Reprinted from WBUR
From my vantage point on the Massachusetts Ave. bridge (officially the Harvard Bridge), I count 11 construction cranes looming over Boston’s skyline. Many more are hidden. Boston is in the midst of the largest building boom in its history.
There are now nearly 100 major development projects going on in the city — narrowing and blocking streets with trucks, heavy equipment and Jersey barriers; closing sidewalks; filling the air with fine concrete dust that we are breathing deep into our lungs. And then there is the constant noise — pile drivers and jack hammers, trucks loading and incessantly beeping. At some sites, like Parcel 12 in the Fenway, the construction has gone on all night for several months, disturbing the sleep of hundreds of people, and for some, I would expect, compromising their health.
The next mayor of Boston, and the Boston Planning and Development Agency, will face some difficult decisions about whether some of the innumerable project proposals before them should go forward.
The question at the heart of all this, is: Why is this building boom going on now?
We are told by developers that we desperately need the many million square feet of new office space that will be added. But there are now more than 4 million square feet of empty office space in Boston’s towers, and another 2 million square feet in long term leases that are not being renewed. It is clear that a large proportion of Boston’s workers will continue to work from home long after the pandemic subsides, perhaps indefinitely.
