Shadowy forces of development
Children splashed in a shallow pool in Boston Common as a guide in a tricorner hat led a tour, pointing out Revolutionary War sites. Yet here, in the nation’s oldest park, some people worry that this city is closing in around its open spaces, with skyscrapers blanketing its parks in shadow.
“It’s going to be hidden, buried within the buildings,” Sonuschka Pierre-Mike, 38, said of the beloved Common, as she strolled through it the other day.
Boston is riding the crest of what city officials say is the biggest building boom in its history, with cranes lifting glassy towers into place and raising the city’s unassuming profile.
The surge of construction is also plunging some of its most cherished sites into deepening shadow, testing state laws that have long balanced economic development with protection of sunlight and open space.
The concern is not merely about preserving a glimpse of sky in the increasingly vertical downtown or about the risks of darkness to plants, historic buildings and even humans. It is also about whether the city is going down a road of no return by trading away, one piece at a time, its intangible assets, such as sunlight on its signature parks and public access to its gleaming waterfront.
“A booming economy is always hard on heritage and heritage values,” said Jean Carroon, a preservation architect at the firm Goody Clancy, who is helping to restore the historic Trinity Church in Copley Square.
Boston has been transforming itself through bursts of construction since colonial days. By the 1970s, as the city became denser and buildings rose higher, residents opposed a proposed downtown skyscraper that would have thrown long shadows across the Common and the adjacent and equally beloved Public Garden. That protest led to the state’s passage of laws in the1990s that restricted new buildings, outside one downtown district, from casting shadows on the two parks for more than one hour a day.
But now, as part of the city’s latest rush of construction, the developer Millennium Partners has proposed a $1-billion (U.S.) skyscraper that could soar 236 metres — and cast new shadows lasting 90 minutes or more on the Common and the Public Garden.
The tower, to be built in the financial district due east of the Common, would violate the shadow laws for 264 days of the year on the Common and 120 days on the Public Garden, according to the Friends of the Public Garden, which oversees both parks.
So the developer, in concert with the mayor, sought to change the shadow laws.
The city stands to benefit because it owns the tower site, a condemned garage in Winthrop Square, and would receive $153 million for it.
The mayor says he will plow that money back into the Common and other parks, and into needed renovations to public housing throughout the city. In addition, Millennium Partners has promised to build about 100 new housing units in Chinatown, which faces a severe shortage. These pledges have helped create a diverse coalition that supports changing the shadow laws. The Common has long been a central gathering place for civic activity — events like public hangings for witchcraft in Puritan days and, in January, the women’s march that drew 175,000 people.