What’s your favorite view of Boston, and where do you take it in? On top of Bunker Hill? While crossing the Charles River? From an office window?
I’m standing in front of the desk of Sam Tyler, president of the Boston Municipal Research Bureau, overlooking Downtown Crossing. It’s still a cavity in the mouth of the city, but it’s being drilled.
"It’ll be Millenium Tower," Tyler said. "When that’s completed that’ll really encourage other developers to come back with proposals for higher buildings."
And continued, new development matters. Boston relies on property taxes for 66 percent of its total operating revenue. Tyler says that’s greater than any other comparable city in the country.
And that new development may be best discussed at the street level. I caught up with Boston mayoral candidate John Connolly after a press event in Roxbury. Spreading a map of Boston on the hood of his minivan, he talked about the areas he’d like to see under construction.
He pointed to vacant parcels along the commuter rail line from Hyde Park to South Station.
"Transit nodes along the Fairmount Line are going to present that opportunity to experiment with heightened density, also look at real discussions around parking," Connolly said. "We can bring costs down and price to the workforce and the middle market, along with the affordable component."
And then Connolly pointed south, to Roxbury.
"You’ve got Melnea Cass [Boulevard] in here and that’s going to be a huge area for development," he said. "You’ve got the Ferdinand Building that’s going to rejuvenate Dudley Square. But we’ve got families struggling to make ends meet and we have developers coming in and buying up housing stock that’s going to ultimately without a smart policy be converted to luxury condominiums. The challenge is how do we maintain a socioeconomic mix?"
It’s a question for nearly every neighborhood in the city.
"What we really need is greater density, greater development, and to overcome this fear of tall buildings," said Mark Pasnik, an architect in the South End who also teaches at Wentworth Institute of Technology. He says Boston needs to think more about prospective business and residents.
"Right now, I think the city focuses on those who are already living in the city instead of seeking to find a broader base and more access for people to gain housing," he said. "Often the pushback from neighborhoods is against development or against height. We can develop more housing and more businesses in central Boston."
And Connolly agrees. Using a marker, he circled Allston and the Seaport District on the map, saying he wants a good balance of residential and commercial development in both areas.
“I want to see us embrace height and density for the purpose of really driving more housing creation,” he said.
Most of Connolly’s platform focuses on residential development. He says he’d build more three-bedroom units for young families, and more of the so-called “microloft” apartments, which are very small. He drew a large circle around East Boston on the map.
"I think the real potential in East Boston is the waterfront," he said. "A lot depends on the residents and the casino. But here’s the key, again, this is the challenge for the next mayor: How do we maintain a vibrant socioeconomic mix so Latino families in East Boston working two, three jobs are still going to be able to call this home, how are we going to help the budding arts community thrive?"
Connolly says he understands Boston desperately needs moderately priced housing along public transportation lines.
"Certain amount of affordable, a certain amount of workforce, a certain amount of middle market," he said. "We’re not just going to let everything get priced immediately to 'market rate' which, to me, is synonymous with luxury or just below luxury.”
And that brings to mind Menino’s recent goal: to construct 30,000 new housing units by the year 2020. If the new mayor wants to keep that goal, it’ll mean a renewed focus on housing prices. A decision that might change the skyline, and encourage middle-class families to stay, or perhaps in some cases, move back, to Boston.
