After 20 years the Clarendon Street Playground is due for a spruce-up and plans for the project are underway.

Last week co-chairs of the Friends of the Clarendon Street Playground Kelli O’Brien, Diane Wolfe, and Kathy McCormack met with a designer hired by the Parks Department to present their wish list for the playground.

“We talked about what we would like to see,” said O’Brien. “The maintenance list itself is pretty long before we even get to the improvements,” she said.

Repairing the rubber underneath the swings and replacing the railroad ties fall under general repairs that are needed. O’Brien said they would also like to see some of the mortar in the large wall fixed.

The committee recently surveyed users of the playground to see what improvements they would like to see. “We took their feedback and feedback from other moms,” said O’Brien.

The Friends, a committee of the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, will meet again with the designer after the start of the new year. “They need us to prioritize our wish list,” she said.

O’Brien said about $75,000 can be spent on materials, and the co-chairs are researching different companies and equipment. “We are looking at suppliers and websites,” she said. “It is not a lot of money for what we need to do there.

The playground was last renovated in 1996 and O’Brien said both City Councilor Mike Ross and state Representative Marty Walz have been instrumental in getting the process started.

There will be two public meetings held in January or February at which neighbors and users can see the plans and make comments and suggestions.

O’Brien said they could start renovations this spring but may wait until summer because the summer months are slower for the playground. “It is hard to find a time to shut it down,” she said. But the changes will “improve the safety and the look of the playground,” said O’Brien.

The soon-to-be-owners of the Ritz-Carlton, Boston have agreed to work to improve how deliveries to the hotel in alley behind it are handled. And the city’s Licensing Board will be the judge of their success.

In early December the Taj Hotel Group, which will take ownership of the property next month, met with the

Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay’s Licensing and Building Use Committee to discuss problems the neighborhood has had with the Ritz and their deliveries in Public Alley 437, between Arlington and Berkeley streets.

“There have been longstanding problems with deliveries to the Ritz,” said committee Chair Thomas High. “In that context we asked that the Licensing Board agree to two conditions [before granting the license],” he said.

NABB asked that The Taj honor and come into compliance with a 1996 22-point agreement the Ritz has with the city regulating deliveries in the alley. “It was designed to adequately deal with the delivery problem,” said High.

High said the committee also asked that the licensing board review Taj’s compliance in three months’ time.

The mayor’s office, two city councilors, Representative Marty Walz and, ultimately, the licensing board agreed to NABB’s requests.

“We are very pleased that the licensing board did that, but we are even more pleased The Taj management has been so responsive,” said High.

The Taj agreed to both conditions at a hearing of the licensing board on December 20 and was granted an inn holder’s license with seven-day, all-alcohol.

Caption: Violet of Beacon Street is pictured as Ms. December in the 2007.
Credit: courtesy photo






Back Bay dog owners have something to cherish all year long. Local pet shop, Four Preppy Paws, has an exclusive calendar featuring neighborhood dogs. The dogs migrated over to Beacon Hill for their close-ups and now star in the calendar called “Hounds on the Hill,” sold exclusively at Four Preppy Paws.

Now in its third re-print, the calendar is proving popular with dogs and their owners.

Twelve pictures of dogs, photographed in perfect positions — while patiently idling — grace the best-seller, which sells for just $25.

There were no evening gown or bathing suit competitions for the dogs to be selected for the calendar — although rumor has it that Beacon Street resident Violet, who is Ms. December, flaunted her beauty by wearing a ballerina costume on Halloween. All it actually took was an active stage mom, or dad, and being the right color.

“It all started because I commissioned some dog photos … to use as decorative pieces on our walls,” said Heidi Barraza, who opened the dog gift store and bakery six months ago on Charles Street. “When our customers saw them, they all wanted to have their dog on the wall. ‘Pick me, pick me,’ they said. So, they left their names and email addresses and kept trying to butter us up so that we would photograph their dogs. I finally decided to do a calendar, and we took ourselves out of the equation by asking a friend to do the judging.”

The dog of each month was primarily selected on the basis of their coloring: It seems that, like people, there are winter, spring, summer and fall dogs. Ms December, for instance, is a black part Lab, part Great Dane; she is shown wearing a Christmas wreath that coordinates particularly well with the red door she is sitting in front of. Ms. November, who is an Irish setter named Lucy, is unquestionably a fall dog. Twelve runner-ups, who did not quite make the finals, are grouped together on the cover.

The photographs were taken by Margaret Crow of Margaret Crow Photography in the Fenway, who said she spent about nine months on the project. “It was not unlike working with kids,” she said. “They had high energy and were all over the place. I used toys, treats and noises to grab their attention, and if they were ‘owner-fixated,’ I had their owners stand near or behind me.”

Henrietta, the white bulldog who is Ms. March, apparently ate 45 dog treats before she agreed to sit quietly for the shoot.

The most trying photo shoot, she said, was of the three Clumber spaniels, Nora and Stubby, both of Beacon Street, and Belle, who not only coordinated with each other but also with August. “The photo was originally going to be just two, but then a third came walking down the street so we asked him to join as well,” she said. “The spaniels were all over the place. As soon as one would look one way, the other would look in other directions.

Other celebrity dogs include January: Commonwealth Avenue resident Katie, a Samoyed; February: Ace and Bailey, who are King Charles Cavaliers; April: Lola, a mixed breed; May: Turbo, a French bulldog; June: Giddian, a Jack Russell Terrier; July: Bosco, a Black Lab; September: Scarlett O’Hara IV, a Lhapsa Apso born in Atlanta but now a resident of the Prescott House Museum on Beacon Street; and October: Mac, a Greater Swiss Mountain Dog.

For the first print run, Barraza ordered 50 calendars and just told her customers about it. “The dogs’ owners came in and bought one for themselves and then others for every single person in the family,” she said. “Then I ordered 75 more and people keep coming in and buying them.” She is now planning to order a third print run, and dog lovers wanting one should let her know.

City Council President Michael Flaherty appears to be leading the three-way, New Year’s Day race for next year’s council presidency.

As of Wednesday, according to a City Hall insider, four councilors – Michael Ross, James Kelly, Jerry McDermott, and Rob Consalvo – had pledged their support to Flaherty. Councilor Maureen Feeney of Dorchester announced her candidacy last week and has promises of support from Councilors Stephen Murphy and Sal LaMattina. No councilor has yet endorsed Councilor John Tobin, who represents Jamaica Plain and Roxbury and announced his candidacy weeks before Feeney.

The four councilors known as Team Unity – Sam Yoon, Felix Arroyo, Chuck Turner, and Charles Yancey – plan to vote as a bloc and had not endorsed a candidate as of Wednesday.

The winning candidate will need seven votes, a majority from the 13-member council, to serve another term. The election will be held in an open session at City Hall on January 1 at 10 a.m. Instead of paper ballots, the results will be tallied during a verbal vote. In the event of a stalemate or tie, the council will enter into additional voting rounds.

Although councilors have claimed allegiances prior to the election, their endorsements may change, as they make contingent promises in the event of a second vote.

The council president also serves as acting mayor, a position that is often a stepping-stone to the mayoral race. Mayor Menino, a former council president, served as acting mayor in 1993 when former Mayor Raymond Flynn went to Vatican City to serve as representative for President Clinton. Menino won the mayoral election that November.

Flaherty joined the body as a councilor-at-large in 2000 and has served three one-year presidential terms since 2002. Feeney has served on the council since 1993 and lost her 2002 bid for the presidency to Flaherty.

Tobin, who is entering his sixth year on the council and chairs the council’s committees on Education and Arts, Film, Humanities & Tourism, said he would like the council to focus more time and resources on keeping children in school and exposing them to art during their formative years. “Call me idealistic, but in 10 to 15 years, you won’t be talking about more jails and more police,” he said.

He also said he would like the council to hold the city’s administration accountable and not fear to disagree with the Mayor. “Rolling over every time they come calling is not a good idea. If this council wants the respect it deserves, we have to stand tall and stand tough,” he said.

Although he has supported Flaherty in past years, “I do think it’s important every once in a while to have turnover,” he said. He said he would like the council to consider making the presidency a two-year term and impose term limits.

Ross, who has supported Flaherty since 2002, described all three candidates as “hardworking and accomplished.” “We’re very fortunate in the caliber of city councilors on this body right now,” he said. “As anyone knows in the city council elections, anything can happen and it often does.”

Sal LaMattina, whose district includes Charlestown and part of Beacon Hill, was on vacation and could not be reached this week.

credit: Courtesy photo
caption:

“Rich the Scooter Guy” treated holiday shoppers to some tricks in front of Trinity Church last week.

Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer kept watch over some ducks in the Charles River near Community Boating last week.

Good job

The commission appointed by the legislature to study the Hynes Convention Center and the Boston Common Garage did an excellent job, even if their report was late in arriving.

Led by the Back Bay’s state Senator Dianne Wilkerson and state Representative Antonio Cabral, the commission gathered data and then based its recommendations on that data. We’re tempted to say what a novel idea — basing a government policy on data, rather than ideology or folk wisdom.

Romney has been given the credit — or the blame — for coming up with what now seems like a silly idea: privatizing the Hynes and getting rid of its pesky $3 million subsidy.

But Robert Reich, when he was running for governor, also urged the state to take that step. When a former Clinton economic advisor and U. S. Secretary of Labor, who was partially responsible for the nation’s fine economic performance in the 1990s, succumbs to such uninformed opinions, it makes us fear for the rest of us.

But the commission members did what they should have done and what needs to be done more often. They gathered facts before they came to an opinion. They found that the Hynes generated substantial economic benefits in jobs, profits for private entities and tax revenue for the state that overwhelmed its small subsidy.

They found that no city had found it possible to run such a place privately — that all convention cities subsidized their facilities which, like the Hynes, produced income for the private sector and taxes for the government entities.

They also found that the Hynes does not compete with the larger Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in the Seaport District. Instead the two facilities make it possible for Boston to attract conventions of all sizes.

So much for the naysayers who predicted economic doom if Boston had two convention centers. It turns out both convention centers are making money for private and public coffers.

Boston’s economy has changed over the last fifty years. Even though Boston retains financial institutions, these have largely dispersed. The hard-core manufacturing industry is virtually gone. We’re left with medicine and related biotechnologies, software development, and tourism. Coincidentally, it’s the bio-tech and high-tech sectors that are significant users of the Hynes.

In gathering facts and operating on them, the commission has done Boston and the Back Bay a good service.