Opening grates: A city effort gets mixed results

At closing time, storeowners switch off their lights, set their alarms, and then secure their doors. Then, the grates come down, one by one, in a cacophony of clattering metal.

For many business owners, the gray shields are the best line of defense against vandals after the sun goes down. They are staples of urban life in many neighborhoods. Some are painted with murals; others tattooed with graffiti.

Now, the city wants businesses to get rid of the grates, saying the metal fencing encourages crime after hours and blights environments in daytime.

''It sends a message that this is not a place where you want to shop," Mayor Thomas M. Menino said. ''It's not inviting."

A campaign that was unveiled by city officials this week includes free insurance workshops on how to file claims for broken windows or stolen goods, safety audits conducted by the Boston Police Department, and some one-on-one arm-twisting.

Officials say business owners will benefit from higher foot traffic and safer business districts, but many owners are resisting.

''I wouldn't even consider leaving here at night not having that thing down," said one Dorchester merchant, Mark O'Brien, who owns a hardware store. ''Reality is reality. This is Bowdoin Street, not Newbury Street."

Officials say the effort is focusing initially on the Bowdoin-Geneva Mainstreets District of Dorchester, in a neighborhood that has been stung by crime, including a daylight shooting at a nearby home last month.

Officials said the goal is to eradicate solid metal grates from the area within the next several months. (Mesh grates that passersby can easily see through are acceptable, they say.) If they succeed, the officials hope to take the program, or some modified version of it, to other districts where such grates are common, including Jamaica Plain, Chinatown, and Hyde Park.

The city's desire to spruce up the look of storefronts has long been key in its attempt to revitalize business districts. For about a decade, it has been using cash as an incentive, offering grants for improved signs, windows, and entryways. Only business owners who do not have the grates can qualify for the grants.

That effort has been only partly successful. Some storeowners in areas such as Allston Village and Roslindale comply, but in some areas, especially those perceived as more dangerous, merchants are skeptical. Officials concluded that they needed a bigger push. In the Bowdoin Street-Geneva Avenue district, nearly half of the 65 businesses have the metal grates.

''Once nightfall comes, all the grates go down, and it looks like a ghost town," said Sandra Kennedy, executive director of Bowdoin-Geneva Main Streets. ''If I didn't live here, I'd keep going too."

Kennedy has been going to door to door, attempting to persuade owners to remove grates. So far, five have agreed to do it.

''That will inspire people, because now they're not the only ones," said Andre Porter, deputy director of Boston's Office of Business Development, a partner in the initiative.

''They will feel that now there's a synergy, a movement," Porter said of merchants' perceptions of the city's effort.

Captain Frank Armstrong of the Boston Police Department is helping to assess the security needs of individual businesses and is suggesting alternative security measures. Meanwhile, police have pledged a heightened presence on the streets.

Lisa Barros, manager of Restaurante Cesaria, a four-year-old Cape Verdean bistro on Bowdoin Street, says the effort is worthwhile. The restaurant has no grates, and it has never been vandalized, she said.

Others are not convinced. O'Brien, who owns Hamilton Hardware and who manages several other properties in the area, renovated six buildings in the past year and a half.

With city funding, he took down grates and added lighting and red-and-brown bricks to the storefront. They're nice to look at, he said, but break-ins are a problem.

At one of his stores, the windows have been broken three times in one month, he said.

Even business owners in low-crime areas are on guard.

Dorothy Ryan, who is the owner of Jobi Liquors on Cambridge Street on Beacon Hill, took down her metal grates about four years ago because they were ''ugly, and they were just looking old," she said.

In the past two years, she said, she has had to pay about $7,000 in repairs after vandals broke windows and stole liquor. Before the last break-in, about a month ago, she decided that she had to put grates back up.

''It looks like I am a target," Ryan said. ''We don't want to put them up, but if it becomes a safety problem, we're going to have to. We have to look out for ourselves."

As an example of a success story, the city points to Allston, where community leaders have been urging business owners to take them down for almost 10 years, as a success story.

The grates create a feeling that ''this is a place where crime happens," said Jennifer Rose, who is the executive director of Allston Village Main Streets.

In the district of about 300 businesses, Rose said, many storeowners have taken down their grates, and others have decided not to put them up, to fit in with the changing district.

''They've seen that the others have done so, and it has been better for business," she said.

Jim Gentile, who has owned The Pet Shop on Harvard Avenue for 31 years, was ready to remove his grates at one point.

But he ultimately reversed that decision, concluding that a window broken by a nighttime vandal would mean freezing temperatures in his shop, thus threatening the lives of his fish in the front room.

Rather than take the grates down, he painted animal murals on them to make them more visually appealing.

''I believe in what they're trying to do," he said of the city's effort. ''But for my own peace of mind, I prefer to do what I'm doing. It's worth it to me to be able to rest at night and not have to worry about frozen fish tanks."

Russell Nichols can be reached at rnichols@globe.com.