Good Greenway News

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Tom Powers got some good news this week. Having struggled for five years to put together a visitors center on the Rose Kennedy Greenway, the president of the Boston Harbor Island Alliance heard Congress is providing $5 million for the pavilion near Faneuil Hall Marketplace. Also, BLOOMS! ...

That's not enough to build a gleaming glass box with a sparkling water pool surrounding it, which was the the impossibly attractive -- but also impossible -- dream that the Alliance first unveiled years ago. But it's enough to build a right nice three-season facility, Powers said yesterday.

The Alliance, stewarding this project for the National Parks Service, had scaled back again and again from a New York architect's vision, as costs rose and money got tighter. The pavilion -- a center for visitors and residents who want to take advantage of Boston Harbor and the Boston Harbor Islands national park -- was once thought to be a good bet to the first building to be built of all those planned for the Greenway.

Like the prospects for the other, more ambitious projects, prospects faded, and the opening date just kept get pushed further out.

Now that's changed.

On Monday, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that will provide $5 million for the project, a 4,000-square-foot center being designed by Tim Love of Utile, Inc. for the 28,000-square-foot Greenway block known as Parcel 14. That's the one just north of State Street, near Christopher Columbus Park and the heart of the tourist and recreation region of the waterfront.

The pavilion is intended as a gateway from Long Wharf to the diverse and beautiful islands -- about three dozen of them -- that are part of Boston's spectacular harbor.

The pavilion will have an information center, and ferry tickets will be sold there. (Who ever knew which side of the Marriott Long Wharf you went to to get tickets in the past anyway?)

In a press release, the Islands Alliance said construction of the pavilion will be done with green building practices. Construction can begin late this summer -- this summer! -- and opening is set for mid-2010.

''This pavilion will provide a gateway to the beautiful Boston Harbor Islands national park just minutes from downtown while creating new jobs and setting an environmental standard for others to follow,'' said Powers. ''We are grateful to Senator Kennedy for his commitment to this project and his leadership in securing the necessary funding.''

Reed Hilderbrand, Inc. is doing the landscaping, and IDEO, Inc. the exhibit design. The pavilion is being shifted toward the center of the block and Faneuil Hall Marketplace, from an earlier planned location closer to Long Wharf.

Mayor Tom Menino also thanked Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, and said, "I look forward to working with the National Park Service and the Harbor Island Alliance to develop an inviting and functional gateway that will open up the Rose Kennedy Greenway to the treasures of the Harbor Islands. We're fortunate to have such terrific natural resources in our own back yard, and whether you’re a resident or a tourist, the pavilion will be a central destination for information about our beautiful city and the amazing Boston Harbor Islands National Park.”

The Alliance was created to promote public awareness and use of the Boston Harbor Islands national park area by creating vibrant spaces, facilities, and programming events on the islands, raising and managing the public and private resources necessary to do so. Check out www.islandalliance.org.

The national park includes 34 islands, encompassing 1,600 acres and 35 miles of undeveloped ocean shoreline. That site is www.bostonharborislands.org .

BLOOMS!

As noted here previously, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society's BLOOMS! event begins this weekend, in lieu of an annual flower show. (The New York Times had an excellent piece on the demise of flower shows, including Boston's, and similar events nationwide, published on page one in last Sunday's editions.)

BLOOMS!, in four downtown locations and three shopping centers, will celebrate spring (or at least the idea of it) with 58 exhibits, and 23 educational lectures, demonstrations, and events.

Between Friday, March 13, and March 22, wander in to the InterContinental Boston Hotel, 125 High Street, International Place, and South Station. Or one of the Simon Malls, at Copley Place, The Mall at Chestnut Hill, or the Atrium Mall.

There will be a floral and tea event at The Mall at Chestnut Hill on March 15. All exhibits are free and open to the public. See www.masshort.org .

MassHort volunteers did much of the original landscaping on the three Greenway blocks near South Station last year. You may notice that the lush picture of Boston's new Greenway that appears at the top of our Journal is of one of those blocks, in front of the InterContinental and Independence Wharf.