Breaking News/09.24.2024
Unwelcome blast from the past? Boston mayor names MIT prof who helped design the Seaport as the city’s new planning czar
Mayor Michelle Wu is looking to a familiar and controversial name from the past to help oversee development in Boston at a time when plans for new housing, labs and other projects are stuck on the drawing boards.
Wu has picked a new chief planner for the city, with the decision coming on the eve of a big speech the mayor is scheduled to give Wednesday morning to members of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, city insiders tell Contrarian Boston. (As we were finishing our story, city officials issued a press release - we’ll add the link when we get it.)
Wu’s choice? Kairos Shen, a one-time rising star in the planning department at the old Boston Redevelopment Authority, who left under a cloud during the Walsh Administration.
Wu’s move to bring Shen, now an associate professor at the MIT Center for Real Estate, back to City Hall comes just a few weeks after the departure of her administration’s first development and planning chief, Arthur Jemison.
Jemison’s announcement last month that he would be leaving to take a new job in Detroit, where his family is located, left Boston’s already beleaguered development and real estate community reeling.
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.
This is a developing story and we will have more in Contrarian Boston’s next edition early Wednesday morning.