Contrarian Boston/Dec. 13, 2021

In today’s edition: Healey says goodbye to stylish Charlestown digs |The massive warehouse formerly known as Downtown Boston | Battle over Rappaport’s West End legacy | Frontline workers face long wait for bonuses | About Contrarian Boston | Seeking contributors

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Too early for ‘sharply critical’ take on Rappaport?

We wondered how long it would take before someone brought up the West End.

The Globe’s front-page obituary on Rappaport last Monday briefly mentions the late 94-year-old developer and philanthropist’s key role in the redevelopment of Boston’s West End, which sparked decades of bitterness on part of residents displaced from the low-income neighborhood.

Now two former city development officials have taken to the pages of CommonWealth Magazine to offer a biting analysis in separate op-eds on Rappaport’s role in the most controversial development project in Boston history.

The leveling of the old West End, condemned by city officials as a slum to make way for luxury housing in the form of Rappaport’s Charles River Park Apartments, stands today as “the worst example of urban renewal in the US,” writes Jim Vrabel, a former researcher at City Hall.

Peter Dreier, a former top city housing official and now professor at Occidental College, acidly notes that Rappaport is now being portrayed as “a selfless do-gooder rather than a rapacious developer.”

Topping the two pieces is an editor’s note citing the “sharply critical” pieces and how, alongside the Globe obituary, “they offer a more complete picture of a central figure in recent Boston history.”

File under not very happy campers.

Downtown Boston suddenly faces future as giant warehouse

We’re referring to the wave of delivery outfits moving into the darkened storefronts across the city’s once thriving downtown.

Startups with names like JOKR and BUYK are turning former mattress shops and the like into mini delivery hubs, with e-bike couriers racing to drop ice cream, soda and sundry other items at apartments across the South End, Seaport, Back Bay and other downtown neighborhoods, the Globe reports.

With less than a third of downtown offices filled each day with flesh and blood workers, the foot traffic on which downtown restaurants and shops relied on has vanished.

So, there’s certainly a void here.

But there has got to be a better way of filling it.

Pandemic worker bonuses delayed by political games

Really, how cruel can you be?

Grocery store cashiers, nursing home aides and others on the front lines during the pandemic stand to take home anywhere from $500 to $2,000 each after state lawmakers approved plans for spending $4 billion in federal relief money.

But the bonuses will have to pass muster with a 28-member panel made up of environmental activists, community development and planning associations, nonprofits, public policy think tanks, and others representing every major minority group.

That’s in addition to representatives of major state agencies and offices, and, rounding up this kitchen-sink approach, good government group Common Cause Massachusetts, of all things.

The upshot is that frontline workers will be waiting for who knows how many more months for their bonuses, with lawmakers have diddled about with what to with all those billions in Biden cash since last summer.

Healey’s stylish digs

Nice place. In fact, really nice place.

This four-bedroom Charlestown rowhouse served for years Attorney General Maura Healey’s campaign headquarters. Not to mention where she lived longtime partner Gabrielle Wolohojian.

Now the four-bedroom 1850s Charlestown rowhouse is somebody’s else’s home, having fetched $2.8 million — roughly double the 2010 purchase price, the Herald reports.

Perks include a roof deck with panoramic views and a wet bar, a deck off the kitchen with “BBQ and outdoor seating,” and a master suite overlooking the historic Training Field.

Maybe we will make this a regular feature – where the state’s political elite live.

One less reason to watch Fox News

That would be Chris Wallace, whose suffer-no-fools, acerbic questioning of Trump and others was heartening.

Wallace’s decision to bail on Fox for a new CNN streaming service has triggered predictable handwringing by MSM outlets about the loss of a badly needed hard news hawk who often seemed to buck the party line at Fox.

Wallace represents the kind of hard-core journalism, from a less predictable and badly needed center-right perspective, that Fox could be doing.

With The New York Times, Globe and Washington Post tilted center-left, such an approach would offer an alternative based in fact, not loopy, emotion-laden rants.

But the Murdochs won’t, for the very simple reason that Fox is making money hand-over-fist with its nonsensical, outrage-stoking commentary and cheap hit pieces.

Journalism comes in a distance second to the bottom line, if that, in the Murdoch family’s global media empire.

What is Contrarian Boston?

I have fielded emails over the past couple weeks asking what Contrarian Boston is about.

Here’s a link to our mission statement – you can find it in the “about” section.

For a more prosaic, nuts-and-bolts description, read on.

An online newsletter, Contrarian Boston publishes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. In Contrarian Boston you’ll find analysis of the day’s news, and original reporting as well.

Our focus is:

·      Politics and all levels of governance, good and bad, with an emphasis on state and local, with some national mixed in;

·      Economic growth and business, especially real estate, housing and new development projects;

·      The media and why it does what it does;

·      Education, from school board spats to the doings of multibillion-dollar university endowments;

·      And whatever else catches our fancy.

Contrarian Boston seeks contributors

Have a news tip? Is there an issue you would like to see explored? Interested in writing up a news item or short opinion piece? As Contrarian Boston gets on its feet, I would like to add more news and a wider range of commentary as well.

Intrigued? Drop me a line at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.

Thanks for reading and see you Wednesday.