September 21, 2007
Michael Lewis, Project Director
Massachusetts Turnpike Authority
Central Artery/Tunnel Project
Via e-mail mplewis@bigdig.com
Re: Public Process for Parcel 13
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Parcel 13 is a designated Greenway park parcel. Like all the others, its concept and design should be determined through a full public process to maximize public benefit. It should be built, programmed and maintained in the public's interest by an entity fully accountable to the public.
Toward this end, there can be no pre-conceived outcomes, no abridged processes, and no curtailment of opportunity to come up with the best possible design for the park.
After participating in the responsive, inclusive public process for the creation of the Greenway, I am dismayed to see that the process for Parcel 13, the last of the parks, has been privatized by a special-interest group offering to pay the cost of construction of their preferred design. I am writing to register my strong opposition to the Authority's sale of our public realm, and to request that a legitimate public process be provided for design of this park parcel.
In consultation with Governor Deval Patrick, who has promised to support genuine civic engagement and democratic public process, EOEEA Secretary Ian Bowles wrote to the Turnpike Authority on June 8, 2007, confirming the mandate for a true public process for the Greenway:
"Parcel redevelopment is subject to the CA/T Project joint development, or tripartite, process established in the Project's mitigation requirements under the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act MEPA and the Federal Highway Administration Record of Decision. This process arises not only from the language of the various documents, but also from an established practice interpreting that language. The process was designed to achieve broadest possible consensus on the ultimate uses of the public open spaces created by the Project. See Central Artery/Tunnel Joint Development Protocol for Surface Parcels, June 6, 2003." (emphasis added)
Instead, we are being taken through the motions of a sham two-meeting "process," orchestrated to legitimize a pre-determined design promoted by a private group, the Armenian Heritage Foundation, which has offered the Turnpike money in return for turning the park into a genocide memorial site.
The first meeting, on September 19, purportedly to set design guidelines, was a by-invitation neighborhood gathering packed with memorial proponents, who openly used the guideline-setting exercise to further their goal. The second meeting, scheduled for September 27, is planned simply as a forum for the Foundation to explain how their design meets their criteria.
At the meeting, you, the Turnpike representative, outright refused, in response to my question, to carry out the most important part of the public process whereby the other park parcels were designed: the competitive designer selection process. For those parks, disinterested professionals were selected to work with the public in creating the best possible designs for each parcel. That is the heart of the public process, the key to the successful outcomes on those parks.
This charade of a process for Parcel 13 violates the letter and spirit of the CA/T agreements. The Turnpike and the Administration must remedy this embarrassing subversion of "civic engagement." It is a betrayal of the public trust – a fragile trust the Governor promised to restore as an antidote to citizens' loss of confidence in their government. Neighborhood people who oppose this use of the parcel did not bother to attend a meeting wasted on a "done deal." The broader public was not even included.
It is shameful -- and inexplicable -- that the Turnpike Authority, which managed $15 billion for a segment of road tunnel, designed and built the entire Greenway according to a genuine and successful public process, and committed a contribution of $10 million to the Greenway Conservancy (a private group of donors chartered to give, not take, funding!) cannot find the trivial sum involved in designing and building a 16,000 square foot (one-third of an acre) park.
I request, on behalf of the public that has been locked out of this unauthorized disposition of their parkland, that the Commonwealth and the Turnpike Authority, the City of Boston, and the community Task Force conduct a public process on Parcel 13 equal to that conducted for all the other parks.
Regardless of the group, regardless of their proposed use (and recall that memorials have already been ruled out as a Greenway element), and regardless of your constrained budget (of which Parcel 13 would be only an insignificant speck), you are obligated to inform all interested parties that the "common ground" we have all awaited for over a decade is not for sale, not now and not in the future. No Greenway parcel should be a proprietary installation.
The Turnpike Authority should make a firm public commitment that:
- There will be a park on Parcel 13.
- It will be of a quality and character consistent with the other Greenway parcels.
- It will be designed through the same standard process that produced the other parks
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- Guidelines set by a broad public process
- Competitive designer selection process
- Public participation in design finalization
- It will be funded, controlled and maintained as an integral part of the Greenway.
Bernard Cohen, Secretary of the Executive Office of Transportation and Public Works and Chairman of the Turnpike Authority, told the Boston Globe for a Sept. 11, 2007, article, "The process remains open to all proposals." So it should be.
At the meeting on September 27, I ask you to announce that an open, competitive designer selection process will be carried out after all. Public accountability requires it.
Sincerely,
Shirley Kressel