A “monstrous” downtown redevelopment plan | Window dressing for big gambling project? | Orange Line delusions | Cambridge lab backlash | Quick Hits | About Contrarian Boston |
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Too much of a good thing? Pushback against lab projects gaining momentum
Here comes the backlash.
Developers, pushing plans for tens of millions of square feet of new lab space in the Boston area, are moving beyond commercial areas to propose new labs in malls and next to residential high-rises.
Now officials in Cambridge and Boston, home to arguably the globe’s leading life sciences hub, are starting to push back.
Cambridge City Councilor Quinton Zondervan has sparked an uproar among local business and university leaders, proposing to bar developers from building new labs in commercial districts, limiting them to industrial zones, the Cambridge Day reports.
The Cambridge opposition comes as the Boston Planning and Development Agency puts the breaks – at least temporarily – on plans to convert a Fort Point office building into labs, Banker & Tradesman reports.
In this case, the would-be lab building shares walls with a couple of residential buildings. City Council President Ed Flynn is leading the charge against the project.
Trojan horse? Erstwhile Suffolk Downs casino builder pushes Worcester area racetrack
Here we go again, with yet another plan to revive horse racing in Massachusetts that just so happens to also require expanded gambling to actually make it work.
That would be Richard Fields’ push to build out a mile-long track in the tiny town of Hardwick, as detailed here by The Boston Globe’s Jon Chesto.
But strip away the happy talk about preserving farmland and the sport of kings, and what you get is the same old ploy to establish a lucrative gambling joint.
We learn Fields, in order to make his venture pay, will need a sports betting kiosk and app, as well as a subsidy from a $22 million racehorse development fund overseen by the Massachusetts Gaming Commission and supported by casino revenue.
Fields tried and failed with a similar plan at Suffolk Downs, spending years lobbying on Beacon Hill for slot machines, and then mounting an ultimately unsuccessful bid for a casino license.
That prize went Wynn Resorts, which built the multibillion-dollar Encore Boston Harbor in Everett.
Suffolk Downs in the old days (photo by Alcinoe)
Fields’ proposal for building a thoroughbred horse racing Mecca at a 365-acre former dairy farm in Hardwick apparently doesn’t include slot machines and table games.
To reassure the locals, the sports betting kiosk will only be open on racing days, the story notes.
Likely story? We’ll see. But having covered gambling proposals for a couple of decades now, where there’s a racetrack, a lobbying campaign for slot machines is typically not far behind.
Hold the champagne on the Orange Line reopening
Stories about the relaunch of Orange Line after the MBTA’s month-long shutdown have been relatively upbeat, maybe too much so.
But while the T and its contractors clearly got a lot of work done, the acid test will be what happens in the next few months.
If we stop seeing daily delays and hair-raising incidents like the woman who dove into the Mystic to flee a smoking Orange Line car, then we’d consider that progress.
We still can’t get over U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton’s rather savage critique after meeting with T officials and getting the run down on their much vaunted thirty-day repair blitz.
The Bay State congressman, who worked on a high-speed rail project in Texas, called the T’s work “completely rudimentary,” in an interview with the Herald.
“I was aghast. I found it frighteningly disappointing and disillusioning,” Moulton said.
And we’d have to say, the troubled transit agency’s big push to supposedly fix the Orange Line at times had the feel of a PR stunt made for TV and radio.
We thought GBH’s decision to run its coverage under the banner “thirty days to save the T” was particularly silly.
“I was aghast. I found it frighteningly disappointing and disillusioning,” Moulton told the Herald.
We’ll be watching.
Downtown development gone awry? Neighbors roll eyes at Hurley Building redo
By Karen Cord Taylor
The Baker administration has chosen Leggat McCall Properties to redevelop the 1971, Brutalist-styled Charles F. Hurley building.
Designed by Paul Rudolph, the now-dirty structure, shunned by passers-by and unloved by everyone except Brutalist buffs, houses state offices and shares a block bordered by Cambridge, Staniford, Merrimac and New Chardon streets with the Edward W. Brooke Courthouse. The Hurley’s northeast corner houses the Lindemann Mental Health Center, which is not included in this project.
Who is Hurley anyway? He was the 54th governor of Massachusetts, serving from 1937 to 1939.
Leggat McCall’s $1 billion plan calls for upgrading the building itself and adding two towers—one for 200 housing units and the other for laboratory use. The state offices will be redesigned. The timetable is aggressive with construction start targeted for 2025.
Reaction from neighbors has ranged from “oh, no” to “outrageous.”
“It’s monstrous,” said Susan McWhinney-Morse, who lives on Temple Street across from one corner of the building. “The new buildings have nothing to do with what they’re sitting on.”
The Hurley Building would be preserved under a $1 billion redevelopment plan
McWhinney-Morse, a former chair and president of the Beacon Hill Civic Association, deplores the sorry condition of the building and the sidewalks surrounding it, but she also notes that it is architectural art – even if she doesn’t like the art.
“The reason I defend it is that it was an intentional design, an iconic concept,” she said. ‘It was supposed to be landscaped and kept up, which it wasn’t.”
But she is more than just a neighbor of the building. Her late first husband, Jim McNeely, was the coordinating architect for Paul Rudolph, and while supervising the project, he found his family a house nearby, a house in which McWhinney-Morse still lives.
“That building is the whole reason I live where I do,” she said.
While questioning the plan’s vastness, she deplores the traffic that will increase once the new buildings house new residents and workers. And that new garage the developers plan to build under the open space between the Hurley and the courthouse? It will invite drivers to come into the city because there will be more parking spaces.
“There is already a massive amount of traffic on Cambridge Street, especially beginning around 3:30 p.m., as cars try to make a left turn onto Staniford,” she said. “There is not enough room for all the people, all the cars, all the buses on these streets.”
Susann Benoit, who lives in the West End and chairs the zoning and planning committee of the West End Civic Association, agrees, even if her language is not as strong as that of McWhinney-Morse.
“It looks as if [the new buildings] came from a Superman comic book,” she observed. “They’re in the same vein as the original building – all unattractive.”
She too is concerned about the traffic, not only after the project is finished but also during its construction. She points out that other proposed new Cambridge Street buildings promise to tie up traffic for years. For example, Massachusetts General Hospital is adding more than one million square feet in two new buildings along Cambridge Street. Construction for one building has begun, with completion scheduled for 2027 – an overlapping timetable with Leggat McCall’s projection. The second MGH building should start construction around 2027 with completion scheduled for 2030.
There is also a preliminary proposal for building housing and a new library to replace the 1960s West End Library. It has no start date yet.
Benoit is concerned that the open space at the corner of Merrimac and Staniford Street in front of the entrance to the Lindemann Center was never made into the park that was promised, but instead is used for parking.
“I need to understand how that massive block will be modified to be more accessible to the public,” she said. She suggested that the developer begin with constructing that park since its location is largely separated from the major construction at the site and could offer some respite while the rest of the site is in disarray.
She is sorry that WECA’s suggestion for the project to provide a school for families on Beacon Hill and in the West End was ignored. Without the chance for a nearby school, many families leave the city rather than submit their young children to long drives on a possibly late school bus.
Benoit plans to monitor this project closely. “I’m looking forward to the whole public process,” she said.
Karen Cord Taylor is former editor and publisher of The Beacon Hill Times
Quick Hits:
Unforced error by hapless GOP gubernatorial candidate: “After ‘no comment’ sparked controversy, Diehl will accept results of the November election, campaign says” Boston Globe
Good press for Marty: “Marty Walsh in 2024?” Boston Globe and “Opinion Distinguished pol of the week: He helped fend off a crippling strike” Jennifer Rubin/Washington Post
Some explaining to do: “Barnstable commissioner candidate minimizes ties to Oath Keepers” CommonWealth Magazine
Sometimes the worst in human nature - Florida governor’s meanspirited political stunt - brings out the best: “Episcopal church on Martha’s Vineyard takes in migrants flown in by surprise” Episcopal News Service
About Contrarian Boston
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