Big Dig's parks projects facing delays

Most of the nearly 300 acres of city parks that Big Dig officials promised to win support for the massive project are not finished and many are not scheduled to be done until after the roadway project is completed next year.

The delays in park construction have raised concerns that as the roadway project winds down, the public spaces could be neglected or forgotten altogether.

To secure the necessary environmental permits for the $14.6 billion project, Big Dig officials agreed to create parks, landscaped open space, and other public areas at a cost of $300 million.

Some parks cannot be built until the Big Dig is finished, among them the Rose Kennedy Greenway in downtown Boston, where the elevated Central Artery is now being dismantled.

But with the exception of Spectacle Island, which is set to open to the public this summer, the bulk of the promised parkland -- on the banks of the Charles River and Fort Point Channel and in East Boston -- is behind schedule for a variety of technical reasons, project officials say.

Big Dig officials have pushed some of the completion dates to 2006 and open space advocates are worried that the project will close up shop and that no one will be around to shepherd those park projects along. Many of the projects involve difficult land transactions and design issues that require diligent oversight if they are to become reality, these advocates say.

"There are fewer and fewer staff people and it's harder and harder to get updated information or questions answered within the artery staff," said Valerie J. Burns, president of the Boston Natural Areas Network. "There's an awful lot of details left to keep track of, and it's not clear who's going to be doing it. It's a real concern the parks won't have that oversight, to make sure the contract specifications are honored and delivered."

Anne Fanton, executive director of the Central Artery Environmental Oversight Committee, an independent panel set up in 1991 to keep tabs on the project's commitments for parks, transit improvements and construction mitigation, said she was also concerned about the timetable for park construction.

Instead of building the roadway project first and then creating the parkland, Big Dig officials pledged that the new public spaces would be finished as the highway project reached major milestones, wherever possible.

"One would expect that some of the parks would not be done until later because the land isn't ready," she said. "But should they be done as late as they are being done?"

Another worry, she said, is how the new parks will be maintained and operated once they are built, Fanton said. The new spaces are set to be turned over to the city in some cases and the state in others, but funding and staffing issues have not been worked out.

Big Dig officials concede that completion dates have been pushed back, but they say that a quarter of the 45 planned parks and significant public spaces are already being enjoyed by the public and that the rest will quickly follow.

Funding for parks is locked in as part of the project's price tag, and will not decrease, they say.

Matthew J. Amorello, chairman of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, which oversees the Big Dig, has "insisted that the parks be closely linked to the project schedule, and for the most part they have been chugging along in sync with [roadway] construction," said Fred Yalouris, director of architecture and urban design for the Central Artery and Tunnel project.

In 2006, when some parks are scheduled to be completed, the Big Dig staff may be gone but "the turnpike authority will be there for the follow-through," Yalouris added. "We'll ensure that the parks are properly finished and appropriate transitions are made upon completion."

The 30-acre surface of the Central Artery through downtown Boston, of which 14.5 acres is designated as parkland, has been the focus of most public attention, in terms of land that the Big Dig is providing for restoration.

But the other roughly 285 acres of parks and landscaped spaces that the project has promised to create are scattered throughout the city, from Charlestown to South Bay to East Boston. Some of the land is over, under, or adjacent to the new roadway system. Other sites are in areas that were disrupted by Big Dig construction, and some are simply in the general area of the project.

In the case of the new Charles River Basin parks and the Fort Point Channel area, activists saw a chance for the Big Dig to pay for improvements that the city or state had never funded. Project proponents obliged, to help win public support.

The parks were easy to promise, but have not been pushed aggressively, open space advocates say.

Some 42 acres of new parkland are planned for either side of the Charles River between the dam in the area of the Museum of Science and the east side of the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge. The Nashua Street park near Spaulding Rehabilitation Center and the Lovejoy Wharf area on the Boston side, as well as the North Point park on the Cambridge side, are targeted for completion by the end of this year.

Critical pedestrian bridges connecting the parks on the Boston and the Cambridge side, as well as a planned new crossing spanning the river, aren't set to be finished until May 2006, and funding is uncertain for those elements, park advocates say.

"This is a tricky area to design a park, with lots of dark corners and noise and freeway ramps," said Bryce Nesbitt, a parks activist with the Friends of the Community Path organization in Somerville. No one lives close to the area, so there is no real constituency for these parks, he said. Without strong leadership, the plans could falter, he said.

The long-awaited 18.5-acre Bremen Street Park in East Boston, parallel to Route 1-A, and the expansion of the Memorial Park beside Logan Airport roadways, is set for completion by May 2005.

The design of these parks is excellent, said Burns, "but we're concerned that as the project winds down, substitutions will be made for quality finishes or elements will drop out. We're all very concerned the budgets may waiver and the parks won't be built as designed."

Anthony Flint can be reached at flint@globe.com.