When you take a drive around Columbia Point with Don Walsh, one thing becomes immediately clear: he loves his neighborhood.

“Terrific resource,” he says. “Dorchester Bay, Atlantic Ocean. Right there. Clean beaches, ya know.”

Boston 2024 thought so too— and has targeted Columbia Point as the perfect spot for their Olympic Village.

And for a guy whose beloved neighborhood now finds itself square in Olympic crosshairs, he’s surprisingly open-minded.

“I’m not a supporter and I’m not an opponent of the Olympics,” says Walsh. “I’m literally ‘Show me. Prove it to me that it’s gonna work.’ But I love the idea of somebody coming out and saying ‘we have a plan, we’re gonna put the plan on the table and it’s long term and it’s big.”

That Walsh is a fan of planning is less of a surprise. When the Boston Redevelopment Association assembled a task force to forge a plan for the future of the Columbia Point section of Dorchester back in 2008, Don Walsh was a natural choice. A life-long neighborhood resident, he was fixture at both the Columbia–Savin Hill civic association and the Dorchester Bay Economic Development Corp.

Boston 2024’s big plan to transform his section of Dorchester into an Olympic Village and then a bustling city neighborhood where people live, work and shop is modeled on a Master Plan for Columbia Point that Walsh helped develop. He showed me the proposed location of the proposed Athletes Village; it is currently little more than a parking lot.

Over three years as co-chair of the Boston Redevelopment Association’s 15-person task force, Walsh came to change his mind about a lot of things. He, like many of his neighbors, was once staunchly against the idea of tall buildings in Columbia Point.

Walsh says he was persuaded by the planning group to reconsider his negative feelings about neighborhood high rises after looking around at the quality of life on Marlborough street and the South End, near the Prudential building. “Boy that was a big, big moment for me when I said wow height can be alright,” he says. “Height’s not bad, look at what height and the density can give you.”

And I asked Walsh about his neighbors. Does the average Jane or Joe in his part of Dorchester even knows there is a master plan for their neighborhood?

“Absolutely not,” he says. “I’m not sure people at City Hall know there’s a master plan for Columbia Point quite frankly.”

Wait. People at City Hall know nothing about a master plan that he and the BRA spend three years developing?

Walsh says he was very naïve at the completion of the master plan “I said ‘this is terrific, I really like it’…I didn’t realize at the time that it meant absolutely nothing because it wasn’t codified in zoning.”

That means is that the city can choose to follow it or not follow it—at will. But Boston 2024 is clearly paying attention to it. Their promise of living units packed densely close to the T, amidst new retail and work space, and improved, safer access to the water are cribbed right from its pages. As are their promises to upgrade the JFK T Stop, and to rework a perpetual neighborhood headache: Kosciuszko circle.

“Uhhh it’s a mess,” says Walsh. “I mean it’s too many cars going in all directions and if you get a trip that takes an hour, 45 minutes of it could be getting through Kosciuszko Circle.”

So what’s stopping Walsh from wholeheartedly embracing Boston 2024’s vision?

The elephant in the room is the issue of financial responsibility. “They have to address that,” he says. “If taxes are gonna go crazy because of overruns and there’s no way of addressing that then it’s a non starter. We shouldn’t do the Olympics period.”

But, if Boston 2024 can get its financial house in order, there’s at least one neighborhood resident who’s ready to back their plan.