BRA KOs McCourt Fan Pier proposal
by Eric Convey and Steve Marantz(c) The Boston Herald
Wednesday, March 29, 2000
Developer Frank McCourt failed yesterday to force a wedding of his 25-acre landlocked South Boston parcel with 16 acres of adjacent waterfront property owned by Chicago's Pritzker family.
Boston Redevelopment Authority officials rejected the unusual bid, which seeks to combine the two parcels via a forced partnership that the Pritzker's local representatives said they haven't even seen.
``The McCourt plan is not comfortable - it's too big and open,'' said BRA director Mark Maloney. ``He wants to create a vast open festival space. We want to create a neighborhood where people live and work. There's a philosophical difference.''
Mayor Thomas M. Menino was briefed on McCourt's plan and agrees with BRA officials, Maloney said. ``He likes what the Pritzkers are doing and doesn't want to slow them down.''
The McCourts did not return repeated telephone calls seeking comment yesterday but have briefed numerous local officials about their plan.
Backed by the Conservation Law Foundation, which has threatened to sue if the Pritzker plan moves forward, McCourt wants to create an underground shopping mall and share in development of the Pritzker's valuable waterfront land.
McCourt also would erect a series of office towers along Northern Avenue exceeding the 298-foot height limit of the Municipal Harbor Plan. A potentially troublesome facet of the McCourt plan, as far as city planners are concerned, is a traffic circle at Northern Avenue, with an MBTA station in the shape of an inverted pyramid.
``It looked and felt like a suburban shopping mall,'' said Linda Haar, BRA planning director.
Unlke the Pritzker proposal, McCourt's plan would move residential space back from the water.
Haar said the Pritzker plan, while not final, offers much of what Menino and BRA officials want for Fan Pier: a pedestrian scale with street-level public access and a variety of design elements.
Also, the Pritzkers and their local partners, Spaulding & Slye Colliers, have agreed to increase residential space to 33 percent in buildings facing the cove, while capping office space at 33 percent, she said.
A senior lawyer at Conservation Law Foundation, Stephanie Pollack, said yesterday that the organization is likely to sue to block the Pitzker plan.
``It's our legal opinion that it's in violation of state environmental law and we would use every means - including litigation - to make that point and to stop that (development),'' she said.
Pollack said CLF is working with McCourt partly because the group wants to be part of a proposal rather than merely a critic. ``We are prepared to be the bad guys and carry a big stick; we would love to be the good guys and put an idea out there,'' she said.
CLF met with Spaulding & Slye Colliers International, the Pritzkers' local developer, and emerged convinced they are intent on building 3.3 million or 3.4 million feet of space - more than the McCourt plan would include. But Spaulding & Slye says the total built-out space would be 3.2 million square feet.
Meanwhile, the Fan Pier project manager at Spaulding & Slye, Kyle Warwick, said he has hasn't seen the McCourt proposal that would involve his company.
``I think from a planning context, it's a great idea (to work together), but the reality is that there is existing planning going on for the last two years in the area and we've never seen a plan out of our neighbor,'' he said.
Separately yesterday, Spaulding & Slye principal Daniel O'Connell said up to 60 artists' lofts have been added to the plan.
South Boston artists have complained for years that they'll be displaced by the development and have nowhere to go locally.
``We've been prodded to do more residential, and we're doing more residential,'' O'Connell said.
The $1.3 billion Pritzker plan also calls for building a 650- and 160-room hotel that would open before the new convention center, and three office buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet.
Your comments as a visitor to the SAND website would be appreciated and forwarded for discussion.