Bostonians can have quick reflexes: Present a new idea and their thumbs instantly turn down.
So suggested Mayor Martin J. Walsh, in a defense Friday of bringing an IndyCar race to the Seaport District next Labor Day weekend.
“We have an opportunity here — I think, a good opportunity,” Walsh said during a Boston Public Radio interview, addressing complaints about the race. “We just love to pound things into the ground here.”
“We’re trying something different and new here and I don’t understand the pushback,” the mayor said. He added later in the interview that Boston had lost some desirable tech companies to West Coast cities that sold themselves as fun and exciting.
“It’s OK to think outside the box as a city,” he said on WGBH with hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan. “Sometimes there’s a mindset to automatically go to ‘no.’ ”
Residents near the proposed race course have raised concerns about traffic, access to their homes, noise, and disruption of their lives.
Chris Dempsey, who helped lead a group that worked against Boston’s failed bid for the 2024 Olympic Games, said Massachusetts “has a proud tradition of saying yes to new ideas: from the first public schools to marriage equality.”
“But we’ve also been justifiably discerning,” Dempsey said by e-mail. “It’s good to say no to bad ideas, especially when they’re pulling resources and focus away from core priorities.”
Walsh in May signed a deal with the Grand Prix of Boston to hold the race in 2016, and annually for up to four years after that. The cars would race around a 2.2-mile street course that encircles the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
Race organizers still need to reach agreements with the Massachusetts Port Authority, the state Convention Center Authority, the state Department of Transportation, and the US Postal Service, which controls a piece of land within the race footprint, representatives of the Grand Prix of Boston have said.
The Walsh administration’s chief of operations, Patrick Brophy, urged race organizers in a letter two weeks ago to complete those agreements by Friday. The deals are not yet done.
Walsh downplayed the time demand on Friday, saying, “It’s an unofficial kind of deadline.”
Race promoters said Friday that they have made progress in negotiations and “anticipate that we will soon obtain the necessary agreements with all agencies involved.”
The mayor is encouraged by the progress in negotiations over the past two weeks, Walsh’s office said in a statement late Friday afternoon.
Mark Arsenault can be reached at Mark.Arsenault@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @BostonGlobeMark.