credit: Courtesy photo


Boston Parks Department worker Pat Durham cleared leaves on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall last week.

Two years after a commission was formed by an act of the legislature to study the use and possible sale of the Hynes Convention Center and the Boston Common Garage, a draft report is finally ready for review by commission members.

While the draft is confidential, the sentiment of the report will suggest keeping the status quo, with modifications to increase profit, said one commission member.

On Monday, December 18, at 6 p.m. at the Hynes Convention Center, the commission will review the draft report and hopefully approve its findings, thus ending a process that has been delayed by more than a year.

The commission, which is chaired by state Senator Dianne Wilkerson and Representative Antonio Cabral, was formed in response to both the new BCEC facility and the post-9/11 climate in which the tourism and convention markets were suffering. “Some folks suggested that it might be time to close the Hynes,” said James E. Rooney, executive director of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, which owns and operates the properties. Simply put, the commission had to answer the question of whether or not the city needs two convention centers.

This summer Rooney said he was pleased with the commission’s work and looked forward to closing the book on the matter. “They were terrific meetings. They asked a lot of the right questions,” he said. “I obviously wish it was behind us. From a closure standpoint, it is important because it is on the books legislatively and it creates uncertainty from a marketing perspective and from a business planning perspective.”

Wilkerson’s office said the delays were due to scheduling and logistical issues.

Neighborhood groups fighting to preserve three National Landmarks as the MBTA makes Copley station handicapped accessible have decided not to petition their case to the Supreme Court after an adverse U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in August.

“The consensus was it probably didn’t make a lot of sense to continue to pursue the case through legal channels,” said attorney Larry Hardoon, who represented the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay and the Boston Preservation Alliance. The groups alleged that the MBTA and Federal Transit Authority failed to comply with federal and state preservation laws to protect Old South Church, the Boston Public Library and the wrought iron canopy over the current Copley T station.

On Boylston Street’s south side, in front of the library, the MBTA plans to reconstruct the wrought iron canopy on the library plaza and add an elevator headhouse next to it. On the north side, next to Old South Church, plans call for replacing the existing outbound headhouse, adding an elevator headhouse behind it and adding a headhouse over the open stair on the east side of Dartmouth Street. All headhouses would be 14-foot tall, glass structures except for the original wrought iron canopy.

Hardoon sent a letter to the MBTA on behalf of his clients to “open the door and invite the MBTA to talk to them” about how they can still preserve certain architectural elements.

In an open letter yesterday morning, MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo wrote, "So, we're done. People with disabilities have prevailed over NABB."

Gordon Richardson, a Commonwealth Avenue resident who chairs the Citywide Groundwater Emergency Task Force, told city councilors at a recent public hearing on groundwater that, while there has been considerable progress on several fronts, the task force still wants more neighborhoods protected from damage caused by dropping groundwater levels.

The progress includes work done by the MBTA who, working with property owners, recently installed two new recharge wells as part of a short-term solution to the groundwater depression near Back Bay Station while it looks for a longer-term remedy, Richardson said. Progress also has been made in determining the causes of such depressions in East Boston and the Back Bay, and remediation projects have been initiated as well.

But, Richardson said Citywide-GET continues to believe that the protection offered by the Groundwater Conservation District should be extended to all parts of Boston where there are buildings or other significant structures supported on wood pilings driven into filled land. Currently the district addresses depletion issues in parts of Back Bay, Beacon Hill, Bay Village, the South End, Fenway, Roxbury and Mission Hill. At the time it was enacted, sections of the North End, Charlestown and East Boston were not included because the cause of groundwater problems there were unknown.

“Our primary reason for testifying here is to express our disappointment with the apparent lack of standard for the city’s determining whether the GCOD should be extended to include other neighborhoods,” Richardson testified at the hearing.

He does not believe that present levels of groundwater, whether they are high or low, should be used as criteria for determining what parts of Boston should be within the district. “Data from monitoring wells indicate normal conditions but do not predict future groundwater levels,” he said. “We need to be sure that future building does not jeopardize existing buildings.

But Jim Hunt, the city’s chief of environment and energy said he and Richardson “will continue to disagree.” He believes that “if you live on pilings on filled land, you need to be assured that your property is protected,” he said. “But the ‘one size fits all’ model does not work; different solutions are needed for different neighborhoods.”

He is concerned, for example, that putting in the recharge requirement in neighborhoods with current high levels of groundwater could cause flooding. In addition, he is leery of adding additional regulations on homeowners and sending more to the Board of Appeal, which is already backed up by four months.

Both Richardson and Hunt said they wanted to have a public discussion about this issue.

Charlestown runner Charles Monahan’s vision for a commemorative Boston Marathon statue in Kenmore Square has taken its first steps towards reality. Commissioners of the Browne Fund met this week to discuss preliminary funding for the statue, which was initially proposed for the finish line at Copley Square.

“As of now, we’re not sure if it’s going to be a statue or something contemporary,” said Chantal Charles, community services liaison for the Browne Fund, a non-profit organization dedicated to the creation of public art. Monahan requested a design development grant between $15,000 and $20,000 to begin planning the statue’s form, which will be designed by Boston University College of Fine Arts professor Lloyd Lilly. The Browne Fund commissioners will not decide until spring, according to Charles.

Monahan, an avid athlete who has competed in 16 marathons on seven continents, said that the city lacks sufficient commemoration of the event. “Boston is the world’s premier marathon, but there’s nothing to show the dedication of the runners,” he said. “A lot of time, effort and pain go into it.”

Of the three-foot commemorative tortoise and hare statue in Copley Square, Monahan said some runners don’t like the analogy. A 15-foot granite map carved into the ground shows the 26.2-mile route but “you have to lie down if you want your picture taken with it,” Monahan said. There are commemorative statues in Newton and Hopkinton, “but it’s not the Newton marathon, it’s the Boston marathon,” Monahan said.

The statue would be located in the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, one mile from the finish line and, according to Monahan’s vision, portray an androgynous runner with a laurel wreath. The inscription would read, “To you who have challenged this course, the laurels are yours forever.” He said he hopes it would serve as a “psychological boost” to weary, exhausted runners struggling with cramps and injuries, including his daughter who completed her first Boston Marathon with three stress fractures.

Monahan estimated that the statue would cost $450,000 and said he would like to keep it free of commercial advertising.

Jack Fleming, spokesperson for the Boston Athletic Association, which sponsors the marathon, said that it is not unusual for a resident to contact the organization with ideas for statues and plaques. He said he did not yet know what kind of support the BAA would give to Monahan’s idea. The Browne Fund will hold another meeting to discuss Monahan’s request in the coming weeks, Charles said.

CREDIT: John Besser
:
Drew Bunn of Marlborough Street helped his dad Jim pick out the perfect tree from Chris Mitchell of Beacon Street at the Christmas Tree Sale, sponsored by the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay at the Clarendon Street Playground Saturday, December 9.

Get rid of news boxes now

We all know that Boston is a dirty city. We can blame the city for not putting out enough trash bins, although maybe that is changing. We have blamed the city for not towing cars when they clean the streets with the mechanical sweepers, but this fall that changed too.

It looks as if things might get better.

Before city officials get too complacent, however, we want to call their attention to a third problem on our sidewalks — news boxes.

These messy, banged-up items litter the whole downtown. Mercifully they are banned from the historic district. But the Back Bay Architecture Commission’s territory extends only to the north side of Boylston Street. The south side has unkempt clusters of these blights on almost every block.

This has got to stop. There is a city ordinance that enables Code Enforcement to take away boxes that are broken or filled with debris. But city officials say the ordinance is too cumbersome, requiring too much notification. And there are too many newsboxes to keep up with.

The newspaper companies, as well as the companies that produce the publications selling cars, renting apartments, and entertaining people blather on about their rights to free speech. Some court cases have upheld their position. Some have not.

We too run newspapers, and we do not agree that our free speech is threatened if we can’t be in boxes on the sidewalk. No one’s convenient access to the free speech the publications say they are protecting is being compromised. One of the ironies of this claim is that within a two-minute walk of every news box in the Back Bay there is a little store selling most of these publications or giving them away. Another irony is that residents can get the Globe, Herald, New York Times and the Back Bay Sun at their doorsteps. Although that, too, has the possibility of creating trash, residents say they prefer the convenience. Since they read the publications regularly, that method is preferable.

Furthermore, no publication has the right to trash the neighborhood. News boxes could be considered a kind of three-dimensional graffiti, which also involves the written word. Graffiti, thank goodness, has finally been seen for what it is, just vandalism. The news boxes should be seen for what they are, just commercialism.

City officials should not be so timid. As a beginning they should get out there and take away all the news boxes that are in anything but perfect condition.

Then they should adapt a solution devised by the city of Chicago, which installed its own permanent black metal news boxes throughout its downtown. The city’s two dailies get space in every cluster. A citizen’s advisory panel decides who else gets to go in. The structure is raised off the ground so that debris doesn’t get blown in and stuck, and someone can sweep under them.

If the city implements a reasonable way to have newspapers on the sidewalk in a way that won’t ruin the neighborhood, we’ll apply for a space. Otherwise, we do just fine without trashing Back Bay with our boxes.