Thoroughfares to the future

Since 2000, when Mark Maloney was appointed director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority by Mayor Thomas M. Menino, the office market has plunged, but the luxury housing market continues to surge. Meanwhile, in the heart of the downtown, the design of a key portion of the final stage of the Big Dig has just been completed: the Rose Kennedy Greenway. It was a unique opportunity for the BRA to alter the face and functioning of the city.

For 19 years before assuming this post, Maloney was president of Maloney Properties Inc., a 300-person housing management and marketing firm where he focused on residential development. A longtime political supporter of Menino, Maloney was raised in Newton and graduated from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. He discussed development with Globe correspondent Susan Diesenhouse.

What is your vision of how the city will look and function in the future?

We want the enormous changes underway downtown to permeate through the neighborhoods to benefit the people who live, work, and play here. That's why last year the mayor launched the Crossroads Initiative to improve and extend major thoroughfares like Hanover and Beech streets, not only where they intersect the Greenway but as they run through the neighborhoods. By September, we'll have guidelines for creating a pedestrian-friendly 21st-century streetscape. We want wide, well-lit sidewalks with signs telling people where they are and where they're going. They'll be comfortable and filled with activity, so for the first time in half a century people can enjoy view corridors like the one from North Station to South Station.

Are there guidelines determining how the city will look?

No. The city is too diverse for that. We plan community by community. But we're very interested in some big ideas like transit-oriented development. So at the South Boston Waterfront, all the new projects are near T stops. With the new Silver Line now running between the Financial District and the waterfront [and soon the airport] some of the pioneering office tenants now feel more connected with downtown. We're also interested in building housing that's more than just luxury condos. Two weeks ago, the mayor allocated $5 million to launch a pilot for the Middle Income Housing Program. Buyers of multifamily buildings with a total of about 150 apartments, who keep them affordable to households earning 80 to 120 percent of the median income, will benefit from some tax relief and reap the appreciation when they sell.

Since the mid-1990s, rent control was eliminated on tens of thousands of housing units. Can that affordable stock ever be replaced?

No question rents have gone up. My goal isn't to restore rent control but to harness the market to stabilize rents one unit at a time. At some point, cost increases will slow. We're working with hundreds of developers to make 15 percent of any residential project affordable. Also last summer, we set a goal of creating 10,000 new dwelling units in three years, with 2,100 of them affordable.

Last December, when the Boston City Council extended the life of 19 urban renewal projects, it preserved on those parcels the Redevelopment Authority's power of eminent domain, the power to take private property for a public project paying full, fair-market value. How important is that?

It's critical; it accomplishes what the market can't. Without it, the new convention center [the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in South Boston] would never have been built because about 85 percent of the site was assembled by eminent domain.

What building symbolizes the new look of Boston?

Last September, construction started on the Institute of Contemporary Art at the waterfront, where it will finally have its own permanent collection. It's about youth, creativity, and the future.