A lot of plans have been floated about the future of Widett Circle: an Olympics stadium, an Amazon distribution center, a rail yard, and another new neighborhood.
I’ve covered them all through the years, but none is more urgent than the proposal from a group of business leaders and South End residents to create a temporary campus offering housing, addiction treatment, health care, and other services for those living on the streets of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.
Widett Circle — a 24-acre parcel that the MBTA bought earlier this year for $255 million — sits largely unused. At some point, the transit agency plans to raze buildings and create a rail yard for when the T increases commuter rail frequency and expands South Station.
This much we know about the MBTA: it operates at a snail’s pace. For once, this works in our favor.
And this week’s announcement of the abrupt departure of state transportation secretary Gina Fiandaca could further delay any plans.
In a statement, MBTA spokesperson Joe Pesaturo said the agency “understands that this is a complex issue with no easy answers . . . The MBTA wants to be a partner in this important work. However, we have concerns about the safety of the Widett Circle location and the risk it could pose, as this site is surrounded by electrified heavy rail and construction activity and will soon be reconstructed as a rail yard.”
I visited Widett this week, and I can see why the T has concerns. Widett is an industrial ghost town with shuttered buildings by an active rail track. You can’t just flip a switch.
But Mass. and Cass is a humanitarian crisis, and we’re running of time and good options. It will require political will to set aside a portion of Widett for a few years to house about 200 people.
Sure, long-term solutions are being drafted: the state wants to redevelop the Shattuck Hospital into 400 units of housing and about 300 treatment beds, while Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston is planning to reopen Long Island for shelter and recovery services by renovating buildings and rebuilding a bridge. Still, it would take years to complete these projects — even if they overcome fierce neighborhood opposition.
The Widett campus could be opened in phases by the spring and operate until the Shattuck or Long Island are up and running. At Widett, there would be curfews and rules against drug dealing as well as supportive services such as addiction treatment, mental health care, and job training. And because Widett is a no-man’s land cut off by the Southeast Expressway, it would be easier to secure to prevent the kind of open-air drug market that has flourished around Mass. and Cass.
This brilliant idea was born out of necessity and desperation from members of the New Market Business Improvement District, which straddles sections of Roxbury, Dorchester, and the South End near Mass. and Cass. The group is a collection of property owners and food wholesalers who banded together to make the streets safer and cleaner. But this summer a new level of violence at the encampment made the area untenable for employees and outreach workers that serve homeless people.
“We didn’t see what we thought was a viable solution in the short term being formulated or even worked on anywhere,” said Michael Rothschild, chair of New Market board and a property owner in the district. “Is there anything we in the private sector could propose or come up with that might lead to something quicker?”
Business owners came up with Widett. They partnered with the South End Forum, an umbrella group of residents that has felt the brunt of Mass. and Cass. They estimate the recovery campus could cost about $25 million.
That’s not a lot of money. The state alone, according to an October 2022 letter to the Wu administration, has invested over $40 million on housing, treatment services, and outreach programs at Mass. and Cass.
We are at another crossroads with Mass. and Cass. On Monday, Wu filed an ordinance that would empower police to remove tents and tarps that have shielded criminal activity and made the area so dangerous. Her administration is also setting up more temporary housing in the South End — which understandably and predictably residents fiercely oppose.
Which leads us back to Widett. Governor Maura Healey and her administration will need to take the lead since the property is state owned. She’s no stranger to Mass. and Cass, having lived in the South End and worked on the opioid crisis as attorney general.
And when it comes to intractable problems, she has always been an everything-on-the-table kind of leader. She was open-minded about Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins’s controversial proposal to pick up people on Mass. and Cass with outstanding warrants and commit them to an involuntary drug treatment unit at the jail.
Boston can be a town that is quick to shoot down novel ideas from hosting the 2024 Olympics to aerial gondolas in the Seaport. Remarkably, the Widett proposal hasn’t generated the same not-in-my-backyard reaction — because it’s not in anyone’s back yard.
Let’s be clear about what the Widett plan is and isn’t. It’s temporary. It’s not meant to replace the reopening of Long Island bridge or a Shattuck recovery campus. Widett fills the void that gets us to long-term answers.
Perhaps no one has worked more closely with homeless people than Dr. Jim O’Connell, cofounder of Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. He says we should explore Widett and other proposals to address Mass. and Cass because the encampment is “taking up all the oxygen.”
Mass. and Cass involves about 200 to 300 people, he reminded me. Boston’s homeless population runs as high as 7,000.
“I can’t wait for [Mass. and Cass.] to get solved,” he said, “so that we can look at the larger problem and start to really come up with better and more creative solutions.”
Shirley Leung is a Business columnist and host of the Globe Opinion podcast “Say More with Shirley Leung.” Find the podcast on Apple, Spotify, and globe.com/saymore.
Shirley Leung is a Business columnist. She can be reached at shirley.leung@globe.com.