The Back Bay Association held its 86th annual meeting at the Fairmont Copley Plaza last week, drawing a capacity crowd of neighborhood business people, elected officials and other dignitaries.
BBA Chairman and Senior Vice President and Regional Manager of Boston Properties Bryan Koop welcomed the crowd and traced the history of the neighborhood from its creation from a landfill in the late 19th century to the present day. He also emphasized the beneficial influence the BBA has in the Back Bay today.
“We must focus on our charter to ‘initiate programs that improve, promote and protect business in the Back Bay,’” Koop said. “We’re known for being the positive group.”
Meg Mainzer-Cohen, executive director of the non-profit BBA since 2000, spoke of the past year’s achievements. The BBA held positions on numerous citizen advisory commissions and groups that oversaw the development process in the Back Bay, including the approval of a new commercial building on 350 Boylston St. proposed by The Druker Company, the demolition and redevelopment of 4-6 Newbury St. and approval of 888 Boylston St. by Boston Properties and Exeter Street Residences by AvalonBay Communities Inc.
The BBA also participated in the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Mandarin Oriental, Boston, and last November, the luxury hotel served as the site of the group’s Best of Back Bay 2008, which Mainzer-Cohen called “the most successful event in our history.” The Best of Back Bay 2009 is scheduled to take place at the Four Seasons Hotel on Tuesday, Nov. 10, she said.
Looking ahead, Mainzer-Cohen said the BBA would launch a new destination Web site in June to promote businesses throughout the neighborhood in June. “Our aim to is to drive more business to the Back Bay,” she added.
Mayor Thomas M. Menino, the meeting’s keynote speaker, outlined several of the city’s new initiatives, including Boston World Partnership, a 6-month-old business network for Boston natives now working internationally.
“It’s about forward thinking, that’s what organizations like this are all about,” Menino said, likening this progress to the work of the BBA. “The status quo doesn’t work if you’re falling behind.”
At the meeting, Sharon Reilly, executive director of the Women’s Lunch Place, a Back Bay-based daytime shelter for poor and homeless women, was awarded the BBA Heavy Lifting Award for her contribution for the neighborhood over the past year. Capt. William Evans of the Boston Police Department’s District D-4 received the Back Bay Security Network Award on behalf of the Security Network, a BBA-initiated partnership between local businesses and police.

While the main objective of “Consignment for a Cure” is to raise money for the fight against breast and ovarian cancer, the June 7 fundraiser at the Park Plaza Hotel is also a testament to the strong friendship between two women.
In 2005, fledgling Dana Farber Cancer Institute Trustee Karen Webster first met her Dana Farber mentor and fellow trustee Patty Franchi Flaherty at a board meeting. Webster, a breast cancer survivor, and Franchi Flaherty, an ovarian cancer survivor, soon became close friends.
Two years later, on the fifth anniversary of Webster’s diagnosis with breast cancer, she met with Franchi Flaherty for a cup of a coffee, and together, they conceived the twoAM Fund to find a cure for breast and ovarian cancer.
“We decided that since there are 10 times as many breast cancer survivors as ovarian cancer, we should do something to bring the communities together and find links between the two diseases,” said Webster, who recently moved to Pinckney Street. “Ovarian cancer doesn’t have the support community that breast cancer does because there aren’t enough women who survived ovarian cancer to form groups, organize and raise money.”
The three simple objectives of twoAM, which stands for “two women on a mission,” are to unify the communities of breast and ovarian cancer survivors, raise funds to research both diseases at Dana-Farber and use this research to explore the links between the two types of cancer. Heading the research are Eric Winer, MD, and Ursula Matulonis, MD - Webster and Franchi Flaherty’s Dana Farber doctors, respectively.
Last April, twoAM Fund held its first fundraiser, “Martinis, Makeovers and a Mission,” at Neiman Marcus at Copley Place. The event was highly successful, but it was also a bittersweet occasion because Franchi Flaherty was very ill at the time and would succumb to cancer that August.
“It was a hard decision to go forward without Patty because she was such a force, but we want to keep her memory alive” Webster said, adding that Consignment for a Cure is, in many ways, a tribute to Franchi Flaherty.
Webster said this year’s fundraiser also has the economy in mind, with individual tickets starting at $100 and a clothing-consignment theme.
“We want women to come who really want to have a good time and want to contribute to something important,” Webster said. “We want it to be inclusive.”
Among the high ticket items are a Hermes Birkin Bag, which Webster said currently has a three-year waiting list, and two Donna Karan gowns, with a combined value of $25,000. Other consignment items include new and vintage clothing, jewelry and handbags and accessories from top designers, such as Hermes, Marc Jacobs, Dolce & Gabbana, Armani, YSL, Chanel, St. John, Akris, Escada and Ralph Lauren. All proceeds benefit the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute’s Breast and Ovarian Cancer Research.
For those who can’t attend the fundraiser, “Consignment for a Cure” is also offering five items on eBay, including a Hermes handbag, a Chanel jacket, Van Cleef & Arpels vintage alhambro earrings with diamonds, a Fendi Sellaria vintage handbag and a mother-of-pearl antique medallion. The eBay auction ends June 7.
“Boston’s most fashionable women have donated gently used and, in some cases, new items,” Webster said. “It’s an opportunity to get designer clothes at a fraction of the price, and we like to think it’s all in good fun and for a good cause.”
“Consignment for a Cure” takes place at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel, 64 Arlington St., on Thursday, June 4, at 6:30 p.m. VIP sales begin at 5:30 p.m. To purchase tickets, visit www.dana-farber.org/twoAM. For more information, contact Kelly See
at 617-582-7916
or via e-mail at Kelly_See@dfci.harvard.edu.

How some of the mighty have fallen from their perch

Last month, the vaunted John Hancock Building, a Boston architectural icon and New England’s tallest skyscraper, was sold at foreclosure for about $600 million, less than half of what it had been purchased for only a few years earlier.
The foreclosure sale was a stunner that took the breath away from owners of large commercial buildings in downtown Boston and in the Back Bay.
What had seemed like a sure thing three or four years ago at $1.3 billion morphed into a $700 million loss.
And even at $600 million, the John Hancock Building continues to carry an almost unsustainable amount of debt.
It was only natural, and some think, fitting, that such a colossal near collapse would be followed by others in Back Bay.
Now comes the auction last week of an 11-story building at 441 Stuart Street. This is an older but magnificent half block giant built in the 1930s, in the art deco style that even today gives the exterior its panache.
It shares a back wall with the Copley Plaza Hotel.
In 2004, a group purchased the building for $37.5 million in the hope of gutting its upper floors, building condominiums and leaving less commercial space.
However, the group ran into zoning difficulties, which was followed by the collapse of the local real estate market, all of which led to the auction held last week.
It was held in the gutted out top floor of the impressive Back Bay building.
Twenty-two people apparently carrying $200,000 cashiers checks attended.
But when all was said and done, no one was willing to pay more than $17 million, which the bank paid to take back the building.
For the owners who were foreclosed upon, that building and their accompanying investment in it represented a $44 million investment and a $27 million loss.
For the Chicago bank holding the note, the situation is even more dire, because it was the bank that lent the former owners all that money.
What is at work here is called the recession.
What has gone up and up and seemed to be heading in that direction as though it might go on forever is now heading downward.
With each passing month for the past three years, prices have declined and continue to decline, as fewer and fewer businesses are looking for office space, and fewer and fewer prospective buyers are looking for new condominiums.
And the situation isn’t expected to get much better before it gets a bit worse.
So if you are lamenting not making the right financial moves at the right time, think about the former owners of the Hancock and the property at 441 Stuart Street – and think about the banks that lent them the money to facilitate the sales.
Think about that and remember – there is always someone out there in much worse shape than you are.