Horticultural society loses backing for Greenway parks
The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority yesterday yanked its longtime support of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society's plans to create parks on three large blocks of the evolving Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway in downtown Boston.
In a dramatic turnaround after years of cooperation between the two groups, Turnpike Authority chairman John Cogliano said at a board meeting yesterday he was sending a letter to the horticultural society informing the organization that "the authority can no longer support its proposals for the Greenway parcels."
The Greenway "will be a landmark in Boston," Cogliano said, and he indicated the Turnpike Authority does not think the society can fulfill its obligations. There was no board vote on the contents of the letter, and authority officials would not release it last night.
Cogliano, who is secretary of transportation, is expected to be replaced in his twin posts by incoming Governor Deval Patrick.
"He's minutes away from being out of that job," Thomas Herrera-Mishler, executive director of the horticultural society, said last night. "It makes you question his authority for this."
The Turnpike Authority cannot simply kick the horticultural society off the Greenway. The society's right to develop the three blocks of the Greenway between the Evelyn Moakley Bridge and South Station was included in permits authorizing construction of the Big Dig, so the authority will have to ask state environmental officials to remove the society from the project.
Roy Blomquist, Greenway project director for the 178-year-old Massachusetts Horticultural Society, yesterday said of the Turnpike Authority's move: "I don't believe this decision has anything to do with the best interests of the city. It's a political decision."
The horticultural society will fight the authority ; the society's board recently voted unanimously to continue to plan and develop the parcels as parks.
The society was unable to deliver its original vision of a "winter garden" on the Greenway, and experienced financial hardship and turnover at the top. Under new leadership, the horticultural society more recently proposed creating extensive gardens, a first phase of which would be complete in 2008, and is to receive Turnpike Authority help amounting to at least $2 million.
The authority 's new position on the society came two months after the chairman of the conservancy that oversees the Greenway, Peter Meade, argued that the group should no longer be allowed control of those three blocks.
Yesterday Meade said he was pleased the Turnpike Authority now wants to start fresh. "We have to examine the options, and you can't go through a thorough examination of those options with the community while you still have someone working on the parcels," Meade said.
Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com. 
