We have become accustomed to the drumbeat of bad news about income equality and the sluggish economic recovery since the Great Recession. Stories have documented the seemingly endless ways in which, to borrow from a prominent area pol, the economy seems “rigged” against the middle class, while those at the top reap all the gains. […]
Growth and Development
Posted inEnvironment
Firm pays $5.5m to resolve Plum Island concerns
A BOSTON ENGINEERING FIRM on Tuesday agreed to pay $5.5 million to settle allegations that it failed to make sure contractors complied with the company’s own design specifications in building a water and sewer system on Plum Island. In 2000 and 2002, CDM Smith Inc. of Boston won contracts to design and oversee construction of […]
Posted inEnvironment, State House News Service
Baker inks long-sought energy law
STATE HOUSE NEWS SERVICE GOV. CHARLIE BAKER sat in the sun on the State House lawn Monday afternoon, relishing a victory for his administration and some in the Legislature. With the stroke of his pen, Baker signed into law an energy bill that aims to diversify the state’s energy portfolio, spur the development of an […]
Posted inEconomy, Education
The next Kendall Square?
AFTER YEARS OF DELAYS and then years of planning, something big is starting to happen on the Boston side of the Harvard University campus. Out behind the stately Harvard Business School, across Western Avenue, is a big, sprawling space filled with gravel, dirt, and crumbling pavement. It’s not much to look at right now, but […]
Posted inEconomy
Boston garage sale stirs worries
THE CITY OF Boston used to sell off rundown municipal garages for development all the time by itself, but it’s taking a different tack with the old Winthrop Square Garage, one of the city’s most coveted parcels of land in the heart of the Financial District. Mayor Marty Walsh wants to transfer the property to […]
Posted inEconomy, Education, Opinion
Harvard’s blank canvas
I WAS STANDING on the roof of the Doubletree Hotel along Soldiers Field Road, looking down at what could easily be described as a whole lot of nothing. But that was sort of the point. Harvard University has bought up an enormous amount of the land surrounding the hotel on the Boston side of the […]
Posted inOpinion, Transportation
There’s no getting around
THE TERM “HIDING in plain sight” has meaning beyond the obvious. Sometimes facts and realities that are part of our daily routine get overlooked, taken for granted, accepted as part of the norm, endured as intractable problems. When that happens – when we accept and endure an unacceptable status quo – we enable bad decisionmaking that […]
Posted inEconomy, The Back Story
Double-whammy for Gateway Cities
CLARK UNIVERSITY IN WORCESTER this week unveiled a series of new data profiles suggesting Gateway Cities are being hit with a real estate double-whammy: housing prices that are relatively low and rents that are relatively high. That combination is trouble because it means developers have little incentive to build new housing units in Gateway Cities […]
Posted inOpinion, Transportation
Whither Boston?
THE RECENT DECISION of the IndyCar promoters to pull out of Boston was met by some with relief, by others with dismay. I was not a fan, and I was particularly concerned about its potential negative impacts on the Silver Line in the Seaport District. Some of the reaction I received on Twitter from IndyCar […]
Posted inPolitics, The Download
GE’s tax avoidance: “Imagination at Work”
The General Electric saga took another turn with reports on emails that circulated among city and state officials showing a fevered effort to lure the company, a push that involved significantly increasing the city tax break and state incentives offered to the global multinational in exchange for siting its headquarters in Boston. Emails obtained through […]