The focus is on possible development at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street as Berklee College of Music prepares to submit to the city a formal plan for its expansion.

“We’re still in the investigatory phase,” said David Hornfischer, Berklee’s senior vice president for administration and finance. “We’re trying to understand the way our needs fit the environment in which we live.”

Corner expansion would be key in helping Berklee meet its goal of upgrading its classrooms, dormitories, rehearsal halls, and performance spaces over the next decade. The corner is currently home to a 50,000-square-foot complex at 130-136 Massachusetts Avenue, which currently contains offices, classrooms, recording studios, and the existing 1,300-seat Berklee Performance Center. “Our first priority is finding an alternate site for the stuff there,” Hornfischer said.

The site is being considered for a 300,000-square-foot mixed-use complex that could stretch as high as 30 stories. Boston Redevelopment Authority project manager Gerald Autler stressed that the tower is only one of several options that the college is considering. The building sits near the city’s “high spine” area, which consolidates tall buildings around Boylston Street.

Autler said he has heard both support and criticism for a building of that height. “Tall buildings almost always provoke opposition,” he said. He said Berklee is seeking community input so that the complex may become an asset to the neighborhood, rather than being perceived as just a structure that overshadows the street’s smaller buildings.

The building would allow Berklee to provide on-campus housing for about 600 more students than the 800 who currently live on campus and would bring Berklee halfway to its goal of 2,000 student beds. Hornfischer said that he expects Berklee’s student population of about 4,000 to remain stable over the next several years. “This year, the number of applicants is up significantly but the entering class is smaller because we’ve become more selective,” he said.

David Dixon, a principal at Goody Clancy Associates who is helping create Berklee’s master plan, said that plans for the complex are not certain. “How big it will be is unknown right now. It could and should be that height to maintain Berklee’s program,” he said. He said that Mayor Menino has expressed support for Berklee’s efforts to increase on-campus housing.

Since space on Berklee’s campus, which straddles the Back Bay and Fenway, is limited, the college will need to build on its existing portfolio of properties or acquire nearby buildings. Additionally, the college has indicated to city officials and the neighborhood task force that it would be interested in participating in air rights developments over the Mass Pike or the redevelopment of sites on Boylston Street near Fenway Park. Student housing in that area would not generate vehicle traffic or new parking needs, Hornfischer said.

Berklee began leasing office space at 186 Massachusetts Avenue from the Christian Science Center in September. The college will also have access to space at the current Fenway Community Health Center in 2009, but that will meet only some of Berklee’s needs, according to Hornfischer. The college is in the process of getting city approval to use half of the first and the entire second floor of the Tennis and Racquet Club at 939 Boylston Street for office space and a coffee house performance venue.

The college may submit its institutional master plan to the Boston Redevelopment Authority in the spring. The next meeting of the task force is scheduled for February 6.

Hornfischer said the college is in no rush to submit a plan and begin construction. “We fully understand the area we exist in is complicated. We need to understand what exactly is the right development for us, and it’s not a process we have total control over,” he said.

CAPTION: Panificio is a quiet neighborhood gathering place but has had no wine and beer license since it opened in August.


One Back Bay restaurant will get its wine and beer license, if all goes as planned.

At the end of December, Governor Romney signed a bill increasing the number of licenses for alcoholic beverages in the City of Boston. The bill restricts the new licenses to five all-alcohol licenses for hotels only, ten new all-alcohol licenses for establishments that already have wine and beer licenses, and 30 wine and beer licenses to be used only in main street districts, urban renewal areas, empowerment zones or municipal harbor plan areas as defined by the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

Since Back Bay restaurants are not in any of these districts, how will Chris Spagnuolo get a wine and beer license for Panificio, his five-month-old neighborhood gathering place at the corner of Massachusetts and Commonwealth avenues?

The answer is that one of the restaurants that is upgrading from a wine and beer license to an all-alcohol license will have to turn in their wine and beer license, said Daniel Pokaski, chair of the Boston Licensing Board. Panificio is one of the first in line for one of those turned in.

“We’ll definitely take care of Panificio,” said Pokaski. “They been in front of us and have been very patient.”

That is good news to Spagnuolo, but he is not celebrating yet. “We’ll be out of business if we have to wait three months,” he said.

Pokaski doesn’t think it will come to that. He said that there is no other Back Bay restaurant vying for a new license and that he expects to see several restaurants soon giving their wine and beer licenses back to the city in exchange for the all-alcohol license.

Spagnuolo may make out well financially even if he has to wait a few more weeks. If he were to buy a license from another establishment, it could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. But the city charges only $1,800 for the new wine and beer licenses.

CAPTION: The Bowker Overpass crosses Beacon Street and the green space around the Muddy River, which has been cleaned up and is now the targeted for further improvements.




Charlesgate, the dividing line between the Back Bay and Kenmore neighborhoods, is back on the radar screen of local officials.

“Now is the time to go back to the Muddy River and the Bowker,” said city Councilor Michael Ross, referring to two Charlesgate features, a river that is partially diverted through underground culverts and a vehicle overpass.

Ross said that with the Democrats in control of both houses of Congress as well as the governorship of Massachusetts, both state and federal money might become available. “These projects aren’t priorities for a Republican administration,” he said.

Federal money is important in this area because the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers is responsible for flood control, which has been a problem, including times when water overflowed storm drains and instead drained into the Kenmore T station. The state is involved because the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation technically owns the land.

Some progress has already been made. The corps finished dredging Charlesgate two years ago, according to Margaret Dyson, director of historic parks for the Boston Parks Department, which has been a partner in the effort to improve the Muddy River. “There was debris left from building the turnpike years ago,” she said. “We took out a lot of stone and cobble in addition to silt.”

The dredging also removed the invasive vegetations such as the tall, feathery Phragmites that still exists along the banks of some portions of the river.

After the dredging was completed, the banks of the river were cleaned up, but no additional landscaping was done. It’s still not inviting. “I know people who won’t walk through there,” said Ross.

The rest of the river, which extends into Brookline, also needs dredging and landscaping.

By this coming summer, the Army Corps of Engineers expects to have a design that includes installing bigger culverts in some places to handle more flow and to “daylight” the river, or bring it out of other culverts to run on top of the ground. This action will increase the flow of the river near the Landmark Center retail building at the corner of Brookline Avenue and the Fenway.

But restoring the river banks to the vision that Frederick Law Olmsted, their 19th-century landscape designer, put forth is not funded.

Nevertheless, Muddy River advocates say that now is the time to act in improving its banks. “There was no point in doing anything until the dredging was over,” said Margaret Pokorny of Marlborough Street.

Pokorny and Ross’s focus now is on a short span between the Charles River and Boylston Street. This could be an important pedestrian and parkland connection, tying together the Commonwealth Avenue Mall, the Emerald Necklace and the Esplanade, they say.

But making connections is a tricky proposition since such east-west roadways as the Mass Pike and Storrow Drive flank each end of the area, and Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue cross it.

But that’s only part of the complications. In the north-south direction, the Bowker overpass and ramps connect all of the roadways. The result of these overhead, buried and surface roads is that most of the area is either inaccessible or shaded. It also acts as a barrier between the Back Bay and the Kenmore Square neighborhoods.

This will not be the first effort to make improvements. Pokorny said she participated in a charrette in 1998. The charrette report called the area a “sad landscape.” Participants suggested uses such a skate park, an exhibit space or a sculpture garden, rough drawings of which were exhibited at the Boston Public Library.

Ross has additional suggestions. “How great it would be to have a tennis court, a dog park, a basketball court — anything that inspires residents to be there,” he said. “It’s a great opportunity and, with a state with new energy, it’s a new chance to have one of Boston’s worst public spaces reclaimed.”

Ross said his staff will shortly convene a meeting to get an idea of what people want for the area.


SIDEBAR

A short history of Charlesgate.
Adapted from slide show text by Margaret Pokorny

1821
A dam, part of a system to create hydro-power to run mills, is completed. It blocked tidal flow in the Back Bay — which was still a bay. A stench arose from the sewers that emptied into the location.

1857
City officials begin to fill the Back Bay to create more land for the city’s expansion and to reduce the smell.

1878
The smell has moved westward to the Fens, and city officials call for design proposals to drain the area and make it into parkland.

1879
Noted landscape designer Frederick Law Olmsted proposes filling in the last of the Back Bay and creating a salt water estuary, complete with a system for diverting and controlling the Muddy River. He intends to drain the sewage into the Charles River, where the tides would take it out to sea.

1895
Olmsted’s plans realized.

1910
Charles River Dam built, eliminating the tidal flow. The Fens becomes stagnant again, and the Muddy River flows through a conduit into the Charles.

Site is neglected.

1918
Arthur Shurcliff, a student of Olmsted’s, proposes a new design for the Fens and Charlesgate to accommodate the automobile.

1937
The Commonwealth Avenue underpass is completed at Massachusetts Avenue, a short distance from the area.

1951
Storrow Drive completed.

1967
Bowker Overpass constructed to connect the various roads in the area. The Metropolitan District Commission takes over this section which divides Charlesgate East on the Back Bay side from Charlesgate West on the Kenmore side.

Last 20 years
Improvements made to Commonwealth Avenue where the Leif Erickson statue stands. Muddy River dredged.

Resolutions for everyone else

It’s the new year, and therefore time to make resolutions. We won’t tell you what ours are. What we will divulge, however, is the resolutions we want everyone else to make. So in honor of 2007, here they are:

For the MBTA: We want the T to resolve to stop the propaganda and start calling the Silver Line what it really is — a bunch of buses. We would prefer that they expand their thinking and bury this line, not only in the downtown section, but farther out. If the buses are running underground, they might actually be rapid transit. In outlying regions, the T should do what they said they’d do long ago, which is to dedicate one lane solely to these buses and arrest those drivers who steer their cars into the bus lane. As it is now, these buses must share the roadway with cars. Passing these buses off as “rapid transit” has alienated and insulted public transportation advocates and made it more difficult to come to an agreement about how to link the Silver Line downtown.

For Mayor Menino: We want the Mayor to resolve to build a new City Hall in any location that has true rapid transit served by at least two lines. It would be unfortunate if moving City Hall meant that more people would have to drive to renew their parking sticker or register to vote.

For Columbus Center developers: We urge them to come to an agreement soon with the turnpike and our financing institutions or get out of the way. The benefits that have been promised for the Back Bay and South End, which include restoring the connections that were severed when the Mass Pike was built, providing jobs for countless workers, and adding housing, will only be realized after construction begins.

For entrepreneurs: Back Bay has plenty of retail establishments but entrepreneurs can fill the gaps that remain in services and products for residents. For example, there are plenty of hair salons for women and trendy men, but for men who want a simple haircut — or what about a shave — there is little. That old-fashioned idea of a barber shop — updated — might be a winner. A product gap is in toys. Newbury Street could use a good toy store. Entrepreneurs should resolve to create shops based on new concepts so that Back Bay residents will never have to leave their neighborhood to satisfy all their wants and needs.

For home and building owners and shopkeepers: This group should promise to shovel their walks fully after every snowstorm and sweep those walks weekly when there is no snow.

Making resolutions for other people is so much more satisfying than making them for oneself.