Tearing down the Government Center garage would transform the area - if the city didn’t stand in its own way.
When it comes to real estate development, Boston is a small-bore city. We like our change incremental, shying away from the big and splashy. And we have a process in place that ensures this - one that developer Ted Raymond calls "excruciating." Any proposal of size is subjected to withering scrutiny by an array of planners, commissions, citizen advisory committees, architectural watchdogs, preservationists, and the self-interested. It's a bewilderingly complex gantlet that can cost millions, last years, and kill many a worthy idea.
Perverse proof of this is the Apple Store in Back Bay, supposedly the most exciting new building to grace the city in years. Yeah, the building is all glass. But it is, after all, just a three-story retail space on a street jammed with three- and four-story retail spaces. Indeed, the Apple store is far less than it might have been. After being beaten up in the approval process, a once-innovative design became - glass excepted - something that looked an awful lot like everything else around it.
That conservative, risk-averse approach is now up for serious challenge: Raymond's real estate firm, Raymond Property Co., recently bought the behemoth Government Center garage, and he proposes to demolish it, putting in place something spectacular, something that might radically transform the heart of the city. That would be a great thing. The 2,300-space garage is a blight, a hulking 10-story block of concrete built in the mid-1960s that covers 4.1 acres and spans Congress Street. Dubbed Boston's "Berlin Wall" by some, it blocks views and deadens streets around it.
However, Raymond wants - indeed, insists - that he must get all the approvals to do so in just 16 months. If he doesn't get what he wants when he wants, then the blight will remain. That may sound like a typical developer's threat, but in this case, it's less threat than a fact dictated by simple economics.
The US Environmental Protection Agency now occupies the top two floors of the building (the only floors with office space) and is moving out in January 2010. That's what drives Raymond's tight timing. If approvals aren't in place by the time the EPA leaves, he'll simply lease it to someone else, and in all likelihood, for 10 years or more. Moreover, Raymond says he needs 3 million square feet (more than double its current configuration) to make the project work financially. He envisions smaller buildings on the east side of the parcel - closest to the Greenway - and taller buildings on its western side. He'd like to see a mix of uses: a hotel, a lot of residential, office space, and some retail. And, he stresses, he'd like the project to be architecturally revolutionary - "green," to be sure, but also physically impressive: "the best project in the city."
Still, 3 million is a lot of square footage. If, as Raymond proposes, some buildings on the site are to be short, that means that elsewhere there would have to be towers soaring 50 stories or more. And in Boston, stuff like this - density and height - is anathema.
I hear such complaints and others in mid-June, at a community meeting organized to gauge reaction to the idea. One Beacon Hill resident insists the builder make room for a new public school. A restaurant owner wants the parking spaces kept; the next speaker says there shouldn't be any. A West End resident doesn't want buildings at all; just green space. A North Ender, fearing dust and noise from demolition, wants the garage left as is. There are demands for affordable housing. Others argue the project is so large that it can't be configured until planning is completed for the rest of the area.
It all sounds very familiar, and I leave feeling pessimistic about Raymond's chances. Some - developers particularly - would wish this whole, complex approval process didn't exist. Indeed, once upon a time, that was the case. Public review in Boston was minimal, which is what allowed the city to tear down the old West End, erect City Hall, and, of course, give us the Government Center garage. The fear of repeating those errors, I think, is why we now tread so carefully. Raymond's proposal makes for an interesting conundrum. The process we have put in place to prevent mistakes like the Government Center garage is the same one that may well stop us from getting rid of it.
Originally published in The Boston Globe Magazine, August 10, 2008. Illustration by Christophe Vorlet.