11.20.2024

Roots of Trump’s win can be found in NAFTA | Backers of Boston stadium plan spent years currying favor with local pols | NIMBY trouble in Needham | Bring your opinions: Contrarian Boston to hold subscriber chat today on the housing crisis | Quick hits |

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Local media’s big blind spot: The Krafts’ soccer stadium push is soaking up all the attention, even as the backroom maneuvering behind an even more controversial proposal goes unexamined

Just call it a tale of two stadium projects.

The local mainstream media, led by The Boston Globe, just can’t get enough of the push by billionaire Robert Kraft to build a soccer stadium on Everett’s gritty waterfront.

There have been all sorts of stories and columns delving into the behind the scenes political maneuvering by the Kraft Group and their opponents over the stadium proposal, which would reclaim an old and likely heavily polluted power plant site.

Yet when it comes to a $100 million plan by City Hall and a well-connected group of local investors to renovate and expand decrepit White Stadium for a women’s soccer team - in city-owned Franklin Park no less - the response has been perfunctory coverage with little interest in all the backroom dealmaking that has surely been going on.

What accounts for the blind spot? Could it be that Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, a Globe favorite, has made the White Stadium plan a keystone of her first term, while at the same time leading the opposition against the Krafts’ plans for a soccer palace in next-door Everett?

Or that Linda Henry, CEO of the Boston Globe and wife of billionaire owner John Henry, is a limited investor in the pro women’s soccer team looking to set up shop at a redeveloped White Stadium?

The funny thing is, there’s ample evidence that high-powered backers of the plan to demolish the 1940s-era high school stadium and replace it with an 11,000-seat pro soccer venue have engaged in the same kind of behind-the-scenes lobbying and grubby deal making so thoroughly reported on by the local media with regard to the Krafts.

Investors and other high-powered backers of Boston Unity Soccer Partners have showered an array of key state and city decision makers with tens of thousands of dollars in campaign cash, a review of state records by Contrarian Boston shows.

The project has drawn fierce criticism from neighborhood residents and activists like Louis Elisa and Dr. Jean Maguire, who teamed up with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy to file a lawsuit.

The lawsuit is likely the only thing that remains that could stop the project, with the Wu administration having methodically lined up approvals from just about all the necessary city boards and commissions.

“There is nothing about this plan, this whole process, that is transparent, democratic or socially or environmentally responsible,” Derrick Evans, a Roxbury resident and plaintiff in the lawsuit, tells Contrarian Boston.

Campaign contribution records reviewed by Contrarian Boston suggest some of the key players behind the plan to transform White Stadium into a showcase for women’s pro soccer have been currying favor with influential local and state pols for years now.

According to the official timeline, the Wu administration began weighing plans for a public-private partnership to renovate White Stadium back in 2022, according to MassLive.

When the city issued a request for proposals in 2023, Boston Unity Soccer Partners was - surprise, surprise - the only group that responded.

Jennifer Epstein, president of Boston Unity Soccer Partners and her developer husband Bill Keravuori have pumped more than $15,000 in campaign cash over the past two years into the coffers of key power players, as Contrarian Boston has previously reported.

Jennifer Epstein, controlling manager, Boston Unity Soccer Partners

The pair contributed $4,500 to Wu’s campaign account since planning on the soccer proposal began in 2022.

Epstein and her husband have also dropped more than $4,000 into the campaign coffers of Tania Fernandes Anderson, a local city councilor who represents residents living near the stadium and Franklin Park.

The pair has also given thousands of dollars into the campaign accounts of Gov. Maura Healey, state Attorney General Andrea Campbell, State Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, House chair of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, and City Council President Ruthzee Louijeune.

Healey’s campaign has picked up more than $10,000 in contributions from the key players pushing the White Stadium plan.

Project opponents appealed to state environmental officials to intervene, to no avail.

All that’s before we get to investors in the new women’s pro soccer team, which recently unveiled its name - BOS Nation.

Former financial services exec Amy Kuan Danoff; corporate consultant Linda Whitlock; developer Herby Duverné; Juan Fernando Lopera, DEI chief at Beth Israel Lahey; and Frederick Lowery, a top Thermo Fisher Scientific exec, have collectively ponied up several thousand dollars in campaign contributions to key city and state leaders.

These include Wu, Healey, and Campbell, as well as city councilors like Louijeune, Anderson and Christopher Worrell.

“This is old school, good old boy BS by the new girls on the block,” Evans, the project opponent and lawsuit plaintiff, told Contrarian Boston.

Bring your opinions and hot takes: Contrarian Boston to host a live chat today on the housing crisis in Massachusetts

Fed up with one of the nation’s most dysfunctional housing markets? Have some ideas on how to fix it?

Contrarian Boston will be hosting a live chat from noon to 1 p.m. today/Wednesday for paid subscribers.

We’ll discuss what has gone so wrong with the housing market, both locally and now nationally as well, and what can be done to fix things.

Join us at Substack Chat and look forward to seeing you there.

Uh-oh: More NIMBY trouble brewing in the suburbs as the Healey administration ramps up housing push