Mayor Michelle Wu and her administration have a development philosophy that can be best described as: Here’s the plan. You’ll like it. It’s for the kids.
That works, sometimes, if you’ve done the hard work to build trust in the community. But that trust was notably absent Monday night, when several dozen members of a Roxbury neighborhood group found out via Zoom that the Wu administration is backing away from a $1 billion life sciences and affordable housing project that could bring critical economic development to the area. Instead, they were told, the city wants to build the new Madison Park Technical Vocational High School on that site.
Boston’s plan to kill life sciences and housing project in Roxbury triggers bitter reaction
Now, you may think this happens all the time. Plans change. No big deal. There’s some truth to that. The difference is that there have been so many promises made — and broken — on this stretch of Tremont Street known as Parcel 3 that to drop a bombshell like this is stunning — and frankly disrespectful of the community process in general and Black voices in particular.
“You’re making a pronouncement right now,” said Tito Jackson, the former city councilor turned cannabis entrepreneur, during the virtual meeting. “You’re telling people what you’re going to do, not asking them what we should do. That’s not how we rock here in Roxbury.”
Wu did not attend the two-hour community meeting on Monday night. She left it up to her planning chief, Kairos Shen, to deliver the shocking news.
This from a mayor who throughout her political career has vowed to blow up the top-down planning process in favor of a more community-oriented approach.
Apparently that was then, this is now.
Shen will have you believe that the sudden about-face is related to the timing of two things: In December, the Massachusetts School Building Authority gave initial approval to help pay for a new Madison Park, which could cost $700 million and make it the most expensive school project in state history. And this week, the Boston Planning & Development Agency is the last chance for the board to renew the designation for the current project on P3, which, at close to 8 acres, is the largest city-owned parcel that’s undeveloped anywhere in Boston.
The planning agency awarded the project, which sits across from the Boston Police Department headquarters and abuts Madison Park’s existing campus, to a team led by HYM Investment Group and My City at Peace in January 2023, but it hasn’t been able to secure financing because of the current glut of lab space and the high cost of construction.
I can understand why Shen, who spent two decades at the planning and development agency under former mayor Tom Menino, is eager to get behind Madison Park. Shen was at the agency when Roxbury leaders began working on a master plan; he has seen over the decades how plan after plan for P3 has evaporated, from a soccer stadium for Robert Kraft’s New England Revolution to a shopping mall anchored by BJ’s Wholesale Club, to offices for Mass General Brigham (then Partners HealthCare), and a new headquarters for the Massachusetts Department of Transportation.
That history may help explain why Shen and the city are sprinting toward a project that can get funding at a time when many other developments in Boston are stalled.
But c’mon, has Wu not learned anything from her experience redeveloping White Stadium in Franklin Park or her controversial plan to move the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science to West Roxbury?
In both instances, there was a community uproar and a sense that City Hall just wanted to steamroll projects through. After only eight months, Wu had to pull the plug on her plan to move the O’Bryant across town.
Through sheer political will, she has made headway on White Stadium. Construction has started on the $200-plus million project, but not without riling up residents of Roxbury and Dorchester and drawing a lawsuit from the Emerald Necklace Conservancy that is now before the Supreme Judicial Court. Some of those same opponents showed up at Monday night’s meeting, again saying they’ve been shut out of the process.
Here’s what I fear will get lost in the bungled rollout at P3: Putting Madison Park there is an idea worthy of serious exploration. If anything, Wu and Shen aren’t thinking big enough.
The school, after all, would only take up a portion of the 8-acre site, leaving other parts of it for future development. Maybe HYM and My City of Peace won’t be able to build their full project — 700,000 square feet of life sciences space, 466 units of housing, and a museum and policy center for Embrace Boston — but they could still put something there.
And that’s what the HYM and My City of Peace development team proposed in a statement Monday night. Not an either/or, but a both/and.
“This is a false choice — one that unnecessarily pits education against community investment,“ the statement said. ”This site can, and must, do both."
I’ve been following P3 closely because of the project’s potential to spread the wealth of Boston’s development boom not only to Roxbury but also the people of color who are partners in the project. The city has been taking a page from the so-called Massport model ― which makes diversity a major factor in awarding development rights on agency properties ― and P3 was supposed to be the shining example of that in Boston.
I’m not worried about HYM chief executive Tom O’Brien, who is white and has other projects on his plate, like redeveloping Suffolk Downs in East Boston and Revere. And perhaps cutting O’Brien out of P3 is political payback for contemplating a mayoral run against Wu last year.
But it’s O’Brien’s partners of color — including the Rev. Jeffrey Brown, Dream Collaborative managing principal Greg Minott, and Privé Parking chief executive Ricardo Louis — for whom I feel bad, as well as the people who would have a chance to purchase affordable homes. To them, the current P3 project represented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Now what?
I’m sure the Wu administration will continue to make diversity and inclusion a priority in the way it awards development projects. Still I can’t help but think there’s a missed opportunity here to forge a public-private partnership the way Wu did with White Stadium, and create something bigger and better than the city can by going it alone.
What’s more, it didn’t go unnoticed that the fate of P3 is suddenly up on the air in the week leading up to preparations to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. At the end of Monday’s meeting, Imari Paris Jeffries, chief executive of Embrace Boston — a nonprofit that exists to honor the legacy of King and his wife Coretta Scott King and their time in Boston — reminded us how we shouldn’t forget their commitment to economic justice.
“This holiday is about making good on a promise, especially in a moment where they’re trying to minimize the memory of this holiday, deprioritize this holiday and deprioritize Black History Month and Juneteenth,” said Paris Jeffries. “There is still an opportunity for us to find a solution where the community gets a win, students of Boston get a win, and that we take advantage of the building opportunity in this moment.”
He’s right. We can’t keep telling Roxbury to dream big and then come up short. This history should matter.
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