ON ITS face, the development of the South Boston waterfront appears to be exactly where it was 15 years ago — idling, with public officials hopeful that massive government expenditures will goose private landholders into building something, anything, on the largely-lifeless acreage between Fort Point and the Reserved Channel.
Previous incarnations of this planning have brought the city a pair of beautiful and expensive public buildings, the Moakley Courthouse and the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. Each was built to bring activity to the waterfront. It’s charitable to say that neither has made a dent in the sea of parking surrounding the two buildings.
A third child of the build-it-so-they’ll-come school of planning, the relocation of City Hall to a rusting dry dock, died under study before it could fail in practice.
And now a state commission is selling a significant convention center expansion. The project has the blessing of the governor and the mayor and a price tag that could reach $1 billion. It’s being justified, in part, with talk of how the ambitious construction job could spur private-sector construction on the vacant parcels abutting the already hulking structure.
Of course, those parcels were vacant the last time taxpayers bankrolled construction in the neighborhood, and it’s hard to see what a bigger building would bring to the waterfront that the original $800 million facility couldn’t. The head of the Convention Center Authority, Jim Rooney, has said the expansion’s centerpiece, a new 1,000-room hotel, will not be able to rise without significant public subsidy.
In fact, most of the private development that has sprung up in South Boston exists in spite of the two government buildings on the waterfront, not because of them. The Moakley Courthouse was even designed so it addresses Boston Harbor, while turning its backside to Southie.
The failure of South Boston’s government-built projects to anchor much meaningful private development is a testament to how exceedingly difficult it is to will a new neighborhood into existence. For the investors who bankroll real estate development, construction is just a means to a profit margin, and all things being equal, they’ll shun risk for the perceived sure thing every time.
That’s why it’s another government planning initiative, and not the talk of building a substantially bigger convention center, that really holds the potential to breathe some life into the empty corners of the South Boston waterfront.
In his January inauguration, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino announced plans to rebrand the waterfront as an innovation district. Since then, the administration has quietly laid the groundwork for a reversal in the way City Hall approaches neighborhood-building along the waterfront.
“Up until now, the planning has relied on the market to respond to opportunities we have created,’’ said Kairos Shen, chief planner at the Boston Redevelopment Authority. The market hasn’t responded, so City Hall has decided to remake the neighborhood’s DNA.
The emphasis is off staples like luxury condos and office towers and malls. They’re being replaced by research incubators, live-work space, and innovative cooperative housing models that would enable the graduates of Boston’s colleges and universities to continue to live in town. Taken together, the approach would create new demand for a different type of commercial development.
Housing is the key, as it is with every city in the country. Businesses can’t retain entrepreneurs unless they can house them, and South Boston’s developers can’t afford to build workforce housing and still make the kind of profit that enables them to put shovels in the ground in the first place.
So the administration is weighing mechanisms to bring prices down, including smaller units, shared amenities, and a relaxation of the requirement that developers build enough parking spaces so every resident can stash a car off-street. They’re relatively modest changes, but taken together, they could enable organic, sustainable development in lots where parking has reigned for decades.
“The waterfront should be a unique place,’’ Shen argued. “We want this to be specific to Boston, and to the workforce we have. Do we really need another Crate and Barrel, or another Gap?’’
Paul McMorrow is a staff writer at Banker and Tradesman. His column appears regularly in the Globe. 
