Anyone who has lived in the Back Bay through a summer season is aware that weekend plans can often be interrupted or delayed based on what is going on at some of the larger public venues in the neighborhood.

The Boston Common, the mall on Commonwealth Avenue and the Esplanade all play host to numerous events that make life in the city fun and interesting. But on those occasions when you’re trying to run your weekly errands or get a quick bite to eat, these events can seem more like a hassle.

Well, this summer, don’t be surprised by an activity that gets in your way.

The on-going renovations of the Boston Common parade grounds have caused many event planners to find other venues around the city. According to John Bailey of the city of Boston Parks Department, most of the larger walks and runs that typically begin and end at the parade grounds have moved either to City Hall Plaza or to another venue.

“The biggest walk for this year [on the Common], the Walk for Hunger, Common has already happened and that was on May 6,” said Bailey. “However, there are other parades and smaller events that may force street closings this summer.”

According to Bailey, there are seven events already permitted that could force street closings or parking designations near the Common between Memorial Day and Labor Day they include:
•Saturday, May 19, A Commemoration Ceremony for Word War II veterans hosted by the French Consulate
•Sunday, May 27, Boston’s Run to Remember
•Saturday, June 2, Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Coalition Rally and March
•Monday, June 4, Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company Parade
•Friday, June 8, Boston Dyke March
•Saturday, June 9, Gay Pride Parade
•Thursday, June 28, JP Morgan Chase Corporate Challenge, which will begin at City Hall Plaza and run to Kenmore Square and back

The Esplanade will also play host to several walks and runs this summer, with most taking place either before Sunday, June 10, or after Saturday, September 15.

Those that could tie up traffic or force detours for those not walking in the event include:
•Sunday, May 20, MDA Walk beginning at 9 a.m.
•Saturday, May 26, Earth Fest from 12 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
•Sunday, June 3, AIDS Walk, beginning at 11 a.m. (sets up on June 2)
•Sunday, June 10, Children’s Hospital Walk, beginning at 10 a.m.
•Saturday, September 15, The Heart Walk beginning at 10 a.m.
•Sunday, September 16, Suffolk University 5 K Road race 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
•Saturday, September 29, Juvenile Diabetes Walk beginning at 10 a.m.
•Saturday, October 13, American Diabetes Walk, beginning at 10 a.m.
•Sunday, October 14, Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.

In addition, the Esplanade will host many smaller concerts and free movies this summer, which are not expected to create any detours or delays. The exception is the July 4 festivities which begin on July 3. To learn more about events at the Esplanade, go to www.mass.gov/dcr and click on events.

CAPTION: This truck, delivering dairy to the Taj Boston on March 19, is one of many which blocks Public Alley 437 daily, preventing passage by business owners, residents, emergency vehicles and even pedestrians.
CREDIT: Tim Mitchell

It’s been a long slow haul for residents and small businesses who share Public Alley 437 between Arlington and Berkeley streets with first the Ritz-Carlton and now the Taj Boston — a long road down an alley too often blocked by the hotel’s delivery trucks.

Neighbors say things are getting better now, since the Taj has taken over. And the Taj keeps saying it is working on it. “We’ve put a lot of money and energy into the alley and have made some immediate changes,” said General Manager David Gibbons.

“We are grateful that they are working on it but we just wish it would go a little faster,” said Tim Mitchell, who lives across the alley and wants to share it with the hotel and more than 400 Commonwealth Avenue residents and Newbury Street business owners whose blood begins to boil when they are prevented from gaining access to their own property.

But Gibbons insists it’s not all their fault. “We are not the only ones using the alley,” he said. “Sometimes it is blocked from the other end with contractors doing construction. We have no leverage over that.”

But neighbors say the blocked alley is not the only problem caused by the hotel. NABB’s Tom High said there has been
longstanding abuse of valet parking at the hotel, which has resulted in cars being parked on Arlington Street for extended periods, forcing delivery vans to double and triple park.

The story of the traffic jams, pedestrian conflicts and double-parking on Arlington Street and the blocked-up alley began many years ago. As required by the Inspectional Services Department, the Ritz had a loading dock in the early ’80s, said Mitchell. It was built with an indented loading platform facility, about 10 x 25 feet, in accordance with the zoning ordinance. But over time the space became filled with a dumpster, then a wooden walkway, a security office, and at times, even a parking spot, leaving no space for the delivery trucks.

“We thought that was kind of peculiar,” said Mitchell, who began to question if the building had a permit to make those changes. When reviewing the records, Mitchell discovered that the Ritz had been cited for not having a building permit. It seems that in 1993 it had filed for a permit but then abandoned it.

“We then asked ISD what they could do about it,” said Mitchell. In response, ISD sent a letter about the violation to the hotel in 2002, and in 2003 the city of Boston Board of Appeal ordered ISD to enforce the zoning code.

At that point, Millennium Partners filed suit against the city of Boston to block that directive by the Board of Appeal.

But for three and a half years, the case was held up in courts because lawyers filed an appeal and every six months pled in Superior Court that they needed more time, said Mitchell. “Both the residents and the commercial side had really been held hostage during that time.”

Then Millennium sold the hotel to the Taj Boston Associates, who, in April, took over the lawsuit. At a hearing before the Licensing Board, Taj’s attorney said that because the lawsuit was currently under adjudication, he could not talk about it.

But Gibbons defended the legal delays. “We are still sorting out the complex and convoluted legal issues,” he said. “It’s a legal iceberg and we have just found the tip of it.”

While the Taj and its attorneys did not want to talk about its legal issues, it did want neighborhood support for a liquor license transfer from the Ritz. At first NABB balked, saying it wanted to see how the Taj resolved the mismanagement of the loading zone. But when Gibbons pledged to work to solve the problems, the committee voted not to oppose the application, and the hotel was granted an all-alcohol beverage license by the city’s Licensing Board.

Still, things continue to move slowly. If things went back to the way they first were, and trucks could turn into the loading zone to park, it would be a permanent fix, said Mitchell. “It would make the neighbors happy and would be easier for the hotel to conform with the original regulations concerning the use of the alley imposed long ago by the city’s Public Improvement Commission,” he said.

Frustrations aside, Mitchell said he’s happy that Gibbons and his staff keep working on it and don’t want them to give up. “If they get tired of working on this, it could revert to what it used to be,” he said. “That was what happened when the hotel was the Ritz.”

Gibbons said that wouldn’t happen. “It’s a 20 year problem and the notion it will be solved overnight is not realistic,” he said.

Boston Properties Senior Vice President and Regional Manager Bryan Koop was re-elected to a second term as chairman of the Back Bay Association at its annual meeting, held Monday at the Four Seasons Hotel.

Back Bay’s biggest cheerleader, Koop gave a review of last year’s agenda, which was packed with efforts to promote, protect and preserve the neighborhood. He then urged the 200 business leaders in the room to “ask not what the city can do for us, but what we can do for our city. Choose not the lazy path to complain, but provide solutions. A positive attitude is contagious and gets things done.”

Secretary of the Executive Office of Housing and Economic Development Secretary Daniel O’Connell was the keynote speaker. A Back Bay resident, he talked about his new department, formed by Governor Duval Patrick to align housing with economic development, and what he hoped to accomplish.

Other officers include vice-chairman Robin Brown, principal of CWB-Boylston LLC; treasurer Cary Lynch, senior vice-president and regional manager of Sovereign Bank; secretary Deborah Carrow, vice president & manager, Corporate Real Estate & Administrative Services of the Liberty Mutual Group

Also elected were four individuals who will serve their first term on the board of directors. They are James Rooney, executive director, Massachusetts Convention Center Authority; Frank McLelland, owner, L’Espalier; Patrick Sarkis, director of recruitment and human resources, Back Bay Restaurant Group, and Joseph Maher, partner, Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge.

Re-elected to the board are Brenda Adams, Adams Design; Roger Berkowitz, Legal Sea Foods, Inc.; Cindy Brown, Boston Duck Tours; Roger Cassin, Winn Development; John Connolly, Sawyer Enterprises; Kathy Connor, Loro Pianna; Steve Coyle, The Lyons Group; Ronald M. Druker, The Druker Company; Harron Ellenson, Harron & Associates; Todd English, The Olive Group; Anthony O. Gordon, Stanhope Company; Bill Kenney, Simon Property Group; Michael Jorgenson, The Westin Copley Place; Lynne Kortenhaus, Kortenhaus Communications; and Joseph Larkin, Millennium Partners;

Also re-elected were Bernard Margolis, Boston Public Library; Patrick Moscaritolo, Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau; Thomas S. O’Keefe, John Hancock Financial Services; Rosemarie Puya, Saks Fifth Avenue; Walter Salvi, NStar Electric & Gas; Carol Sapoznik, Crate and Barrel; Charles Sarkis, Back Bay Restaurant Group; Gary Saunders, Saunders Hotel Group; Erwin Schinnerl, The Ritz Carlton, Boston; Peter See, Boston Properties; Fred A. Seigel, Beacon Capital Partners; Charles Talanian, Talanian Realty; Bill Taylor, Four Seasons Hotel; Cedric Tonello, Cartier; Ken Tutunjian, Coldwell Banker; and Abbot Williams Vose, Vose Galleries.

credit: Courtesy photo


Television’s Randy Price and Frances Rivera and Shreve's owner David Walker attended the Shreve Crump & Low grand opening on Thursday, May 10. The evening, a fundraiser for Children's Hospital, netted more than 10,000. Guests were treated to music by a Boston Symphony Orchestra trio.

credit: D. Harney


The annual Make Way for Ducklings parade, sponsored by the Friends of the Public Garden on May 13, ended in the Public Garden.

#1: Fifteen-month-old Ella Walgreen got to know Mayor Menino.
#2: Four-year-old Reagan Rick was a vision in yellow tulle and feathers.
#3: Nineteen-month-old Ryan Leary learned to walk like a duck.

This issue marks the beginning of The Back Bay Sun’s second year of publication.

Since our first issue we have covered some pretty strange stories. How about last year’s state Senate race when two unrelated women with the same last name challenged the incumbent, Dianne Wilkerson, who won but got the votes of only 37 percent of Back Bay’s voters? Wilkerson’s neglect in filing papers and other transgressions made the Keystone Cops look like pikers. But then we reported on her assessment of the Hynes Convention Center’s viability, in which she showed all of her ability to run a good show (even if her report was late). Go figure.

All of the candidates were women of color. Color and gender were never mentioned during the whole process. They were of no significance. Maybe we have made progress after all.

There are stories that never seem to end — the alley problems next to the Ritz, now Taj, is one of those. If matters continue in the way they’ve been going, we’ll be reporting on those tussles at least until 2010.

One of the perennial stories for a neighborhood newspaper is the varying opinions, often strong, about governmental projects and their effect on the neighborhood. The MBTA project at Copley is a good example of this in which neighborhood leaders believed that the T could find a better place to locate a handicap accessible head house than right next to a historic public library. Naturally, T officials (and some of the daily newspapers) liked to characterize their objections as being against the handicapped. It isn’t yet clear to us where a better location would have been, but accusing neighborhood leaders of discriminating against the handicapped was a misleading cheap shot, and it rankled with us as we were reporting it.

The current government project at the Storrow Drive tunnel is destined for its own amount of controversy. While every article we have written has pointed out that the committee working with government officials has urged them to look at ramps leading to the Mass Pike, a reporter from the Boston Herald finally decided to write a story about it as new news, when it wasn’t new at all.

But never mind. That article and ones by the Boston Globe got everyone’s attention, and television appearances and radio interviews by committee members followed. it may be that government officials will now take the committee’s suggestion about the ramps to heart and start figuring out how to reduce traffic on Storrow Drive. A story that wasn’t new finally put some pressure on decision-makers, and that pressure may work in favor of the neighborhood.

Some of our favorite stories are, of course, about trash, parking and the tangles people get themselves into over these matters, which in most communities must be of no consequence.

Finally, we’ve covered zoning and licensing, which, perhaps, provides the most dramatic fare. People’s dreams can be dashed in only one meeting. Some players envision nefarious motives. Others complain about government regulation. We told one story in which a building owner seemed to be testing the limits of how far he could go.

The stories will keep coming — whenever there are two or more people gathered together, it’s one thing that is sure. We’ll be there to enlighten you, entertain you and keep you up to date on all that Back Bay can offer.