For most people, the launch of a city planning study isn’t exactly a scintillating event.
But a new review of Boston’s downtown waterfront is worth watching: It could result in sweeping changes to the area between Long Wharf and the Northern Avenue Bridge, where city officials are seeking to reconcile big plans from developers with maintaining public access to Boston Harbor.
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A bizzare thought occurs while glancing over this tale of Boston city scheming about waterfront development and public use. The city fathers envision skyscraper hotels, apartment buildings, and lower rise ferry terminals and museums built right up to the park that runs along the water's edge. But what is missing in this pipedream is the issue of melting glaciers and rising sealevels. Boston wants to see all sorts of money, public and private, poured into erecting all sorts of buildings and scraping, raking and planting public access areas, but what about the chances of a storm - call it Sandy, Randy or Dandy - arriving on the Massachusetts Bay coast like 2012's Sandy ran over New Jersey and New York? Does the city of Boston planning bureaucracy deem it worthwhile to include in their schemes some sort of protective system to keep the rising ocean at bay, and thus preserve the expensive developments they dream of?
The BRA is lauching a "planning study" -- watch your wallet.
The study results are already lying on the desks of the Mayor's favorite developers. Only the citizens will be kept in the dark for two years until all the profiteers, including the BRA, are good and ready to begin development, and then the kabuki "public process" will be used to legitimize the unlawful projects prescribed by the "plan."