nearly all of the smaller and more politically middle-of-the-road House district that her Republican challenger has represented for years in the House – Wrentham, Plainville, Norfolk, and parts of Medfield, Millis and Walpole.
But state Rep. Shawn Dooley also appears to have an advantage on the contribution front as well.
The Norfolk Republican is sitting on a $141,000 war chest as of the end of February. By contrast, Rausch, who lives in Needham, had just a little over $97,000 in her campaign account, though her fundraising has picked up steam lately, bringing in $25,000 last month, state records show.
Stay tuned.
Top developers duke it out over Roxbury lot
Chalk it up as a promising sign for City Hall’s efforts to finally develop the long-neglected P3 site in Nubian Square – and to lure deep-pocketed investors into neighborhoods that often get bypassed.
HYM Investment Group, a major downtown developer, and New York property giant Tishman Speyer have both submitted rival bids for the 7.7-acre lot across from Boston Police Department headquarters. The site has sat empty for six decades since it was cleared to make way for a highway project that never got off the ground.
As we reported here Tuesday, HYM and its neighborhood partner have big plans for the site – 273 “truly affordable” condos and apartments, along with 700,000 square feet of life sciences space.
Hopefully some of the good karma currently emanating from the Nubian Square site will rub off on city efforts to redevelop a key Uphams Corner site in Dorchester.
The Boston Planning and Development Agency is preparing to put the Columbia Road site out to bid again, this time without the Strand Theater in the package.
As we reported here last month, an earlier call for bids for the Dorchester site wound up with zero offers, with a requirement that developers team up with a new operator for the Strand a significant turnoff.
Use it or lose it: Mass. schools sit on $2B cash stockpile
Beacon Hill has a rather unusual message for schools across the state: spend, spend, spend.
Massachusetts school districts are sitting on more than $2 billion in untapped federal relief money, state Sen. Jason Lewis said on Tuesday.
There are two concerns. First, Lewis said he is worried about that school officials have been slow to spend this federal windfall given the flood of reports about students struggling socially and academically amid the pandemic, State House News Service reports.
But second, there’s a deadline to use the money, with one year down and now three left to go.
Given how cash-strapped school systems typically are across the state, it’s amazing we haven’t heard about this before.
File under: Good problem to have.
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.