Credit: Courtesy photo


Vlora Mediterranean Restaurant on Boylston Street hosted Maria Menounos for an after-party last week. Following the debut of “In the Land of Merry Misfits” at the Boston Film Festival, Menounos and her friends and family gathered at the local eatery. The Access Hollywood star is seen here with Vlora chef-owner Aldo Velaj.

Credit: Penny Cherubino



Early Saturday morning, firefighters responded to a small fire on the second floor at 411 Marlborough Street. They knocked it down quickly and were gone within half an hour. When there are flames in a building, the Boston Fire Department responds quickly and in force. Ladders were extended and a firefighter was stationed on the roof.

CAPTION: A car turns from Boylston into the open left lane on Dalton Street, which has jersey barriers on the right side.





About nine months ago, Jeff Dugan noticed that someone had installed Jersey barriers at the corner of Boylston and Dalton streets. That made it hard for trucks to turn onto Dalton, the street they used to deliver supplies to Summershack, the restaurant where Dugan serves as director of operations.

Someone had also placed jersey barriers along one side of Dalton Street, effectively shutting down one lane. Dugan was puzzled — no one had talked with him about closing half of a street leading to his restaurant. He said it took his delivery men about two months for all of them to figure out how to get to Summershack by a different route.

Mark Cousins noticed the change too. Then he noticed that revenues were declining slightly at the Prudential Center garage, which has an entrance on Dalton Street.

“Our garage business has been impacted,” said Cousins, the regional property manager for Boston Properties, owner of the garage. “People don’t feel as if they can turn right [off Boylston] and go down Dalton.”

He said it has most affected the transient traffic, rather than regular users.

Meg Mainzer-Cohen, executive director of the Back Bay Association, which represents business interests in the Back Bay, said her organization was blind-sided by the barriers. “Out of nowhere Jersey barriers appeared,” she said. “We have planter islands and hanging baskets out there because of the Boylston Street Improvement Program. We’ve put hundreds of thousands of dollars into trying to make that street a beautiful gateway, and someone comes and slaps down some Jersey barriers.”

She said that debris has now collected around the barriers, making the area disgusting. Those most affected say they have no idea why the barriers are there or when they will be removed.

The reason for the barriers is a familiar one. At the corner of Dalton Street and Boylston is a bridge over the Mass Pike. The bridge is shedding chunks of concrete. The City of Boston owns the bridge and is responsible for maintaining it. This happens to be the only bridge over the Mass Pike that Boston owns.

In July, 2005, Mass Pike officials notified the city that one of its crews working near the bridge noticed pieces of concrete falling from the bridge into their work area, according to Mac Daniel, the turnpike authority’s spokesman. In November, 2005, a contracting group hired by the city asked the turnpike if it could use their equipment to evaluate the condition of the bridge, but the turnpike does not allow equipment to be used by outside parties, said Daniel.

To prevent any further damage to the bridge, the city closed part of it, said Dennis Royer, Chief of Transportation and Public Works for Boston. It isn’t clear why more than a year elapsed between the time the turnpike notified the city of the bridge’s problems and the time the city installed the barriers. No one has verified the exact date the Jersey barriers were installed, but most agree it was sometime last winter.

It was unfortunate that the community was not notified, Royer said, but at the time his department was most concerned with public safety and had not learned how damaged the bridge was.

Royer’s staff still doesn’t know the extent of damage to the bridge. When they tried to find out, they ran into restrictions the Mass Pike imposed, Royer said.

Daniel said those restrictions probably involved such matters of set-up, arrow boards, and police details, all of which are overhead costs the turnpike typically charges. In June, 2007, the turnpike authority received a request from a city contractor asking what the costs would be. The turnpike sent the contractor a letter detailing the overhead costs, but Daniel said he did not know what those costs were.

Royer explained that because things were getting complicated, the city decided to inspect the bridge at the same time it repaired it. That required putting the project out for bid in a formal Request for Proposals process. Royer, who was out of his office on his cell phone when interviewed, said the bids are finished and a contractor has been chosen, but he did not have the paperwork that detailed when the work would begin or how long it would last.

When the work is complete, the city has requested that the Mass Pike take over this bridge, since it is so difficult for the city to make repairs on a road it doesn’t own. Daniel said the turnpike authority has this request under review.

Back Bay needs more children

Our report on the small decline in the number of children living in the Back Bay is sobering. Frankly, as nice as adults are, it’s just boring in neighborhoods without children.

Why don’t families want to live here?

And it’s not just here. In general, the number of children living in Boston is declining. Beacon Hill and the North End/Waterfront neighborhoods are downtown exceptions, but they are two of Boston’s smallest neighborhoods.

The barriers to raising children in the city are pretty obvious.

First is the accepted wisdom. Since the 1950s, there has been a general idea afloat that one moves to the suburbs when one has children. The city is fine when you are young and fancy-free or when you are old and finally free. People raised in such a way sometimes have little imagination of how it might be done differently – and better.

Another barrier is the cost of housing and the availability of condominiums or rental apartments with three bedrooms or more.

Schools are another problem. The most cost-effective way to go is the public schools, to which some parents give good marks. But all the public elementary schools require a bus ride from this neighborhood, and some parents don’t like the time wasted. Private schools are costly, though there are several high-quality ones within the neighborhood or within walking distance. With the high cost of living quarters and the high cost of private schooling, it’s easy to decide that Brookline is the place to be.

Then there are the outdoor places to play. The Clarendon Street Playground, the Esplanade and the Public Garden are fine, but they require a walk and supervision. Some families move when they find they can’t just open a door and turn the children loose into their own fenced-in yard.

Parents we talked to last spring felt that, despite the attractive playgrounds, there were not enough other places for children to gather. The Boston Public Library helps. But parents thought a neighborhood center on the lines of Hill House, which is on Beacon Hill and serves the Back Bay and other downtown neighborhoods too, would make the Back Bay more attractive to families.

There are solutions. The Boston Public Schools should place a school within walking distance of Back Bay and Beacon Hill kids. In a neighborhood like Beacon Hill with a ballooning school-age population, it is discriminatory not to provide a public school. With such a school, Back Bay’s school population would probably start to grow again.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority should require that developers of residential property of a certain size provide a percentage of three-bedroom units and more in both their market-rate and “affordable” units to make it possible for families with more than one child to occupy them. The BRA gives lip service to such an idea, but their timidity on this subject does little good. The more units in the downtown with more than two bedrooms, the more affordable those units will be.

The Back Bay has no family-friendly facility that serves as a good meeting place. Back Bay parents should pay attention to possible locations that could be adapted for a neighborhood center for adults as well as children. Hill House’s two buildings were a former police station and a former fire house on Beacon Hill. Chinatown has a YMCA that hits the spot with families within walking distance of its newish facility. The North End and Waterfront neighborhood has the non-profit North End Music and Performing Arts Center. Despite wonderful private, and pricey facilities, there is no similar neighborhood hang-out in the Back Bay.

City living is making a come-back for many age groups. It will surely trickle down to families too. But a few well-placed tactics could make the turn-around faster. More children in Boston would make all of our lives richer.

On the Web, it’s becoming more and more of a “wiki” world — and we’re just living in it. A wiki is a collaborative Web site that can be directly edited by anyone, and it’s up to the general public to edit, fact-check and control the content. A Boston neighborhood-focused wiki called Povo (www.boston.povo.com) recently launched with the goal of creating the “ultimate urban guide” for residents, business owners and tourists.

“We’ve found that city-guide Web sites such as Yelp and Citysearch often contain stale info,” Povo developer Hasty Granberry said. “Maintaining an accurate city guide is such a huge problem that no one company can handle it — but the community can tackle it for you.”

Over the past few months, Povo developers have spent countless hours pre-populating Povo with basic information on businesses, government services and public buildings. And now Boston residents are logging on to add their own reviews, comments and pictures about favorite places in their neighborhoods. The end goal — to be able to quickly search for and receive information on things such as the best neighborhood pizza shop that takes American Express and the best nearby pastry place to grab dessert.

Many members of the Newbury Street League have already logged on to Povo to update information about their own businesses. Newbury Street League Chief Administrator Kate Quinn said representatives from Povo reached out to the League membership over the summer to promote the Web site, and many of the businesses saw it as a no-fee opportunity to build their businesses. Interested members were given information on how to get started on Povo, and many jumped right in

“I have not had a single complaint about the Povo site being hard to use or update, which speaks for its accessibility,” Quinn said. “The Povo team has informed me that they've had a number of calls from League members updating their information.”

The success of Povo will depend on interested people continuing to tweak and add to the information on the Web site. The whole interface is extremely interactive — everything from the basic content to the way search fields work is controlled by the users. It’s a model that works because community members can easily monitor and catch any malicious behavior and fix it.

“Generally, it is much easier to fix bad doings than it is to make a bad change,” Granberry said.

Povo is currently working on reaching out to more community organizations to build traffic and content. Povo’s Kate Toland, a Beacon Hill resident, said it makes sense for those with an interest in the community to want to build that community online. As traffic picks up and the content becomes more robust, she expects local business owners to really see the benefit of keeping their information up to date.

“If someone were looking for a florist in the Back Bay and you owned a floral company, you could post all kinds of information about what flowers you sold and your services,” she said. “We really want local business owners to participate.”

Granberry said that Povo’s ultimate goal is to reflect the meaning of the company name — which translates from Portuguese to “people.” He hopes Povo will spread far beyond Boston; recently a New York version was launched.

“Our end goal is to cover all the major cities in the United States and Canada,” he said. “Povo will eventually be able to not just help you find things, but find the best things for you.”

A group of Back Bay residents, in cooperation with the Boston Police Department and the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay, will soon establish a neighborhood watch team to help prevent crimes in the area.

“This is not because of a specific incident,” said Anne Swanson, co-chair of the NABB’s crime prevention committee. “It will just let us serve residents better, disseminate more information, and set up a network that can be a crime deterrent…. This is a proactive, preventative measure.”

The Back Bay once had a neighborhood watch committee, said Swanson, but it has not been active for some time. With the NABB’s recent focus on cleaning up graffiti, the crime prevention committee did not have the capacity to start a new division. “Now,” she said, “we have some wonderful volunteers who are interested and motivated to do this.”

The committee will establish a stronger relationship between the community and the police department. Recently, she said, “People would tell us they saw graffiti vandals, but didn’t know what to do.” The police can help show residents how to be more vigilant and better respond to suspicious activity.

The Boston Neighborhood Crime Watch unit, a department of the BPD, held a meeting at the public library Wednesday to educate residents about starting a crime prevention committee.

“The most important part of this program is bringing neighbors together on their individual streets,” said Joseph Porcelli, BNCW coordinator. Each street will have a captain, he said, who will check in with the unit and BPD D-4 office about crime-related activity and report back to residents about how they can deter it. The captains will hold meetings to help neighbors get to know one another and exchange contact information, which they will use to alert each other if there is a problem. They will also review local crime logs and, with police, decide how to prevent further problems.

“This can also be a lot of fun,” said Porcelli of the neighborhood meetings. “I don’t care if you get together to watch ‘Lost,’ or to have a Halloween party in your building… as long as you get together, talk, exchange info.”

“Fortunately for this group,” said Porcelli, “the Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay already has a strong network.” The BNCW will use that network to connect the neighborhood watch leaders and inspire other neighbors to organize their streets so everyone is represented. “The importance of having all streets participate is that the streets that get organized will displace criminal activity to the streets that are not organized,” he said.

At the meeting, some residents were concerned that Back Bay businesses would not be part of the program. Porcelli said that for crime protection to work, all aspects of the neighborhood much work together. “Those folks will be relieved to know you want them to get involved,” he said. “This concerns them, their shoppers, everyone that comes into their stores and restaurants.”

Others thought that getting enough people interested in the program may be difficult at first.Porcelli suggested leafletting the neighborhood, sticking bright colored papers to people’s doors rather than putting them in mailboxes, so that nobody can miss the message when walking by. Swanson recommended using email to get word around.

Porcelli worked on a similar program in Charlestown, organizing 58 street groups over a year and a half. This helped decrease part-1 crime in the area, which includes robbery, burglary, rape, aggravated assault, motor vehicle theft, arson and homicide, by 16 percent between 2005 and 2006, he said.

“People don’t often realize how much power they have,” he said. “By learning to communicate for each other, target hardening their homes, vehicles, and selves… that can make a huge difference.” Simple changes in behavior can do a lot, he said, and encouraged residents to lock all doors and windows, turn front and rear porch lights on, leave cars absolutely empty (no coins, empty cans, blankets, bags, jackets, electronics, or GPS units and their mounts) and, in multi-unit buildings, never buzz in visitors they do not know personally. He handed out a Safety Guide with additional tips, as well.

The residents at the meeting decided to meet again soon as a small group to plan how they can best expand the network.