09.25.2024

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Retread city? Boston mayor names MIT prof who helped design the not-so-beloved Seaport as the city’s new planning czar

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu had better hope her new planning chief’s second tour of duty at City Hall goes better than his first.

Kairos Shen rose to chief planner at the old Boston Redevelopment Authority only to get ousted in 2015 after a damning McKinsey report found that the agency that he played a leading role in running was a dysfunctional mess.

As the city’s top planner, Shen helped shape the jumble of glass, steel and concrete buildings also known as the Seaport, which, all can agree, is no Champs-Élysées.

And on his way out the door, Shen made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Warming the hearts of government hacks everywhere, Shen asked the Walsh administration to officially fire him so he could take advantage of a quirky state law and double his pension to $71,000.

But apparently all of that is forgotten and forgiven. On Tuesday evening, Wu announced that she would be bringing back Kairos as City Hall’s planning and development chief.

Kairos Shen

The decision came on eve of a big speech the mayor is scheduled to give Wednesday morning to members of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce.

And Wu’s move to bring back Shen, now an associate professor at the MIT Center for Real Estate, also comes at a crucial juncture for both her administration and the city’s business and development sectors.

Last month, Arthur Jemison, her administration’s first planning and development chief, announced he would be leaving to take a new job in Detroit, where his family is located.

The decision stunned Boston’s already beleaguered development and real estate community, with projects across the city stuck on drawing boards amid high interest rates and high construction costs.

Jemison was seen as a steady, experienced hand in a Wu administration top-heavy with young and inexperienced staffers determined to push through progressive mandates on climate and affordable housing, whatever the cost to the business and development sectors.

Is Shen the right choice to turn things around? Well, that remains to be seen, but given his track record, there are reasons to be skeptical.

Remember that 2015 McKinsey report? Well, it noted that housing and other developers believed that just two individuals controlled all planning and project review decisions at the agency, Kairos being one of them.

That’s the recipe for bureaucratic bottlenecks, stuff not getting approved and built, and potential cronyism.

The ICA, one of the more stylish parts of Boston’s Seaport neighborhood, which Shen played a major role in helping design

After Shen left, the Walsh administration revamped the city’s development bureaucracy and got things moving, authorizing a record number of projects and housing units.

However, you won’t find any of those concerns spelled out in the Globe’s “scoop” on Wu’s decision to hire Shen as the city’s new planning and development chief.

The piece has all the earmarks of a handoff in which a friendly news organization - in this case the Globe, with its clear affinity for the uber progressive Wu - is given the story first, in the hopes that it won’t dig too deep or ask too many annoying questions.

Kind of cute, we guess: Boston Harbor now aquatic nursery for baby sharks

That’s the word from the Boston Herald’s Rick Sobey, whose beat includes anything and everything to do with sharks.