The word: Pier plan better, but it needs shoring
Locals like changes to luxury housing plan, and seek additional safeguards
Neighborhood activists, environmentalists, and businesses closely watching plans to transform Pier One into a luxury housing development said last week the project has improved greatly but still needs fine-tuning to better welcome the general public.
They were commenting on the state Department of Environmental Protection's Sept. 8 draft of a key building permit, called a Chapter 91 license, which Roseland Property Co. and its partner, Sea Chain Marine LLC, must obtain before the planned groundbreaking next spring on Portside at Pier One and Boston Harbor Shipyard and Marina.
There seemed to be two major thrusts to the comments: Some want to ensure the complex succeeds financially while others fret that, without proper planning, the development might become a wealthy enclave.
The Boston Pilots, an association of sea captains who guide ships through Boston Harbor, continued to press for safeguards that would ensure the group will not be priced off Pier One in a few decades. Jamy Buchanan Madeja, the pilots' attorney, asked state officials to make the group's Pier One berth a condition of the license, arguing that the pilots' role safeguarding harbor security merits special protection, especially since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
''They have to have a home in Boston Harbor," Buchanan Madeja said. ''And Roseland is developing on public tidelands that is their current home." The Massachusetts Port Authority, which will lease the land to developers for up to 95 years, largely agreed with state environmental officials' plans to retain long-term oversight on rents charged to working-port tenants. Massport officials, though, asked that the developer be given more leeway in designing and operating some of the public spaces in the project.
Meanwhile, Valerie Burns, president of Boston Natural Areas Network, said her group and the East Boston Greenway Council want state environmental officials to make public their future dealings with developers during the lease period, and they want assurances that the developers will use high-quality materials on the harbor walk and other public spaces.
The groups also would like more work done to flesh out plans for a ''special destination facility" that is still in a conceptual stage.
''It should be something of museum quality or a visiting tall ship, a big attraction that will attract people to the end of the pier," Burns said.
