Globe ‘backlash’ story lacks a lot, including tech and bio firms fearing backlash
With the collapse of the recent Forest City plan as inspiration, The Boston Globe posted a weakly supported and out-of-touch business-section item bearing the headline “Tech, bio firms meet resistance in Cambridge.”
“The backlash has caught the notice of biotechnology leaders, who are asking whether the industry is still welcome in Cambridge,” Robert Weisman wrote on Saturday.
This would indeed be an interesting story — if there were any examples in this story of biotechnology leaders asking that. There aren’t.
Instead we have Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino talking about how his city wants the biotechs if Cambridge doesn’t (and how his city wants them anyway) and a not exactly game-changing quote from Peter Abair, director of economic development for the Massachusetts Biotechnology Association:
Is there room to accommodate the growing industry in Cambridge? Yes. And when there isn’t, when the community draws a line, then there are many other communities, such as Boston and the suburbs, that will be welcoming to the industry.
If Abair had any words speaking to Weisman’s thesis, they’re in the writer’s notes, not his story.
The item also quotes Peter Calkins, a Forest City executive, on the City Council opting to take no action on the developer’s proposal. But again the reader is left wondering, as Calkins’ quotes are as so: “We’re disappointed in how the process came out … Millennium still wants to do this. We still very much want to do this. But we can’t go through this same process for another three or four months with the same results.”
Finally, when Weisman talks about the tech firms meeting resistance in Cambridge, his story refers solely to Boston Properties. This is the developer that got its Google connector building plan through with the ongoing blessing of seven city councillors and four members of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority board who by now would have to be deaf, dumb, blind and dead to not understand that the plan was sneaked through by a quasi-city official who had no rights to act; justified with an urgency that has not been asked about, let alone proven; and sold for five “commitments” that are mainly things the city was already getting or could have had anyway. If Boston Properties and Google have learned any lessons from their experiences with Cambridge, it’s that if you get enough city officials in a room together and wait patiently while they talk tough you can pretty much make them do anything you want.
There has been a backlash, but it’s from residents tired of two things: seeing city officials bending over backward to give away land and rights for paltry benefit; and company officials who still don’t get that the best way to sell a project in Cambridge is to talk to the affected residents, a lot, to make sure that when a vote comes they’re aboard with whatever the company wants to do that the city has to sign off on. If Boston Properties and Forest City had gone to the residents first with their plans to remove much of the open space in their immediate areas, the nasty, faith-shattering, time-wasting debate and revelations that have followed would have been avoided and residents would now be as a result significantly less on guard — and likely not seeking to “‘downzone’ a number of parcels around Central Square, including the planned Millennium site, making them less suitable for large-scale development,” as Weisman says.
It’s city and company officials who think they’re too clever and cool to bother with a real public process who are causing a “backlash,” and The Boston Globe should know it and be able to reflect that in a story without the alarmist tone of the Saturday item.
Take note, any tech and bio firms that want to avoid this “backlash,” as well as Calkins, who wants “very much” to build in Cambridge and not go through a process “with the same results”: It’s not hard to do.
Marc,
I really do wonder if the developers being more forthright would have allowed them to avoid this issue. It seems that there is a small group in the Central Square area that wants to keep Central Square as it is now, or better yet, as it was when they moved there decades ago. I can’t see Boston Properties coming in and being upfront really changing that. Wondering if you can point to a time when that has happened in Cambridge as evidence?
On another note, this seems like an example of a community relying on a Jane Jacobs fallacy as the basis for community planning. We all love Jane Jacobs and would be worse off without her (she, among other things, really created the intellectual framework for blocking projects like the Inner Belt Expressway, which would have ruined Central Square). But she made a point about low-rise neighborhoods preserving affordability and diversity, that I don’t think anyone can really point to evidence to support. Low rise neighborhoods that routinely block new development, if they are attractive for other reasons, eventually become some of the most expensive areas in any city. Look at Greenwich Village, her muse, where no one, save for hedge fund managers and their ilk can afford to live. I think the people who are terrified of Central Square becoming less diverse are exactly right. Prices will increase, and it will lose what makes it special. But blocking development is going to exacerbate that, not hinder it. We should be developing new places to work, live, and shop. Otherwise we will all be priced out. Very soon.
Mr.Levy,
I concur with AlexMMM and would add that Forest City did approach the community, several times (afterall they came to the city with three different proposals over almost two years). In fact there have been several very public charrettes where they were in attendance to explain their proposal. They also presented their vision (which at that point included a residential tower) to the Central Square Advisory Board (C2). So to suggest that something was done in secret, I think, isn’t really accurate. However, what I find truly disturbing is this sense that Cambridge is somehow insulated from failure. A sentiment I’m sure was prevalent in the heyday of the manufacturing boom in these contested areas of Cambridge. The reality is that we have a genuine competitor that is well organized and able to accommodate. While I don’t think we need to rise to the level of paranoia I do think we should be conscious of the fact that Cambridge is currently in a boom cycle and it is something we need to nurture.
The down zoning petition and the moratorium initiative adopted by the council are a real slap in the face to not only the commercial sector but also property owners. It surmounts to nothing less than a taking and a real misguided attempt to achieving anything other than doing exactly as AlexMMM suggests. Property values have already gone up, housing is already limited and now we need to either try to mitigate the issue or do as the “downzoners” suggest and increase the problem. What is worse however is the fact that by sending this message of blind malice to developers suggests that not only do we not understand how this city is financed but that we don’t understand what we want or how to get it. Fan the flames all you like, but please give reason and compromise its’ fair shake. (think this one will get erased too?) ;)
Alex and Patrick seem to have things a little bit confused. Boston Properties is Kendall Square, not Central Square. There is simply no question that their plans to obliterate a substantial part of the roof garden for Google were actively concealed from the residents, Boston Properties’ other Kendall Square tenants and, probably, the city council until the February 22 letter that purported to come from BP and the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority, which at that point had only one member, who was not consulted. The procedure mandated by city ordinance (Chapter 2.110 of the municipal code), which requires community meetings and hearings before the Planning Board and the city council in order to dispose of city property, was foregone in the name of undefined urgency; seven councillors voted that $2,250,000 was “of such little significance that the [full process] would be unduly burdensome.” BP took advantage of a chaotic East Cambridge Planning Team meeting, at which the attendees voted unanimously to oppose its proposal, to convince a couple of residents to support it after the fact, allowing BP and city councillors to falsely claim community support. And now we find out that the housing BP has repeatedly dangled in front of residents, city councillors and, more recently, the CRA in exchange for ever more of what BP wants rather than what we want can’t be built under the current zoning.
I have been less involved in the Forest City proposal for Central Square, but I know enough to know that much has in fact been concealed from the residents, as Forest City tried to cut deals with city government. As with BP/Kendall Square, the devil is in the details. Central Square residents’ calls for housing rather than biolabs were met with a proposal to take back a hard-won public park in order to build an extremely out-of-scale apartment building in addition to, rather than instead of, the biolabs. The housing part was not brought out until very late in the game, as was the assertion that no community mitigation was necessary because Forest City had already done more than enough for the community. Both of those were abandoned in the face of strong community opposition. The residents continue to call for housing instead of allowing biotech to keep marching west from Kendall Square into their neighborhood and reject the notion that they have to accept whatever developers put forward. At the very last minute, yet more complications appeared out of the blue: expiring affordable housing in University Park.
I can’t be the only person who doubts the sincerity of developers who keep springing new wrinkles on us and then claim we just can’t ever be satisfied. Very few if any of us are completely anti-development, but we are sick and tired of having the camel’s nose under the tent turn into a full camel destroying our neighborhoods over and over, with the active encouragement of city officials, both elected and appointed. Looked at in this light, the downzoning petition is just the neighbors using the developers’ techniques against them. Tell us the truth from the beginning, talk to us for real not just for show, and see if maybe you get a different reception.
Heather is right that I got my developers confused.
But I think what really matters is the question of, if these developers were more forthright with the community, would they be received differently. I think the evidence points to a resounding no. We in the Boston area have a peculiar relationship with density. We live in a very dense place, we derive great benefit from density (shopping, transit access, lively streetscapes), and many declining areas have been rescued by injecting more density. However, a significant number of people, who seem otherwise bright and marginally logical at other times in their lives, lose their minds when the notion of increasing density comes up.
I will, for now, accept Heather and some other anti-growth activists at face value, and presume that the real issue here is the Kendall Square office district creeping into Central Square. If that’s the issue, then what is really desired is housing. So far so good. BUT it has to be housing built on a scale that is financially infeasible AND at densities that are way below what is appropriate in an urban, transit-rich environment, and will not make a dent in the housing crisis that has made Cambridge unaffordable to all but a very few. “If you can give us something impossible to build, that is wrong for the location, and bad for the overall planning of the city, then we will support your plan, Mr. Developer! Why won’t you give us that?”
Let’s talk about the notion of “out-of-scale” for a moment, because this is my favorite current hot-button phrase among the “preserve our city in amber” set. What does it really mean? Who has ever said that building on the same scale as a site’s surroundings is more important than: providing homes for other people, making a neighborhood exciting and vibrant, or maintaining our ability to employ people who live here, and stay out of recession? Why is “out-of-scale” reason enough to not build certain things? Isn’t everything, at a certain point in time, out of scale? Wasn’t City Hall out of scale with the rowhouses on Bigelow Street? Should we not have built that? Isn’t Fenway Park grossly out of scale with the rest of the neighborhood? Wasn’t the Prudential Center completely out of scale with its neighborhood, which was an abandoned rail yard? Should we have kept it an abandoned rail yard in order to preserve scale? Should we have eliminated the gold dome from the statehouse so that it would blend in with the surrounding townhouses, and not upset the apple cart?
Cambridge has a bigger issue than scale. We have HUMAN BEINGS who cannot live here. We could build taller buildings and allow those HUMAN BEINGS to join our community. Is scale really more important than that? Would you be willing to tell people that you want to keep them out, in order to preserve the scale of a site next to a lifeless “urban” office park? Is that what the spirit of Cambridge is all about?
Or is it really all about yuppies? Do these offices and apartments represent an opportunity for the yuppies to come in and take over our precious neighborhood? Eureka! I have followed fights over development all my life, and am fascinated by how this plays out, and I have realized that virtually anyone who opposes new development is trying to keep out “those people.” The stereotype is suburbanites trying to keep the poor, or the minority, or someone different, out. But it cuts both ways, and in Cambridge, “those people” are the ones who didn’t live through the 60s and 70s and 80s here, and don’t deserve to reap the benefits.
Heather, you wonder why our elected officials are willing to work around the aging hippie activist minority? Maybe it’s because they see a form of discrimination taking place, and they are doing everything they can to prevent it. Isn’t that what Cambridge is really all about?
I live in that neighborhood and I fully support the Google expansion. I too wish the city negotiated better terms with the developer, like they did with Alexandria, but please do not suggest that the urgency was “undefined.” The city was scared that Google would be lured by Boston to move to the waterfront. A perfectly probable scenario one which was written about in the boston business journal. That the CRA doesn’t have their house in order was especially troubling, but again, that isn’t Boston Propertie’s issue. The people never truly owned that space, and while it is sad-ish that half of it will be gone, I don’t really think its the tragedy that some groups have made it out to be. I was at a wedding their last weekend, its nice, but not the eden it is sometimes equated to.
As for Forest City they were completely upfront about every move they made. They submitted last year to the council who then asked for a residential component. They came back with the residential tower. The only “outraged” people were a group of malcontents stuck in 1969 who claimed that a 10k sqft park populated by drunks, drug addicts, and discarded syringes was worth more than housing 200+ people. They claimed it would block the sun. They claimed they would no longer be able to read books in the park, even though none of them ever set foot near this area of Central. They sent out pamphlets stating the tower would be 16 stories tall, have only one bedroom market rate units, and convinced all of Newtowne Court and Washington Elms that a wrecking ball was headed their way. If anyone wasn’t telling the truth it was these residents, who, like the Tea Party or any other extremist group used scare tactics and lies to move their agenda forward. Even in the face of fact they still rallied against a premise built of nonsense. So, now, instead of having a reasonable discussion about density, height, and content we sit and wait for Forest City to see if they will resubmit. The irony is that you and your ilk say you want lower cost housing, or just more housing, and stores, and emenities, but you’re completely unwilling to compromise acting as if you somehow own the property in question or are somehow entitled to control it. Forest City or MIT for that matter by right can go up to 80′ by special permit and put lab space or anything within the scope of BB zoning with absolutely no community benefit save for the increased tax revenue afforded the city. Forest City’s request asked for (in its last iteration)an increase of 100k sqft and 15′ in excess of what is allowed in height. For this we would have gotten 1m (per the ordinance $10/sqft), a retail floor with 8000 sqft to continue the success and design of Flour and Central Bottle, and 168 (not sure on exact number) units due to expire would have been kept in lower income housing. Now, that is off the table and we have a developer and most of the city scratching their heads wondering what happened. Menino knows what happened and he’ll attempt to capitalize, as he should. However Millenium now has to make a decision, and if anyone doubts their commitment to Cambridge you only have to look to the 30+ volunteer squads they repeatedly send out into the neighborhoods to quell that thought. Did we want more? When does this cross the line into extortion? Admittedly the 100k sqft would add about 8mil in additional revenue to Forest City, so maybe their is more room for negotiation, but the council has removed the housing portion, and there will never be housing on that block. But these radical groups respond simply with “No!” and in the end everyone loses.
So, maybe you can make the argument that the 10k park was worth fighting for. Maybe the work done by the community 25 years ago should remain frozen in perpetuity, but I would argue that the residential tower would have trumped that current use and that property should always be reevaluated relative to highest use. Central Square needs more housing, it will not be on the “all asia” block. The downzoning petition exacerbates the problem and further puts private property owners at odds with those who would see it through. Like it or not, you need property owner support, instead of throwing them under the bus why not work to a reasonable compromise? You say that the downzoning petition is “just the neighbors using developers’ techniques against them” … I have to disagree, if developers had shown up at zero hour and tried to force a petition like this, not on the council agenda, we’d all be there with pitchforks and torches. No, this petition ignores private property owners, ignores any real neighborhood concensus confining authorship to zealots who simply wish to “occupy” something, and is more akin to the reaction one would expect from an immature teenager lashing out at authority because they didn’t get their way.
A few thoughts:
One thing that Marc’s article points out is the dance we seem to go through where developers often come forward with their proposals before doing a great deal of leg work with the community. This results in people not trusting the developer and being against their plans. I’m not commenting specifically on the two matters in the article, as I was not involved, but it would seem to be in a developers best interest to meet with the community first, revise their plan as needed, and then come forward to the city council. Strategically it is the best way to gain community support. Of course, you will never get 100% community support, but you would get more.
Regarding the Globe article, I think this is a very real concern. Cambridge’s biotech industry is very important to the city. Its important for jobs, tax revenue, and local businesses. That doesn’t mean that we should give free reign to these cooperations, but Boston is actively recruiting biotech, and this could have a significantly negative impact on Cambridge. Boston isn’t just going after new businesses who want to settle in the area, but Menino is going after current businesses already settled in Cambridge (what a great neighbor). Although I think the article is a bit alarmist, the underlining point is true. If Cambridge becomes seen as a hostile place to do business (and we all know how perception quickly becomes reality), then these companies will go to Boston.
We have a very well financed city. As a School Committee member I am grateful for the amount of money given to our public schools. As someone who’s family owns property, I am grateful for our low property tax rate. Those two things will be in jeopardy if we lose our biotech industry.
Regarding Forest City specifically, I’m not sure I understand this point that housing should be built on the site. Although housing would be nice, this land is not owned by the city. I don’t think we can tell the land owners to build housing on land that they own. There was an offer to build housing in another location but that was taken off the table. I think its important for everyone in this debate to stay focussed. Talking about wishes and dreams that will never come to reality only distracts from the conversation. They want to build a lab there. Zoning allows them to do that within parameters. The question is, do they do that within those parameters with little give back to the city or does the Council allow them to do more then zoning allows and what will the city get in return. If I don’t have this right please correct me.
So, I think there are various things that folks can do to help the process move along more smoothly. I think developers can involve the community more and earlier, I think some in the community need to better understand the benefits of having this industry in Cambridge, and I think the decision makers need to stay focussed on what are the real options in front of them and not go off on tangents. In the end, we can’t just let companies get whatever they want, but if we are not careful, we will lose much of this industry to our “neighbors” across the river, and that will hurt everyone in the end.
Marc McGovern
First of all, who says I’m an anti-growth activist? Ask the developers whose projects I have come to Planning Board and City Council meetings to support if that’s true. My neighbors and I have shown up and waited through hours of meetings in order to speak in favor of projects we think will benefit our neighborhood. Have you, Mr. Barrett? AlexMMM?
Mr. Barrett, you should read the excellent stories in this paper about the roof garden saga. The alleged urgency predated any public knowledge of the proposal and therefore could not possibly have had anything to do with subsequent overtures by Mayor Menino.
As I have pointed out in many public meetings, this project was hatched in total darkness; even the sole member of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority was not told about it, even though it was presented as coming from Boston Properties and the CRA. The manager, BP and Joe Tulimieri tried to ram it through in four days; instead it took them an additional three weeks to get the sheep on the city council to bless it without ever considering the substance of the deal or the fact that they were yet again intentionally circumventing the procedures in our city ordinances that were adopted to prevent things like this from happening in secret.
I have maintained from the beginning that the Google deal could happen in a way that would make everybody happy if there were any real desire on the part of BP and Google to be creative. Let me note also that the people who keep being forgotten in all of this are all of the other tenants in Kendall Square who are losing a place that they care about a great deal. It is insulting to call the porkchop park a quarter mile away sandwiched between the railroad tracks and a four-lane truck route a replacement for the roof garden.
By the way, it is six months later, and the world has not come to an end. The so-called urgency was just another lie. We could actually have done what we were supposed to do and probably have come out with a far better project had we used that time well. This is just another example of people expending more energy avoiding doing what they should do instead of just doing it. I have no patience for that, nor for apologists for it. Over and over developers have agreed that their projects improve when they listen to the affected community. In this case they didn’t (not one single thing has really changed since February), and I expect this project to reflect that failure. That will be a loss for everyone.
Heather,
I have to admit that I am a bit disappointed. I had assumed you knew more about real estate and would understand that the fact that nothing physical has happened since February does not mean that there was no urgency. There was an urgency to get a deal done, because the players understand the long lead time to actually get things built and get tenants in place. So there was urgency to cement a deal in order to go through the necessary steps to actually get something built in a timely manner. Also, while I am sure that the commercial tenants will miss their windswept piece of underutilized hell on top of a parking garage, you can bet they extracted something from BP. Guaranteed amenities are written into leases.
If your accusations about the developer-friendly scheming that goes on in Cambridge is correct, why is the entire Boston area, including Cambridge, considered to be the most developement-unfriendly region in the country? Many of the activists who run to meetings crying about how their voices are not heard must be heard by someone, because they have been very successful in making it so hard to build in Boston that many national developers won’t even attempt it. Oh, and the ones who do? They build exorbitant timing delays and legal costs into their budgets to plan for the absurd process they have to go through. Remember that the next time you hear that people can’t afford Cambridge anymore, or when you wonder why only national chains can afford the retail rents. Someone has to pay for the development costs that your ilk pushes through the roof.
I have lived in Boston, Cambridge, or Somerville for virtually my entire life, and have attended countless meetings. Try again with the unsubstantiated ad hominems.
There is something that Alex, Patrick and Marc McGovern seem not to have grasped yet. There are four types of development situations depending on the site and economic conditions :
1. Zoning changes with downzoning
2. Existing Zoning.
3. Zoning change with Upzoning
4. No zoning change, but zoning is violated
Type #1 above includes the recently filed Yanow downzoning petition.
Type #3 above is the Forest City petition which was an upzoning but it expired.
Type #4 above is the Google proposal which appears to violate zoning.
The downzoning petition is on the Robert Winters website, but the City website does not list it, so people cannot get familiar with what it says. It is so new to most people and I imagine a majority of the commenters on this site have not read it yet.
The Forest City petition has been submitted both last year and this, and may come back a third time. The last time I looked the City Council makes decisions on zoning but cannot allow any developer to “do more than zoning allows.” Last year the Council send Forest City back because they did not have a sufficient housing component. So Forest City came back with a high rise housing proposal located on a park with a shadow on another park. When I saw it, I said that this idea was designed to die. And it did. A council amendment to the zoning deleted the housing.
Now we were back to square one with the original proposal — without housing. The last couple of weeks in July were an attempt by many parties to identify housing concerns and see what could be resolved. There was not enough time to work things out and work out a resolution. So the zoning petition was allowed to expire. The official explanation given to the Planning Board was that the Council decided that since there was an ongoing plan for the area, so the plan should be completed first. Only then could the City consider zoning changes. This position for planning first, zoning second had already been taken by the Planning Board.
When the dust settles, we may more easily see that indeed planning should come first, and the zoning comes second. The Forest City petition should probably not have been filed. It was premature.
We can still ask whether the Forest City petition was legal. Forest City was proposing to locate housing on a park. Parkland is protected by Article 97 of the Amendments of the state Constitution. The requirements are not overwhelming : a 2/3 vote of both houses of the Legislature is required for a change of use of parkland.
The basic idea of upzoning raises a special problem with Article 7 of the Declaration of Rights of the State Constitution. All those who believe in giveaways to developers should read it and weep :
“Government is instituted for the Common good, for the protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness of the people and not for the profit, honor or private interest of any one man, family, or class of men;
This provision is positive in that government actions such as zoning changes must serve the common good. It is negative in the sense that it limits profits to individuals and private interests. Basically, the Constitution says that Forest City and MIT could not make a dollar out of the upzoning.
They can make whatever profit they like (consistent with other laws) from EXISTING zoning. But if the zoning is inflated to allow more development (and yes, more density), there can be no profit to the petitioners. Yes folks, it is the law. And the same law applies to Tom Menino.
This law is not secret. It has been around since 1780. The words came from crusty old John Adams, hero of many conservatives. Tax breaks, public-private partnerships, upzoning and a whole lot of other things could be illegal under the Constitution. The trouble is that people who should be respecting the law are keeping Article 7 secret. From my experience, I have run into two people on the development side who are willing to talk about it. Among public employees, including elected ones, no one wants to talk.
I have held off on the Google-Roof Garden controversy because it is a sprawling morass of missteps by all sorts of people along the way — public and private. The Authority is half way through a process to take a legal “look back” at what happened to the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority. I expect that shortly before September 19 the full legal report will be posted on the web.
In the latter half of Marc Levy’s commentary he identifies some of the failings in the ways public agencies have conducted themselves. Currently, I am less critical of Boston Properties because I feel they have been more honest than the public officials.
How can you have a public body which is supposed to meet publicly for business struggling with quorum issues for two-and-a-half years? With an active quorum of three for part of that time, they did not meet when they could have. They tried to have a meeting two years ago, but it lacked a quorum, so all of their Authority votes are nullified, voided. For at least the early months of this year they had one member who was, according to the by-laws, “the Authority.” Not being a quorum, he could take no official action.
The whole Google deal was handled by CRA staff with no vote of the Authority. The last time the CRA voted a budget was in 2009. For over two years they have been operating without a budget. Without a budget, who authorizes any expenditure? What sort of precedent does this set for public agencies working without formal meetings, without a budget yet with fairly large amounts of money being spent?
The City Manager can properly claim that “we don’t do this sort of thing in City government.” But he was the only person empowered to appoint new members, and this did not happen on his watch until April of this year. The CRA Board is now back to full strength with five members, and they still do not have a budget. The matter has not even been on the agenda.
I think that a good image of the City for any potential developer is that “We do things by the Law here,” and “We do not operate on any principle of ‘Pay-to-Play’.” In other words there is no corruption in this City.
Cambridge Day and the Cambridge Chronicle have been providing extensive coverage of the ills of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority. Guess which media outlet has not said a word? The Boston Globe.
Stephen H. Kaiser
Mechanical Engineer
I have been disappointed by the Globe’s apparent bias that those who objected to the Forest City development are uniformly anti-development. (As well as the added message that, by the way, we LOVE you Big Pharm guys over here in Boston.) The journalist, the editors, and Ed Glaeser all seem to share the same notion that a call for sensible, process-oriented development is a hysterical cry of Anti-Growth.
While some voices in Cambridge may be pure anti-growth, I think most of us here are pro-growth, in favor of urban over rural density, and like to have popular, productive industry in our city. What we don’t like so much is growth without planning, poor urban landscaping, and changing zoning laws without due process, and growth without consideration of cost/benefit to the local environment.
I keep thinking, how much would Tom Menino embrace a several story, zoning-exception lab two blocks from his house?
What we want is Smart Planning. Where are the boundaries? How do we manage traffic and transportation? Where is the housing? Who can afford to live there?
Surely this is something we can all agree on. What happened to the Globe?
This is a very funny comment. Jean, like everyone else in the world who actively opposes development, claims to be pro-development, BUT….
Yes, we all agree that housing and jobs are good, and tall buildings can be OK, and we (almost) all agree on something else. Namely, that all of those things are OK as long as they happen somewhere else, and are handled somehow differently than this one development.
The problem that experts and rational people agree on is that, since everyone wants it to happen somewhere else, and the somewheres else all have neighbors of their own, it can’t happen anywhere. Every neighborhood group has only its own petty finite quibbles in mind, and cares not for the city or region as a whole.
That is Glaeser’s point, and my point. You have all lost credibility, because you all say that you like growth, but not when it’s near you. How about this, Jean: if you don’t want housing in Central, suggest a place where it should go, and then take it upon yourself to respond to the inevitable asinine complaints that those neighbors are sure to have.
Sorry, but Mr. Barrett is getting the order of things reversed, as many did. There was no attempt to lure Google away, as pointless as it was, until after the council got the CRA/Boston Properties documents. And other cities’ attempts were indeed pointless. See the reporting I did back in March 2012.
I have never erased a single comment that’s come to me on this site. I will refuse to post comments that are libelous, inflammatory, ad hominem or below community standards, but I tend to lean toward publishing whenever possible.