Arts at the Seaport

It should go without saying that human beings crave more than high-rise living space and fancy restaurants to make their lives complete.

And while Boston’s Seaport District — home to the Boston Herald — has an abundance these days of both luxury housing and fine dining, it’s still missing much that makes a neighborhood a real neighborhood.

The newest plan for the remaining 12.5 acres of Seaport Square, a mixed use development on the waterfront being put together by WS Development of Chestnut Hill, now includes a proposed 500-seat Seaport Performing Arts Center on Summer Street. The complex would also include a 150-seat performance space in the same complex and a separate 100 to 150-seat black box Fort Point Community Theater on Boston Wharf Road.

The developers are also proposing to enlarge and enhance some open spaces with things like a children’s playground and to extend the lease of District Hall, which has proven a lively place for the area’s workers and residents to just hang out.

Now the developers aren’t doing all of this out of the kindness of their hearts — although surely they know that workers in those office towers and residents of those condo complexes are looking for something more to make the neighborhood livable. To its credit, the Boston Planning and Development Agency has also been promoting the idea of linking arts spaces to new development.

WS got the none-too-subtle message and responded with a creative proposal.

The BPDA seems to think the sweet spot on new performance centers is 800 seats — a debatable point — based largely on the fact that there are smaller venues and larger ones but nothing in the 800 to 900 seat range. (Memo to BPDA: Perhaps that’s for a good reason.)

Frankly the WS proposal seems more realistic and easier to find a variety of programming for.

The important thing right now is that the performing arts will at long last gain a foothold in the city’s newest neighborhood — and help make it a real community in the best sense of that word.