09.23.2024

From John Kerry confidant to notorious deadbeat | Secretive State House dealmaking drives voter anger | A Celtics arena deal could bring out the worst in insider Boston politics | Steward’s forgotten Norwood debacle | Key state lawmaker jumps on anti-MCAS bandwagon |

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Cronyism alert: A new Celtics arena could be the next questionable collaboration between Boston’s mayor and the city’s billionaire power couple

Let’s just say Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has been rather cozy with John and Linda Henry, who control the Red Sox, the Boston Globe, and a budding development empire.

There’s Wu’s rent free use, during her annual state of the city speeches, of a glittering Fenway Park concert hall owned by Henry’s Fenway Sports Group.

The MGM Musical Hall at Fenway is also a stone’s thrown from where Henry and FSG plan to build a $1.6 billion mega development, having won a green light from Wu’s City Hall last year.

Then there’s Wu’s $100 million plan to renovate the city’s decrepit White Stadium and transform it into the home for a new women’s pro soccer team. Linda Henry, the Globe’s CEO, is a minority investor in the team.

But all that may be just a dress rehearsal for the kinds of cronyism and conflicts of interest that are likely to bloom in city’s corridors of power with the multibillion-dollar sale of the Boston Celtics and the potential development of a new arena for the team.

John Henry and TV media mogul/Red Sox investment partner Tom Werner are eyeing a bid for the Boston Celtics, with the franchise expected to sell for anywhere from $5 billion to over $6 billion, the Globe reported last month.

“I think they are interested,” Andrew Zimbalist, one of the world’s top sports business experts, told Contrarian Boston. “The Celtics are the Yankees of basketball.”

Yet in order to make those eye-popping numbers work, Henry and Werner and other bidders will likely want to explore the idea moving the Celtics out of the Garden and building the team a new arena, according to Zimbalist, professor emeritus of economics at Smith College.

The Celtics may have 18 championships to their name. But they don’t own the Garden, the arena they play in. That’s the property of Jeremy Jacobs, owner of the Bruins and the Delaware North concessions empire.

The Garden, the arena where the Celtics play but which the franchise does not own.

That means most of the money spent on beer, hotdogs and corporate sponsorships are flowing right past the Celtics owners’ noses and into Jacobs’ pockets.

Henry and Werner are hardly a shoe-in to buy the Celtics, with lots of competition from other billionaires dreaming of sports team glory.

But if they do, the already at times eyebrow-raising relationship between the Henrys and Wu will almost certainly get cozier still.

Why? Well, for starters, there is no way Henry and Werner will be able to find and secure an arena site, let alone build a $1 billion-plus arena on it, without the Boston mayor’s full cooperation.

Like all Boston mayors since who knows when, Wu controls all the levers when it comes to City Hall’s approval of new development projects and the various and sundry permits required to build.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu

Then there’s the question of a potential public subsidy or tax break for any new arena plan. No matter how deep their pockets, the new owners of the Celtics are sure to plead poverty after shelling out billions for the franchise.

But the Henrys hold some important levers of their own, including ownership of the region’s dominant news gathering organization, the Boston Globe.

And let’s just say it’s pretty clear Wu knows which side her bread is buttered on.

Scandal on Nantucket: Deadbeat financier and one-time John Kerry advisor arrested on resort island after stiffing casino

The $1.5 million bad check he wrote to a Las Vegas casino? Well, that is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to rogue financier and Democratic insider John Burrell’s mounting legal and money woes.

On Friday, Burrell, a one-time top advisor Kerry’s ill-fated 2004 presidential bid, was nabbed on Nantucket on a warrant out of Las Vegas for the bounced check, according to the Nantucket Current, which has the scoop.