The New West End

Monday, January 12, 2009

For years, in planning and even in execution, the Big Dig was seen as a be-all and end-all. "What has come as a pleasant surprise to me," said Downtown North Association's Bob O'Brien, "is the development of the Central Artery has become a catalyst for development of other parts of the city that are going to be much more important."

O'Brien is a dedicated, involved, and influential player in the development of the city. He's impassioned but very prudent. Back when reporting for a living, we once joked with him that he was much too reasonable ever to be quoted in a news story.

He's always worth listening to, so we wandered out on a frigid night recently, fought the Bruins fans for a parking space near the TD Banknorth Garden, and attended a meeting of the West End Civic Association on Staniford Street.

The association meets in the modest little West End Museum , at 150 Staniford, and if the meetings get slow you can always lose yourself in the fascinating pictures and text on the wall, chronicling the ups and downs of a historic neighborhood.

O'Brien was addressing the association meeting, a couple of dozen people, before they took up their regular agenda.

He started by explaining that, essentially, he's executive director of a West End organization.

He wasn't being presumptuous. It's just that names and terms of reference have become confused since the West End neighborhood got erased from Boston's map in one of the early, and now considered more blundering, examples of post-World War II urban renewal.

"Downtown North and the West End are synonymous," O'Brien said. "I look forward to the day when the term Downtown North will return to its historical roots, and become the West End."

O'Brien has been leading the Downtown North Association for a couple of decades. It represents everybody -- businesses, residents whether owners or renters, nonprofits. Everybody with an interest.

And the Central Artery project, which impacted the area considerably, has been a focus of the association. Specifically, O'Brien was a significant player on the Mayor's Central Artery Completion Task Force, which helped shape the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, and a huge influence in the rebirth of the Bulfinch Triangle.

O'Brien said the Downtown North Association was an early community action group in Boston, in the late 1980s, originally with only 30 members and no staff.

It has grown to 120 members, and was diverse from the beginning, representing all types of people or groups interested in the area.

The West End Civic Association, by contrast, emerged as the first significant residential group in the West End.

"From my point of view," he said, "the terms Downtown North and West End are synonymous."

Duane Lucia, the new president of the West End Civic Association (and of the West End Community Center), noted that some Boston Redevelopment Authority and city officials refer to the Bulfinch Triangle as being next to the West End, or near the West End.

West Enders consider the historic triangle, a former mill pond long ago filled in and now being developed and redeveloped, as part of their neighborhood.

"There's got to be a change at City Hall," Lucia said, referring to the language.

"The West End got consolidated in Charles River Park," O'Brien said. That is, people thought of them as the same, even though the West End was considerably bigger and encompassed more than the major residential development that developer Jerry Rappaport created along Storrow Drive.

It would be easy for the nearby North End, or its political representatives, to claim the Bulfinch Triangle as part of that neighborhood, O'Brien said.

"One could argue it was neither, but it wasn't the North End."

O'Brien said he is particularly concerned about four areas in the Downtown North or West End neighborhood that are on the table for change, so to speak.

One is the old Boston Garden site, "which needs to be done," O'Brien said. Always tending to look on the bright side, O'Brien (who was patient through years and years of delays in Turnpike and MBTA development in the Bulfinch Triangle) said: "The devil -- or the angel -- is in the details."

That site is owned by Delaware North, which owns the new Garden.

Another is the "Nashua Street quadrangle," which is the area that will be the next phase of development of Massachusetts General Hospital. That includes Spaulding Rehab.

The third is Suffolk University, which some have considered a likely prospect for redevelopment of the sprawling Lindemann and Curley buildings. "That complex has not been part of the community and presents some interesting challenges," O'Brien said.

And, finally, the Government Center Garage, at One Congress St., "the most immediate."
The developer of that proposed project, Ted Raymond, is scheduled to be at a West End Civic Association meeting soon.

Redevelopment of that vast garage "will remove the last remaining barrier between ourselves and Government Center," O'Brien said.

And that project is exciting for three reasons, O'Brien said, the first of which is "the possibility of a new public elementary school," the idea for which goes back at least 10 years in the neighborhood.

As it happens, that issue dominated discussion at the association's meeting after O'Brien left, the main item on the association's agenda.

"We could see that happen -- the developer is open to that possibility," O'Brien said. "It could change the nature of the community. We need that kind of change."

Everyone present at the meeting, including a few who have young children and many without, seemed in favor.

O'Brien said another reason for supporting the elimination of a hulking parking garage for a mixed-use complex, with more residential (if that market ever returns) opportunity, is it would improve "the social and cultural dimensions of the community."

Finally, in the Bulfinch Triangle, he said, it could usher in a new mechanism for community development, such as a "business improvement district." These districts, supported by taxes or levies on the local businesses, use the money for improvements within their boundaries.

They've been popular in some other cities but have not caught on here. Efforts for a BID for Downtown Crossing have not gotten a grip, nor was the idea very popular when a "PID" idea was kicked around for the parks of the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

"What we need is a NIB," O'Brien said. A neighborhood improvement district.

But, he said, "I'd have to put the school at the top" of his list.

*******

O'Brien answered some questions, including one about how a proposal for a couple of 700-foot towers for the One Congress St. site "fit into your vision."

"I'm not in favor of height for its own sake," he said. "But, if we develop that, what do we get for what is being proposed?"

"The project needs to be worthy on its own merits, but what do we get that we otherwise wouldn't?" by supporting a large development.

"Height shouldn't be debated in the abstract."

The site is currently zoned for two 400-foot towers, he said.

"How high above that is less important than what goes on at the ground level and what we get for it."

Though Copley Place is popular, and not high-rise, he said, he considers it "one of the most uninteresting, unattractive developments one can imagine."

"Height can be elegant," O'Brien said. "Squat can be ugly."

*******

O'Brien has an interesting history for such an active Boston activist, and he summarized it.

He's originally from New Jersey, went to Regis High School in New York, then Boston College, and then Columbia business school.

After that he -- and how many are there of these? -- worked at Xerox, then went to Harvard Divinity School. (So that's where he gets his patience.)

He did community development in Charlestown and the North End, and has been tending to the West End for 20 years.

O'Brien also spent a couple of years at the Massachusetts Consumers' Council.

*******

There was a lot of optimism that a new elementary school is in the future for the West End.
"This thing is gaining momentum in a big way," said Lucia.

"It's an outrage that there's no school in this neighborhood," said one woman.

"We need to convince the mayor," O'Brien said in his presentation.

There's a feeling that the West End, North End -- and maybe even Beacon Hill -- would support it.