Local campus chiefs no fans of sports betting | Globe’s hot smoking mess, part three | Real reason why Amazon dissed us on HQ2 | Will Wu really cancel the BPDA? | About Contrarian Boston |
Priced out: Massachusetts was apparently too expensive for Amazon
The Bay State had a good shot at landing the online retail giant’s coveted HQ2 expansion, only to be thwarted by our crazy high rents and home prices, Gov. Charlie Baker revealed this week.
At the end of three days of top-secret meetings with state and city officials, business leaders and others back in 2018, Amazon leaders delivered a blunt message, Baker recalled Thursday at an event in Lynn unveiling his proposed $3.5 billion economic development bill.
“We love your people, we love your institutions, but the housing thing is a big deal for us,” Baker recalled being told by Amazon execs. “We just think you are too expensive.”
Amazon apparently was also concerned about the cumbersome and restrictive process under which new housing projects are vetted in Massachusetts, with executives noting “you don’t have a process … to create more.”
Amazon wound up splitting its HQ2 project – and its estimated 50,000 jobs - between New York and the Washington, D.C. metro area, a decision Baker said was a “wakeup call” given that housing is hardly cheap in either metro market.
In the aftermath of the Amazon rejection, the Baker administration and the state Legislature teamed up on a series of reforms to the local zoning process aimed at opening the door for more housing.
But suburban officials are pushing back hard, so the jury is still out on that one.
Statehouse sports betting showdown test of collegiate clout
We are the ultimate college town. But do Greater Boston’s best-known universities have the political juice to preserve a long-standing ban on collegiate sports betting?
We’ll get a better sense of that starting Thursday, when the state Senate is slated to debate a sports betting bill that would allow wagering on pro sports, while keeping the prohibition on college games.
The Senate bill stands in sharp contrast to a bill the House passed last year that would legalize betting on both college and pro sports.
However, Senate President Karen Spilka is clearly taking seriously the warnings of officials from Harvard, Northeastern, Boston College, Boston University, and UMass Lowell and Amherst, among others, who teamed up on a letter arguing the ban needs to stay to “preserve the integrity of intercollegiate athletics in the Commonwealth.”
Memories are a bit longer in higher ed, with BC rocked in the 1990s by a college sports betting scandal that sucked in players and had ties to organized crime.
Rev. Richard McGowan, an economics professor and gaming industry expert at Boston College, doesn’t see a big drop in revenue by keeping college sports off-limits, noting Boston is a pro sports town.
“The fact that there is no college betting shows … Boston area university presidents certainly wield some power,” McGowan writes.
Globe ad partnership with Philip Morris continues to stir controversy
It was a highly critical story that raised big questions about the Globe’s advertising work with Philip Morris, and it triggered some fierce blowback.
This March 27th piece in CommonWealth Magazine claimed that “prominent scientists” interviewed for sponsored content pieces underwritten by the tobacco giant informed the magazine “they were never told the true purpose of the interviews – for inclusion in Philip Morris ads.”
Hitting back, the Globe released a statement claiming that “in each case, we found that the individuals and/or the PR representatives who support them were in fact informed” and that it had the emails and documentation to back it up.
But it now appears the Globe was blowing smoke when it called into question the integrity of the CommonWealth Magazine story and the freelance writer who wrote it.
In a thorough and highly detailed piece, CommonWealth Magazine’s editor reviewed the paper’s complaints and talked to some of the scientists quoted in the original piece. We won’t rehash the piece, but here’s a line that sums things up rather nicely.
“Our review also convinced us that sponsored content, a form of advertising taking hold in the news business, is a pretty murky subject, one that even world-leading academics don’t fully understand,” wrote Bruce Mohl, CW’s editor.
And here’s what one of those scientists, Suzanne de la Monte, a professor of pathology and neurosurgery at the Alpert Medical School at Brown University, told CommonWealth.
“I do not recall any discussions about who sponsored the person that interviewed me. I was just answering questions about my science. That’s it. My brain skips past commercial and political stuff. I really only discuss my science,” she said. “My research shows tobacco harm to the brain and liver.”
How serious is Wu about plans to “abolish” the BPDA?
That would be Boston City Hall’s long-time – and long controversial - economic development and planning arm.
Back when she was a city councilor, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu published a lengthy tract calling for the demolition of the city agency long associated with the seizure and bulldozing – back in the late 1950s – of the city’s old West End.
But several months into her new job, the Boston Planning and Development Agency still stands, while Wu’s pick at the city’s first ever planning chief got his professional start at the agency.
The Herald and the Globe, in pieces that ran both Saturday, offered two very different takes on where Wu is headed.
After her press conference on Friday, the Herald ran a piece headlined: “Michelle Wu says she still intends to abolish the BPDA.”
The basis for the Herald piece was a “quick affirmative ‘yeah’” Wu uttered when asked whether she still planned to “abolish” the BPDA.
However, it is Globe columnist Adrian Walker who gets to the heart of what is truly happening – or in this case, not happening - in this piece on the city’s new planning chief, which also appeared on Saturday.
“Aside from being city planner, he is also the titular head of the BPDA. Wu has vowed — or sort of vowed — to abolish the agency, though “abolish” is a word she has pointedly started to avoid. Regardless, Jemison has clearly been brought in to oversee an overhaul.”
We’re going with Walker on this one.
Quick hits:
Paul Krugman’s take on all the recession talk: “How a Recession Might — and Might Not — Happen” NYT
Boozing it up on Morrissey Boulevard: “Liquor license sought for old Globe building, owners eyeing food and beverages services” Dorchester Reporter
A disturbing story about Boston’s only public university: “Black UMass Boston faculty fight for funding: Trotter Institute, Africana Studies still lacking staff” Bay State Banner
Too racy for downtown? “Gasp! Fishnets raise eyebrows among some at Hyannis village association” Cape Cod Times
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 Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. 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.