Local news is back in Somerville | Uninspiring start for new state housing chief | Still dead broke at MassGOP | Maybe not the way to save downtown |
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Downtown Boston on the ropes: Wu administration looks at subsidies for converting hard-hit office buildings to residential, B&T reports
The Financial District is reeling, so something needs to be done.
But does it make sense to have taxpayers help foot the bill to transform aging, half-empty office buildings into new apartments and condos?
Well, that’s another question altogether.
Mayor Michelle Wu tells Banker & Tradesman the city is in talks with several office building owners about using public subsidies to help pay for conversions.
Exactly what form the aid would take is still being hashed out, Wu tells B&T’s Steve Adams.
The possibilities include not just “permitting and zoning streamlining,” but also “financial incentives and tax incentives,” Wu told the paper.
But will it be worth the cost?
Transforming older office buildings from say, the early 1900s, can be an exceedingly - and even prohibitively - expensive proposition given different layouts and myriad other complications.
How pricey? The Canadian city of Calgary has put aside $153 million to help pay for the office-to-residential conversions of 10 buildings, the B&T piece notes.
Advice to new state housing czar: think bigger
That would be Ed Augustus, the state’s first ever housing secretary.
The former Worcester city manager, at his recent swearing in ceremony at the State House, pledged to do an inventory of unused state land on which new housing could be built.
Hmm, that sounds familiar, we thought.
Sure enough, back in 2015 now former Gov. Charlie Baker pledged to sell off 40 different tracts of state-owned land in a bid to spur housing development.
Deval Patrick and Mitt Romney also pushed similar initiatives during their stints as governor.
It does make you wonder. After all, how we can still have all this vacant state land, just ready to to build new housing on, after so many pledges by different governors over so many years?
Apparently, we are dealing with an inexhaustible source of developable land - and in Massachusetts, no less. Who knew?
Seriously, this is the same small-bore stuff we have been hearing for years from one gubernatorial administration after another when it comes to dealing with a housing crisis that just keeps getting worse.
Online news startup Somerville Wire takes shape as Gannett shutters weeklies’ coverage
By Mark Pickering
As Gannett’s Massachusetts weeklies continued to slash news coverage, fears the chain would create news deserts skyrocketed. Out of the turmoil, the Somerville Wire emerged.
Editor Jason Pramas said the genesis of the news outlet took shape in 2019, the pre-COVID days. He and others organized community meetings that successfully attracted a range of residents along with Somerville movers and shakers.
“Residents were clearly calling for more news coverage,” Pramas said. The Wire officially launched in February 2021. Pramas said it now has an email list of 400 subscribers and a couple thousand visitors to the website weekly.
“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from the community” about our work, Pramas said. “We’re doing this project in the interest of democracy.”
The Wire has a part-time reporter – and a presence on Facebook and Twitter.
In a major project, the Wire produced a six-part investigative series on the health risks from Interstate 93 for Somerville residents. The news outlet’s reporting landed a Kozik Environmental Justice Reporting Grant, through the National Press Foundation and the National Press Club Journalism Institute.
The Wire is now a project of the nonprofit Somerville Media Fund, which recently started soliciting donations. Pramas serves as executive director. Both of his two roles with the Somerville operations are unpaid.
The Media Fund’s board of directors includes Michael Capuano, a former congressman.
The online Wire has forged ahead even as the Gannett chain abandoned community coverage of Somerville, which had 81,045 people in the last census.
The end came in early 2022, when Gannett halted local coverage at most of its Massachusetts weeklies and turned those websites over to regional news. To add insult to injury, Gannett merged its Somerville Journal with its Medford Transcript. That resulting website is now as moribund as Gannett’s other Massachusetts weeklies.
The Somerville Wire has been working to fill the void. It’s a daunting task though, said Pramas. In part, that’s because the Journal was a real powerhouse just one decade ago.
In its heyday, the Journal “had two full-time reporters (and) one part-time sports reporter,” said Kat Powers, a former editor. The Journal also had a regular columnist, covered crime and fires, and had access to staffers who took care of such things as calendar items.
Beyond that, the newsprint Journal had advertising and distribution networks. The paper had a circulation of 10,000, said Powers, who serves on the board of the upstart Somerville Media Fund.
Mark Pickering is a veteran of the local news business, having worked on the business desk and the opinion pages of the Boston Herald.
Can the MassGOP be salvaged? Early returns are in, and they don’t look so good
The battered state Republican party has been desperately trying to turn over a new leaf since ousting Jim “Jones” Lyons back in January.
Lyons played a key role in aligning the state party with Trump and ruining any hopes former Gov. Charlie Baker may have had in running for a third term.
Amy Carnevale, the new chair, clearly has her hands full - and then some - grappling with the dumpster fire formerly known as the MassGOP.
Yet results so far have been mixed.
While a few deep-pocketed business types have written a check or two, the MassGOP’s fundraising efforts remain anemic under Carnevale, a veteran lobbyist who has eschewed the unhinged rhetoric her predecessor was so fond of.
Contributions to the state party’s coffers amounted to less than $11,000 in April and May, according to state campaign finance records reviewed by Contrarian Boston.
Those are not particularly impressive numbers.
And on Thursday, Carnevale presided over a state party committee meeting that degenerated into chaos and pointless battles over parliamentary procedure, driven largely by the still sizable contingent of Lyons loyalists.
Not great press for a political party desperately in need of new blood.
The "round up surplus state land for housing" pitch goes back (at least) to the Weld era. The fact that each and every disposition requires approval from the Legislature is one of the principal reasons there appears to be an inexhaustible inventory of state property for redevelopment. This usually means a detailed plan for redevelopment that meets with local legislator, neighbor and municipal approval. These plans and the subsequent legislative approval take an enormous amount of time and money. So, this remains an great source of "low-hanging fruit" that is not really so low-hanging for each successive administration.