07.12.2022
Ready for ‘rent control lite?’ | Wu the dealmaker | Convention center follies | About Contrarian Boston
Sweet deal for Texas tycoon in Boston convention center expansion
It’s hard to see how spending $400 million to expand an already half-empty Boston Convention & Exhibition Center would do much for the local economy.
But adding on to the convention center could pay off big time for Texas billionaire and Republican megadonor Robert Rowling, owner of the Omni hotel chain.
The Massachusetts Convention Center Authority is pushing for a green light to expand the aircraft carrier-sized convention hall in the Seaport. And wouldn’t you know the plan just happens to include a tunnel under Summer Street to link the BCEC with the luxury, $550 million Omni Boston Hotel?
Well, we are sure that is just fine and dandy with Rowling, who, when he is not cutting advantageous - and often publicly subsidized - hotel deals with convention centers around the country, is busy showering cash on GOP causes and candidates. A prodigious Republican donor for years now, Rowling and his wife, Terry, most recently pumped $446,800 into a political action committee backing Republican House candidates in the midterms.
With literally a direct connection to the BCEC and its swanky new addition, Rowling and his Omni Hotels & Resorts chain would be primed to grab convention business away from competing hotels in the Back Bay and downtown Boston, Heywood Sanders, a public administration professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio and a long-time expert on the nation’s convention industry, told CB.
“Omni and Rowling are in a position to benefit directly and greatly from the public investment,” Sanders said.
Rowling, though, is smart enough not to be his own pitchman in Boston. That role is played by a team of local developers, including Richard Taylor and hotelier Robin Brown, who helped build the convention center hotel.
All that said, Omni definitely has skin in the game, and a lot of it. Along with being the hotel’s operator, Omni also pumped $100 million into the development deal.
And make no mistake, the expansion plan in Boston fits a wider pattern that has seen Rowling and Omni reap “substantial public subsidies” for centerpiece, convention center hotels in Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, and Nashville, among other cities, Sanders said.
If Rowling and his Omni hotel empire is going to reap big benefits from Boston’s budding convention center expansion, then maybe he can help foot the bill for it.
Now there’s an idea.
‘Rent control lite’ set for big State House vote
Landlords absolutely hate the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, while housing advocates see the proposal as a way to blunt or even rein in runaway rents.
Hence the ‘rent control lite’ nickname, as some supporters of the plan have dubbed it.
The controversial bill now faces a make-or-break vote Wednesday, and we can only imagine the angry phone calls, emails and furious, behind-the-scenes lobbying taking place.
Two Boston state representatives, Rob Consalvo and Jay Livingstone, will try and use the amendment process to attach TOPA to a larger, economic bill when it comes up for debate Wednesday afternoon.
The name of the bill, while not quite misleading, also doesn’t tell the full story when it comes to its potential impact on Boston’s overheated rental market.
While, yes, tenants would get a chance to buy their buildings when they hit the market, they would also be able to team up with nonprofit housing developers, which, arguably, is the real play here.
Community development corporations and similar groups have found themselves outgunned in a hyper-inflated housing market where cash is king and flipping is the order of the day.
But opponents have labeled the proposed new law the ‘silent threat,’ with some landlords fearing the bill could tie up potential apartment building sales, drive off cash-rich buyers, and force them to sell to nonprofit groups and CDCs.
Stay tuned.
Wu, City Hall, cut potentially landmark housing affordability deal with Harvard
Will this become the measuring stick for other major housing proposals in Boston? Either way, it’s pretty significant.
Harvard and developer Tishman Speyer have agreed to effectively subsidize an unprecedented level of affordability in the first phase of Harvard’s long-planned Enterprise Research Campus in Allston.
Harvard and Tishman have agreed to make 25 percent of the 345 units in an initial residential building “income restricted.” That means the units will be restricted to tenants making between 30 percent and 100 percent of area median income.
That represents the “largest percentage of income-restricted units in a single project by a private developer in Boston,” according to a press release issued by the mayor’s office.
In addition, Harvard has also agreed to launch an Allston-Brighton Affordable Housing Fund, with a $25 million commitment, while also donating land at 65 Seattle St. for a future affordable housing development.
Years in the making, Harvard’s research campus is now set to be approved by the Boston Planning and Development Agency at a meeting slated for Thursday afternoon.
The agreement with Harvard will be closely scrutinized by both developers and housing advocates in Boston and beyond.
The 25 percent affordability requirement is considerably higher than what the city requires now of condo and apartment developers. And clearly not all builders have the kind of deep pockets that Harvard enjoys.
That said, the housing crisis has gone from bad to worse to just about unbearable for far too many people in Greater Boston.
What is Contrarian Boston?
I have fielded emails over the past couple of months 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.