By Lisa Lipman, Associated Press, 12/06/00
BOSTON -- Fan Pier is an enormous parking lot that has sat idle for decades while dreams of a bustling neighborhood on the city's waterfront remained tied up bureacratic wrangling.
On Wednesday, after months of negotiations, city and state officials reached an agreement on a plan for the area to develop 800 residential units, 1,000 hotel rooms and 150,000 square feet of civic and cultural space.
The largest waterfront project in the city's history -- a 33-acre, $1 billion development -- finally crossed its final hurdle.
It is "probably the most exciting development that will happen in Boston in our lifetime," Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said.
The plan includes 11 acres of open space, twice as much as was originally proposed. A two-acre park will lead up to the pier. A pedestrian-friendly open space will wrap along the water's edge. The plan also calls for 10 percent of its residential units to be affordable housing.
The new proposal is a reduced version of the original $1.2 billion proposal. BRA spokesman Susan Elsbree estimated the cost of the revised plan at about $1 billion.
Chicago hotel magnate Nicholas Pritzker, head of a family business that has been trying to build on Fan Pier for a quarter-century, originally envisioned 3.3 million square feet of condominiums, office space and hotels, and had refused to make any changes on it.
Menino and his representatives went back and forth between state officials and Pritzker to hammer out a compromise.
Menino implied that Pritzker had changed his mind.
"If I'm satisfied," Menino said with a grin, "the Pritzkers are satisfied."
Pritzker did not immediately return calls for comment.
Approval of the plan became jeopardized when the Conservation Law Foundation, an environmental group, claimed the original plan was too big and too close to the water. The group, which approves of the new plan, had threatened several months ago to tie up the plan in court by suing state Environmental Affairs Secretary Robert Durand if he didn't force Pritzker to scale back his plans.
Durand's approval of the project was the final government hurdle for the plan.
Durand had asked for the elimination of one of the project's centerpiece waterfront buildings. Although the approved plan still includes the building, the building's height has been reduced and it is set back farther on the property to increase green space.
Durand said the new plan, with which he was satisfied, also "slimmed down" four other buildings.
"The draft decision said either (one building) would have to be removed or more open space would need to be provided. ... Our goal was to make sure that it was a comparable offset," he said. "That was accomplished."
Lt. Gov. Jane Swift acknowledged that the planning process was "not always easy," but said the complicated route to approval resulted in a better plan than the original.
The Boston Redevelopment Authority held three public hearings on the proposal, at which many South Boston residents voiced their concerns.
Durand said that thousands of Boston residents had written letters about the plan. Many of them complained about potential traffic problems the development would cause. But Menino said a BRA-conducted study done several months ago showed that the traffic impact would be less than most people had thought.
Durand said that if all goes well construction could begin sometime in this coming year. He did not project a date of completion.
He called the project "a lasting legacy which our children, and their grandchildren, will be proud of."
