Legal saber-rattling over Natick Mall lab project | MassGOP’s not so secret ballot | Thousands of residents gone missing on Boston’s waterfront | The Bay State’s strangely common sense gun laws | About Contrarian Boston
Seaport planning: Waterfront neighborhood missing thousands of residents amid shift to commercial development
Can you truly have a neighborhood without neighbors?
That’s the question in the Seaport amid growing anxiety the waterfront enclave is morphing into Kendall Square on the harbor, and to be clear, that’s not a compliment.
While certainly a flashpoint, WS Development’s recent move to nix plans for as many as 700 residential units in favor of lab space at its Seaport Square project is not an isolated decision.
Rather, it is just the latest in a long series of decisions by an array of developers, and officials at the Boston Planning and Development Agency as well, that have tilted the balance in the Seaport towards labs and offices, contends neighborhood activist Steve Hollinger.
Over the past decade, flips of previously planned apartment and condo buildings to commercial uses, or in acreage that was originally planned for residential development, has come at a significant cost.
Roughly 2,500 to more than 3,000 residential units never got built, leading to many as 6,000 fewer residents in what was supposed to be a gleaming, model Boston neighborhood, according to Hollinger.
Given the Seaport’s population, after two decades and countless billions in intensive development, stands at just 5,579, the neighborhood, such as it is, could really use the additional people. And as of 2020, that number included just 200 children.
Maybe the Seaport wouldn’t seem so dead right now if it had 11,000 residents, roughly the size of Beacon Hill or the North End, rather than less than half that.
Stay tuned.
Transparency or bullying? MassGOP sends out data on how convention delegates voted
When it comes to whacky stories, the recent Republican state convention is the gift that keeps on giving.
In the wake of the Springfield confab, Jim Lyons, the party’s Trumpie chairman, has posted on the MassGOP’s website a list of whether delegates voted for Geoff Diehl, who was endorsed by the ex-president, or his challenger, Wrentham businessman Chris Doughty.
While Lyons is calling it a move towards “absolute transparency,” party moderates, who say the balloting has traditionally been secret, see another move to pressure and bully members who are refusing to line up behind the MassGOP’s Trumpist agenda.
P.S. The Globe ran an extensive piece this morning on the demise of the moderate wing of the state Republican party.
Residents at Natick Mall condo tower lawyer up over lab plan
As we predicted here months ago, a proposal to convert Natick Mall’s Neiman Marcus into the region’s newest life sciences project isn’t going over well with its neighbors.
Residents of the luxury Nouvelle condo tower, which literally overlooks the department store, have hired not one but two lawyers.
A group of condo owners at the high-rise – where units sell in the $700,000s and $800,000s – have hired their own lawyer, augmenting the attorney the Nouvelle’s board of trustees has brought on, a long-time resident tells us.
Nouvelle residents have turned out in force for Natick Planning Board meetings on the proposal by developer Bulfinch Cos., which is effectively looking to add two large floors to the two-story mall building – one for lab space, topped by a large, rooftop mechanical system that takes up at least another story.
With the booming life sciences sector looking to add as much as 90 million square feet of new research and manufacturing space across the Boston area, this is probably just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to conflicts with skeptical/anxious neighbors.
Does Massachusetts hold the key to curbing gun violence?
The numbers certainly seem to suggest we are onto something here, with Massachusetts having just about the fewest firearm deaths per capita in the country.
Only Hawaii is lower.
The Bay State has just 3.7-gun fatalities per 100,000 people, compared to 28.6 in Mississippi, the national leader in this dubious category, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
The Globe’s Scott Lehigh zeroes in on the essential components of what, in a sane world anyway, would make Massachusetts a model for the rest of the country, at least in this area.
Yes, all would-be gun buyers in the state are required to go through a federal background check. But here’s the clincher: to buy a gun in Massachusetts, you first have to get your city or town’s police chief to sign off on a license.
And the police chief can reject the application, even if the buyer has passed the background check, if “he or she deems the applicant a risk to public safety or to themselves,” Lehigh writes.
The head of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police, no less, is also calling our state’s gun laws a model, the Herald reports.
This isn’t some whacky idea out of left-wing Massachusetts. This is just simple common sense, based on an idea – relying on the police – you’d think self-described conservatives would be championing.
Quick hits:
John McWhorter, a Columbia University professor, argues the struggle to curb gun violence is the defining issue of our times: “Gun Violence Is Like What Segregation Was. An Unaddressed Moral Stain.” New York Times
Disturbing numbers: “During the Omicron Wave, Death Rates Soared for Older People” New York Times
We’re all ears: Opinion: Four things Biden can do to improve his standing Washington Post
Baker ups the ante on potential state takeover of Boston schools: “Baker Raises Constitutional Obligations To Boston Students” State House News Service
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.