When Nancy Brennan became the first executive director of the Greenway Conservancy in 2005, the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway was a collection of grassy patches where a highway used to be, a blank canvas in need of a vision. Greenway officials had to abandon some ambitious early plans, including an arts and culture center and an indoor arboretum, but those losses have helped shape what the Greenway has become: an appealing, ground-level urban park, dotted with food trucks and small attractions. Visitors can now enjoy a labyrinth, a guide to the Harbor Islands, and some irresistible fountains. A $2.5 million new Boston-themed carousel is scheduled to open next year.
For all of its advances, though, the Greenway still has yet to reach its full potential. There is little to draw visitors to the park in cold-weather months, the landscaping can be less than inspired, and critics have rapped the conservancy for its high executive salaries and its relative lack of transparency. Now, Brennan’s departure, for a job at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, leaves the conservancy with an opportunity. Brennan’s successor might not need all of her $185,000 salary and bonuses, but he or she will need a few things to help the Greenway fulfill its promise.
Comments
Nancy Brennan didn't "need" $200,000 a year. She took it because she could. You should note the other six-figure salaries in the Conservancy. This was enabled by the state's open-ended subsidy to this private entity. The park was designed and built entirely with public money; the Conservancy's contribution was the "less than inspired landscaping." The Conservancy has received $17.5 million in public funds (including over $1 million from the Mayor of Boston), $10 million of it before they even assumed any responsibility for maintenance. Their budget has ballooned to almost $5 million a year, and is slated to go as high as $11 million a year, to take care of a park the size of a dozen suburban house lots. No other open space in the city or state has been so over-funded. Having to lure people to parks is a post-urban notion; it indicates a malfunctioning city life, which is only exacerbated by the focus of construction of phenomenally expensive skybox condos occupied as pied-a-terres for wealthy transients who have no use for the public realm. Parks must serve a need; they cannot be required to create a need for themselves as gentrified, revenue-generating theme parks. We need parks that serve the people, providing a free-to-all civic, recreational and environmental public realm. Parks are public services; they shouldn't have to pay for themselves by becoming commercial venues, and they shouldn't be made dependent on money from private corporations, an arrangement which inevitably privatizes them. No need to cry poor: The government money lost annually to useless corporate welfare would easily take care of the parks, as well as the T, the libraries and other starving public services. The state would have paid far less for the Greenway's care if it had simply bid out a management contract, like Massport does for Piers Park in East Boston, instead of pouring endless funds into the stone soup cooked up by this private, secretive and unaccountable organization, which got power and money on its false promise that it would pay for everything with private donations. It's not too late to correct course. Sec. Davey: Take back our land, terminate the Conservancy's lease and recover the millions of public dollars they still hold, get competitive maintenance bids, and make the Greenway a public park again. The Globe has been the dependable mouthpiece for this Conservancy (and its Artery Business Committee patrons) and its financial interests since its beginnings. A credible newspaper must be impartial and fact-driven. I ask the Globe to stop cheerleading for the Conservancy and start providing leadership on behalf of the public interest.