July 4 gala may shift to S. Boston by 2008

For 32 years, the Fourth of July Boston Pops concert and fireworks celebration has been an iconic event along the shores of the Charles River, typically drawing 500,000 spectators and putting the city on display to millions of television viewers across the country.

But event organizers, fearing massive disruptions from the reconstruction of Storrow Drive, have drawn up elaborate plans to temporarily move the festivities from their longtime home on the Esplanade to Joe Moakley Park in South Boston by 2008.

The plans have received the early, tentative blessings of Mayor Thomas M. Menino and other key public officials, some of whom believe that once the concert and fireworks are moved to South Boston they will never return to the Esplanade.

''Everybody thus far is enthusiastic about it," said David Mugar, the godfather of the event. ''I think it's a good, logical site for us."

''It's very real, as long as we get the support of the neighborhoods and the politicians," Mugar added. ''We've talked to the State Police. We've talked to [outgoing Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen] O'Toole. We're well along in the planning process."

Under the working plan, the concert would remain at the Hatch Shell through 2007, then move when construction begins on the Storrow Drive tunnel at Arlington Street, now tentatively scheduled for late that year. It would return to the Esplanade after the Storrow Drive repairs, which are estimated to take from 18 months to four years to complete.

Mugar has already met with Menino, several South Boston elected officials, Pops executives, and event sponsors. Yesterday, Mugar and his staff checked Dorchester Bay depth charts to assure that fireworks barges could be brought in at high tide for the massive display.

According to a rough map made available to the Globe, a portable concert stage would be located amid a long stretch of open grass outside the Paul Saunders Stadium. The fireworks would be shot from barges sitting off Carson Beach, which is located just across William J. Day Boulevard from the park.

The display would be easily visible along the South Boston shoreline, as well as from the neighborhood behind the park, from the peninsula that holds the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the John F. Kennedy Library, and from Dorchester Heights, a crucial staging area that colonists used to drive the British from Boston in the Revolutionary War.

''It would be an honor," Menino said of moving the event to South Boston. ''It's a win-win for everyone. Why wouldn't they want it? They could sit on their front porch and watch it."

Said City Council President Michael F. Flaherty: ''As a proud son of South Boston, I believe this could be a great opportunity to bring the American people to the beautiful coastline of our neighborhood."

Flaherty said that his backing is dependent on neighborhood support, but that he would join with other local officials in hosting community meetings.

Mugar and his staff initially drew up a list of alternatives to the Esplanade, but rapidly eliminated one after another, until only Moakley Park remained. Harvard Stadium, for example, isn't close enough to public transit, and the Common can't accommodate the massive pyrotechnics show, he said.

At Moakley Park, organizers envision a scenario in which spectators could drive to the event along the Southeast Expressway and Morrissey Boulevard and park at the Bayside Exposition Center. More people, they hope, will come on the MBTA, with the JFK/UMass Red Line stop just steps from the park.

The park is nearly 58.7 acres, much of it open, allowing for better visuals and acoustics than the Esplanade, where relatively few spectators sit within sight of the stage, most of them within the so-called music oval.

According to city officials, the park is home to three Little League fields, two softball fields, three full-size baseball diamonds, four multiuse fields, two soccer fields, and a lacrosse field. It also features a street hockey court, three tennis courts, four basketball courts, and two playgrounds, one of which is under construction. Saunders Stadium, within the park, has a football-soccer field and a track.

''I would want to make sure the traffic, trash, and security issues are fully discussed and approved by the residents of South Boston and Dorchester," said Flaherty, a lifelong resident of South Boston.

All of this becomes necessary because of a rapidly decaying 55-year-old tunnel on the eastbound side of Storrow Drive, abutting the Esplanade, just a stone's throw from the Hatch Shell. State officials are considering plans that variously call for rebuilding the existing tunnel, permanently closing the tunnel, or rebuilding the current tunnel and adding a second that would take traffic in both directions underground.

The best-case scenario calls for widespread traffic disruptions along the thoroughfare, which handles 100,000 cars in each direction every day, for at least 18 months. Other estimates call for more than four years of work.

What began in 1929 as a quaint and quiet affair on the banks of the Charles was reinvented by Mugar and famed Pops conductor Arthur Fiedler in 1974, when they added the 1812 Overture and the accompanying fireworks display. For the last decade, authorities have estimated annual crowds of between 400,000 and 700,000. Organizers use 30 sound towers along the Esplanade to make the Pops concert audible to spectators.

Mugar and his nonprofit group, Boston 4 Celebrations, have taken the concert through wars and recessions, only to nearly dissolve for lack of money a few years ago. In 2004, Liberty Mutual stepped in and promised $2 million a year for five years to sponsor the affair. CBS is in the fourth year of a five-year contract to televise an hour of the event. Last year, it was viewed by 8 million people nationwide.

''To move a Boston icon from the Charles to South Boston would be no small feat to pull off," Mugar said. ''You know how we are in Boston. It would be like saying we should run the marathon from Salem to Boston."

But he added: ''I don't see any alternative."