The process to designate the Charles River Esplanade as a Boston landmark has taken a giant step forward with a report that will be presented on May 26. In their study report, the staff of the Boston Landmarks Commission has citied the Esplanade “as an example of innovative and outstanding park planning and design” that has achieved significance beyond the local level. This positive recommendation has almost assured that the Esplanade will be listed as an historic landmark and preserved as it exists today.
The process to have the Esplanade placed on the list as a landmark started when the staff of Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR) suggested hundreds of trees be removed and the area around the Hatch Shell be paved as part of permanent repairs to the Storrow Drive Tunnel. This shocking solution to repair the tunnel galvanized many local community activists and groups to protect the Esplanade by initiating the process to have it listed as a landmark. Without landmark status, the DCR would maintain and could change the area without any community involvement and as it deemed as necessary. While being considered as a landmark, the DCR is unable to substantially alter the site until the commissioners determine its status.
The 72-page report by the Landmarks staff noted several features of the Esplanade, such as like the vegetation and architectural, sculptural and engineering features and topography that the Commission would take into consideration in deciding to designate the site.
At its May 26 hearing, the Boston Landmarks Commission will present the study report. All interested members of the public are encouraged to speak or submit written comments either in favor or against the possible designation of the Esplanade. The meeting will occur at 5:30 p.m. in Room 900 of Boston City Hall.
After the hearing, the commissioners will then decide the status and will publicly vote at a later date. The fate of the Esplanade could be known as early as June 9, which is the next scheduled meeting of the Landmarks Commission.

A longstanding dispute between the Ritz-Carlton Boston Hotel, now the Taj Boston, and neighbors over a loading dock located next to Public Alley 437 could come one step closer to a resolution next week when the matter goes before a Superior Court judge.
On May 19, representatives from the Taj, which purchased the Ritz-Carlton Boston in November of 2006, and the Carlton House will face the city seeking a summary judgment, whereby the court will make a ruling without a jury.
The approximately 8-by-30-foot loading dock provides an off-street loading area for the Carlton House, located adjacent to the Taj Boston at Commonwealth Avenue and Arlington Street, and was built according to a 1978 agreement between the city and the building’s developer. (Millennium Partners, the New York firm that previously owned the Ritz-Carlton Boston, also owned a share of the Carlton House). A trash compactor, loading ramp and security booth now occupy the loading dock site. As a result, neighbors maintain that trucks cannot directly access the loading dock and instead block the public alley or sometimes double-park on Arlington Street to make deliveries.
In 2002, Tim Mitchell, a Commonwealth Avenue resident whose property abuts Public Alley 437, filed a complaint with the city’s Inspectional Service Department (ISD), stating that the loading dock didn’t conform to Boston zoning requirements. ISD rejected Mitchell’s claim, prompting him to bring the matter to the city’s Zoning Board of Appeals.
The following year, the Zoning Board of Appeals found the hotel was in violation of zoning ordinances and ordered ISD to enforce the regulation. The Ritz-Carlton appealed the matter to the Supreme Court, requesting that it overrule the Zoning Board of Appeals judgment. Since that time, Mitchell said, a series of court hearings followed, but the matter has yet to be resolved.
Still, Mitchell hopes next week’s hearing will bring closure to the case.
“The 200 residents and business owners who share this block with the hotel look forward to having the right of access to their property restored, to allowing entry to our property for emergency response vehicles and to eliminating traffic jams on Arlington Street,” Mitchell said.
Meanwhile, Mitchel Ross, attorney for the Taj Boston, said, “We think the case ought to be decided in favor of the hotel.”
The attorney for the Carlton House was unavailable for comment.

Talking with friends just back from New Orleans who were rebuilding houses devastated by Hurricane Katrina, my husband, Frank Mead, and I saw an opportunity for Beacon Hill Village (BHV) to be useful beyond the confines of its neighborhood.
The Village agreed, and we recruited seven more game volunteers: Art and Eloise Hodges, Herb and Ellie Weiss, Ginger Lawrence, Cassandra Gordon and Sally Hinkle. Frank contacted the Episcopal Diocese of New Orleans, a major force in organizing volunteer workers, and signed us up for a week.
On a Saturday afternoon in February, we arrived at the parish house that was to be our local living quarters. After laying claim to the cots on which we’d rest our weary limbs in the nights to come, we ventured into the French Quarter to kick up our heels while we still could.
We wound up—unwittingly but not altogether unhappily—amid a boisterous crowd watching what we later learned is the city’s most infamous parade (launched by a group that considers Mardi Gras “too family-oriented”). Imagine nine Beacon Hill elders, plastic beer containers clutched in their hands, hooting along with the rest of ‘em as the raunchiest floats ever fabricated by man passed by.
Up the next morning not long after dawn, we made our way to the Diocese’s warehouse where we split into two crews, picked up our project supervisors and construction supplies, and headed off to work.
We were stunned by the desolate emptiness –nearly five years after the hurricane-of the neighborhoods to which we were assigned. Barren lots bore few traces, other than an occasional concrete slab, of the simple houses passed down through generations, without deeds or other legal documentation.
Maybe a third of the original houses remained standing. Still visible were the numbers and letters spray-painted on front doors by rescue teams searching for survivors, coded information signifying the number of bodies found inside, the whereabouts of abandoned pets, and the location to which the family had fled.
Our team’s first project was a New Orleans “shotgun” style house owned by a disabled man waiting in Houston for the day he could move back in. Rebuilt by volunteers and painted red (the owner’s choice), it sparkled in an otherwise bleak neighborhood. Frank and Herb did “men’s work” - building an exterior staircase, finishing off the handicap ramp. Eloise, Ellie and I labored on our hands and knees, painting wood trim with fine brushes and careful strokes to our supervisor’s exacting standards.
Meanwhile, the other BHV team—Art, Sally, Ginger and Cassandra—was engaged in serious men’s work at a newly-framed house in another parish. Donning protective eye-gear, they learned how to install insulation and hang plaster wallboard. In no time, they were wielding their own power tools.
On the third day, the Diocese shifted our crew to Miss Hortense’s house in Jefferson Parish. The elderly Miss Hortense had handed over her entire $60,000 FEMA rebuild allowance to an out-of-state contractor, one of hordes that descended on the city the minute the checks started arriving. After two days’ work, he vanished with every cent.
The Diocese responded to Miss Hortense’s plight with teams of volunteers. The plasterboard walls and ceilings had just been placed when our group joined 10 California college kids to prepare and paint the interior. Boom boxes blaring, we sang from the tops of our ladders and slathered paint onto every bare surface, including ourselves. We moved through the house like a swarm of bees.
We had been warned at our first-day orientation not to count on meeting the owners of our houses. Many, like the disabled owner of our first house, had not yet returned to the city. Others, traumatized by events, might opt to stay out of view.
“But, of course,” said the Diocese representative, “you have come to New Orleans, not for personal gratification, but to do a job and then leave.”
Good intentions aside, we were thrilled on our last day when Miss Hortense, legally blind and unlicensed but driving a friend’s car, delivered a homemade feast of gumbo, rice, and bread pudding. She walked through her house, for the first time in a month, on the arm of Gerard, our young project supervisor.
“Such a happy color,” she repeated, passing wall after wall aglow in her favorite daffodil yellow.
She hugged us all, then allowed Gerard to walk her to her car. Slow to return, he explained, “She couldn’t stop crying.”
On our way back to Boston the next day, we conceded that our hard work had amounted to merely a drop in the bucket, but it was a tangible drop, one that would help Miss Hortense and the others reclaim their lives-- five years after the levees broke.

No cell phones on T trains

The horrifying crash underground in the subway system over the weekend is a harsh reminder to everyone who uses public transport how our lives are held virtually in the hands of others.
When others driving T trains are sending text messages on their handheld cell phones, many, many lives are put in danger, as was proven with this recent crash.
Dozens were injured and taken to the hospital.
The cost for this pileup is $10 million, according to T officials.
As a result of this recent accident, the T has banned cell phone use by all of its train operators, a move that has been a long time coming.
It was a stroke of luck that no one died in this costly accident.
The driver should be fired instantly.
His was a very costly text message.