March 17, 2000
Mark Maloney, Director
Boston Redevelopment Authority
City Hall
Boston, MA
Re: Two Financial Center
Rose Associates/Leather District Community Meeting
Dear Mr. Maloney:
On February 24, residents of the Leather District were scheduled to meet with Rose Associates to discuss the Two Financial Center proposal. When Leather District Neighborhood Association members arrived, they found the meeting room filled with ironworkers militantly pressing for the project, making a civil and constructive meeting impossible. After two unsuccessful efforts to make room for neighborhood people, the community withdrew, leaving mostly construction workers, city officials, Rose personnel, and a few others in the audience.
Frank Jordan, our ABN representative, stayed behind and spoke in support of neighborhood-responsive, law-abiding public process. The responses to his remarks were rude and intimidating. The ironworkers made it clear that they perceived the Alliance as their enemy, and that they intended to be present at all meetings where the ABN is represented and to oppose us.
Several serious issues in this incident require the City's immediate attention.
The attendance of ironworkers in these numbers was not accidental. By 7:00 PM, the announced meeting time, almost every seat in the room was occupied by construction workers. As it turns out, residents learned that the ironworkers were instructed to arrive at six. Indeed, by 6:30 PM, when the Leather District working group arrived, there were already more than a dozen workers outside the building waiting for entry. By seven, there were probably more than 50 construction workers in the room. Who is responsible for inviting these people to a Leather District Neighborhood Association meeting, and for what purpose?
As Leather District residents and businesspeople arrived, efforts were made by the Leather District working group members to make room for Association members. Jim Green, attorney for Rose Associates, was asked to request that workers relinquish their seats so that Leather District Association members could sit close enough to see and hear the Rose presentation. He refused to do this.
Mr. Joseph Nigro, the BRA board's trade union representative, also attempted to clear seats for the Leather District attendees. His efforts were met with derision by construction workers who claimed they lived two miles from the project and have their livelihoods at stake, and, therefore, were entitled to those seats. Mr. Nigro was forced to back down.
If the Rose Associates attorney refused to do it, and Mr. Nigro couldn't do it, what choices did the neighborhood have? They left because there was nothing else they could do. The presence of the ironworkers had clearly one and only one purpose -- intimidation -- and it worked. The intimidation tactics witnessed at this meeting speak poorly of the developers and of the workers they brought to disrupt the meeting.
And where was the City of Boston during this display? Many public official were present in order to discuss the Rose proposal and other neighborhood matters. What was their response? Some left, to their credit. But many stayed, contributing to the myth of public process that Rose so loudly proclaims in their DPIR and in letters to supporters. If the BRA is to credit developers with a completed public process, it must fulfill its responsibility to make certain that legitimate public meetings are possible. The BRA's credibility is severely undermined, because it has given every benefit to the developer, and has allowed -- indeed, encouraged -- them to proceed this far without a good faith public process.
Why did City officials continue to participate in this meeting? Did they not know this was a sham? Did they care? Have they made efforts to reconvene a meeting under more reasonable circumstances? Or are they going to continue the charade by accepting Rose Associates's assertions that the public process has been served, and accept the DPIR as presented? If the immediate neighbors of a proposed project are not the legitimate "public," who is?
When the Alliance speaks at neighborhood meetings, our purpose is to support proper public process. In this case, the proponent is egregiously violating important zoning laws. The District's neighborhood zoning was recently completed, so it is not obsolete; it represents countless volunteer hours of residents' personal time, in the interests of the community and the city's historic legacy. It is being contemptuously mocked.
The project site is surrounded by a registered Historic District. It is not within the registered District because no one wants to protect the character of the parking lot (or the 1950s parking garage nearby). Both are in the Leather District zoning district, however, and therefore subject to Article 44. This zoning was deliberately put in place, with both the parking lot and parking garage included, to prevent high-density development which would put pressure on existing small historic buildings. Experience shows that large developments in historic areas, aside from destroying the historic character, create incentives for demolition (often, by neglect) of small old buildings and replacement by more lucrative towers. Further, the proponent's claim that the project, a 205' tower in an 85'-100' zoning district, is justified because it is on an "edge" or "transition" site between the historic scale and nearby towers is fraudulent, since seven of the eight Leather District blocks could be construed as "edge," and the neighborhood is about to be surrounded by tall buildings.
The developer's strategy for evading the zoning seems to have changed from filing as a Planned Development Area (for which the site did not qualify, despite the paper gerrymandering) to requesting a Chapter 121A agreement. For this purpose, the owner has the audacity to declare the site's surface parking lot (a lucrative, low-tax land-bank on a prime redevelopment parcel) a "blighted, decadent and substandard" area, in order to evade both zoning regulations and fair property taxes.
I have often heard both staff and board members at the BRA say that zoning is not a hard-and-fast rule but merely a "guideline," or a "point of departure." This is tantamount to saying we have no zoning at all. In fact, it is worse, because citizens are led to believe their painstaking neighborhood zoning processes are going to protect them, when in reality zoning is invoked by the City only when it constrains the residents, and not when it may constrain developers. Residents cannot complain when a project complies with zoning, even if the proposal is contextually inappropriate; but developers are free to violate zoning, using various subterfuges such as non hardship "variances," PDA designation, or Chapter 121A agreements. Sometimes, developers simply ignore the zoning regulations, sure of BRA support in case of challenge. The City of Boston is guilty of complicity in this haphazard, market-driven development, assisting developers in finding zoning-evasion schemes and running interference to shield them from public protest. This is one of the most urgent concerns of Alliance members, and one we wish to discuss with you very soon.
One of the main purposes of zoning is to provide stability and predictability, for both existing property owners and new investors. This lawless environment fuels speculative bubbles which exacerbate boom-bust cycles, and leave us with an incoherent urban fabric based on political whims and bankers' bets.
Labor is not well served, either, by these boom-bust extremes. Fewer projects actually get built when developers over-reach. Site acquisition, infrastructure, bank financing, environmental review, and community acceptance all become more difficult and risky. Delays often result in higher design, legal, and construction costs, and more developers get caught in the inevitable crashes. Over-all, more developments would actually get built, in a steadier stream, if developers proposed reasonable, conforming projects, each with a reasonable profit margin, rather than over-reaching to make a killing on each project and succeeding relatively seldom. Cities where zoning is respected suffer less economic disruption from boom-bust extremes, and end up with a more sensible building pattern accomplishing better city-wide planning goals. From a labor perspective, predictability is just as important for budgeting long-term family expenses. And after all, our workers live in our communities too; they could just as well, with their labors, build things that are good for their children, rather than things that will harm their quality of life. The Alliance represents neighborhood people from all over the city, including many hard-working people. We support labor, and we resent being cast as adversaries by cynical developers.
The other purpose of zoning is to guide development according to a broad consensus of public welfare. The zoning constraints are meant to protect us from an accumulation of financially driven excesses, and in the long run to produce a place of greater value -- social, esthetic, and economic -- to all of us. To systematically disregard the zoning regulations is to say that there is no public interest, and no vision of a good community. The City does all citizens a disservice to take up our time playing with regulations that it cynically discards for political and financial indulgences. Our officials thus leave a legacy of disregard for law, and a threadbare urban fabric for our next generations.
We will be discussing these matters with you in the coming weeks. In the meantime, all involved must step back and look at this proposal in a broader perspective. The people of Boston will judge elected officials, and their appointees, by the vision and stewardship shown in dealing with development issues as the face of Boston changes. Will your legacy be the destruction of Boston's historic neighborhoods?
Sincerely,
Shirley Kressel
President
Cc: Mayor Thomas M. Menino, City of Boston
Senator Stephen Lynch
Representative Salvatore DiMasi
City Councilors
Joseph Nigro, BRA Board
Albert Rex, Boston Preservation Alliance
Phil Golden, President, Leather District Neighborhood
Association
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