On the other hand, I will with any luck be retired by the
time the Olympics rolls around in 2024. By then, my concerns about wait times at
Oak Grove Station should be strictly academic.
Also, how can I embrace the idea of a Boston Olympics as
long as the Games seem to be at odds with the best interests of the City of
Revere, where I was raised and where my heart lies?
The Boston 2024
Committee is eyeing Suffolk Downs as a back-up site for the Olympic Stadium
if its first choice, some land off the expressway in South Boston, falls
through.
I guess that means the folks in Revere who are hoping to
turn the no-longer-necessary racetrack into something new and exciting,
something that capitalizes on the site’s proximity to the Blue Line and Revere
Beach, something welcoming and good for hard-working families, something that
permanently widens the tax base, will have to put their hopes on indefinite
hold. Or maybe not.
If you’re Revere Mayor Dan Rizzo, you are probably not going
to allow one of your city’s biggest potential assets to lie fallow because persons
who will never live and vote in Revere might need it to realize their dreams of
international glory.
Mayor Rizzo at least has to consider the possibility of
scoring political points at the expense of outsiders who presume to decide the
best way to use some prime real estate in his city.
It would be easy for Mayor Rizzo to convene a news
conference and announce that (a) the city is working closely with the owners of
Suffolk Downs to come up with the smartest and most productive new uses for the
site, (b) it is impossible to determine at this time if an Olympic Stadium
would be either smart or productive, and (c) you are recommending that the owners
of Suffolk Downs avoid any agreement with Boston
2024 until all viable proposals are carefully considered and compared to
one another. He might want to throw in
a comment to the effect of: “The chairman of the Boston 2024 Committee is
welcome to call our City Planner at any time.”
Meanwhile in East Boston, a group of activists has
promulgated a “vision statement” for their community that addresses the
redevelopment of Suffolk Downs, a good portion of which lies in East Boston.
The statement, entitled “Overarching Principles for
Development in East Boston,” is the work of East Boston 2020, a
group mainly composed of elements that defeated a pro-Suffolk Downs casino
referendum in November, 2013. It
contains “five principles by which all future significant development proposals
in East Boston – and Suffolk Downs in particular – should be measured.” Those principles are: permanent job creation,
community inclusion and a transparent process, environmental impact,
transit-oriented development, and economic feasibility.
East Boston 2020
is fortunate to have at its disposal the energy and intellectual firepower of
Attorney Jim Aloisi, an East Boston native and a former Secretary of
Transportation in the Governor Patrick administration. He was quoted in a recent press release from
the group, (“Olympic Stadium at Suffolk Downs? Any Plan for the Site Must Meet
Community Principles, Approval,” 2/2/15), as follows:
“Although Suffolk Downs is privately owned, it is supported
by a highway and transit system owned and operated by the state and paid for by
the taxpayers of Massachusetts. It is
only fair and just that any major development on its grounds be thoroughly
vetted by local citizenry and surrounding communities. We hope these principles, which express a
positive and forward-looking vision for the future of this site and community,
will be embraced by a broad spectrum of state and local decision makers. Ours is a constructive vision, and we are
eager to engage with those who appreciate the potential for this site to bring
transformative change to the community, the city and the region.”
Long before the great athletes of all nations parade into an
Olympic stadium in Massachusetts, average citizens will troop into meeting
after meeting to “thoroughly vet” the sites proposed for the various Olympic
events. That will be as it should
be. Greece gave the world both the Olympics and democracy. Of those two wonderful ideas, it’s not hard to say which is the most important.
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