Whither I-495?
What ever happened to Interstate 495? You remember I-495 -- the belt in the boondocks beyond Route 128 that was billed in the late '90s as the new center of gravity, the suburban template for the future where people would work and live far from the ominous skyline of Boston?
It's still there, and people continue to flock to it. Its explosive growth has caused horrific traffic congestion and the herniation of town budgets obliged to provide expensive services like schools and sewer systems for the hordes. But that's not where the action is now. That's not where the buzz is. The buzz is back in our much-maligned urban core.
Consider the confluence of events occurring as the Big Dig nears completion: the long-overdue compact among the city, state, and Massachusetts Turnpike Authority for management of the 27-acre Greenway space created by the project; the recent sale of Fan Pier for development; the water activity plan along the Fort Point Channel agreed to by the feisty tribes of abutters, advocates, and residents. My spies tell me that Massachusetts General Hospital will build 512,000 square feet of medical space in the Charlestown Navy Yard. There are the huge condo plays in the South End and East Boston. And so forth.
''Boston as a hub is not a worn-out idea," says Douglas Foy, chief of commonwealth development for the Romney administration. ''It's back to the future."
I-495, in contrast, has a case of the corporate cramps contracted during the implosion of the high-tech industry. ''You don't see a lot of cranes or earthmovers out there now," says Chris Fox, who travels the state for MassINC, a Boston-based nonprofit group devoted to the health of the middle class. ''It was touted to be the next 128. It didn't turn out that way."
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''That's absolutely true," confirms Tom Hubbard, vice president of the Westborough-based Massachusetts Technology Collaborative and a close observer. ''There's no other big anchor that wants a corporate campus out there now. The big corporate campus plans are, at a minimum, tabled."
That said, the high-tech industry will eventually regain its health and pump new life into the I-495 corridor. Long-term projections show more people and business going there. But will the players have learned anything from the past?
Will corporate leaders commit themselves to smart, strategic planning in a way they have not done thus far? It is business, after all, that provides the jobs that trigger the growth, and it must be business that helps solve the problem if I-495 is to avoid choking further on its own growth. Otherwise, the same dumb expansion will simply continue.
And it is dumb. ''I-495 is nowhere to be unless you live in a four-bedroom house with a two-car garage," says Foy. ''The biggest challenge out there is affordable housing. Most towns pride themselves on 2-acre zoning that forbids the construction of a downtown. The corporate leadership must step up to the plate and help us with zoning reform."
Don't count on it. ''It's the responsibility of the individuals who live in those towns," says David Weinstein, an executive vice president of Fidelity Investments, which maintains a huge I-495 presence.
Foy produces a statistical map drawn by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council of multifamily housing starts from 1997 to 2002 in suburban Boston based on US Census data. In communities inside Route 128, the percentage of starts routinely tops 40 percent. It tails off dramatically, with a few exceptions, moving out to I-495 and beyond. Some 87 percent of housing units produced in Massachusetts between 1991 and 2000, he notes, were single-family dwellings, putting the Commonwealth fifth from the bottom among states in terms of multifamily starts.
Some might argue that, lacking a public transportation infrastructure, the I-495 corridor was always doomed to the automobile-driven sprawl that eventually eats itself. People moved there because they like 2-acre zoning. If so, there is every reason to believe that, absent mass transit, the same destructive phenomenon will repeat itself when the next belt further out, Interstate 290, is developed.
And forget about commuter rail to I-495. It would be prohibitively expensive to build, particularly given the lack of density out there. Instead, says Foy, the Romney administration can steer capital spending to communities along existing rail lines that get the message. He mentions Littleton, Natick, and Ashland as examples. Yet the larger problem dwarfs this small answer.
What's missing is a detailed, comprehensive presentation from Romney of his vision for the suburbs -- their managed growth, transportation solutions, and relationship to Boston. Ask the average citizen what the governor's strategic plan is and watch said citizen examine his cuticles.
That's because despite smart campaign talk about smart growth, Romney hasn't focused much on it. He has chosen to spend political capital on the death penalty and gay marriage, but not on smart growth. The I-495 problem may be intractable, given corporate myopia and people's addiction to lawns and cars, but Romney nevertheless needs to shed blood in the fight supporting his rhetoric.
''Unless there's strategic planning from the governor's office, the whole concept of smart growth won't take off," says David Magnani, state senator from Framingham.
Meanwhile, Boston grapples with affordable housing, crime, parking, the growing gap between its rich and poor. The city, God knows, is no panacea. But the action is here, now. You can feel the torque.
Sam Allis's e-mail address is allis@globe.com
