By Doreen Iudica Vigue, Globe Staff
North End natives Nancy Caruso, Mary Giuffreda, and Phyllis Rugnetta are threading their way between high-rise, high-rent condominiums, office buildings, and parking lots off Atlantic Avenue to reach the waterfront. It's a mazelike trek, with views and access blocked in many places, and running the obstacle course can make their blood boil.
As lifelong dwellers in this mostly Italian-American enclave, the women, all community activists, have seen too many projects encroach on the neighborhood's slice of Boston Harbor. They want residents to enjoy what the women feel is rightfully theirs: a view of the ocean, a whiff of the waves.
``We want complete waterfront access, with more open space, more parks, more flowers, more places for people just to come and sit and gaze out at the water,'' says Caruso. ``Here is a beautiful waterfront, and what's here? Cars and offices. I want it for human beings, for the people who live here to enjoy.''
From Chelsea to Charlestown, Eastie to Southie, the mantra of waterfront residents is the same: We want more. We want a voice and a choice.
More access, more parks, more recreation space, more views, more small businesses, and more points of interest like museums and sailing programs. It's the water, many say, that anchors them to urban life, its sounds and smells the calming background music of their days; they need to see and hear it.
They want small businesses dotting the landscape to rev up the local economy and draw visitors, and they'd like to see some mixed-income and market-rate housing for locals. The grandest plan of all calls for two museums: One would commemorate East Boston's maritime history as birthplace of some of the world's finest clipper ships; the other would honor its place as an entry point for immigrants, second only to Ellis Island in numbers.
``The idea is to attract people to the community who will spend money and enjoy what we have here,'' says Mary Ellen Welch, co-chair of the Community Planning Initiative and a member of the Jeffries Point Neighborhood Association. ``If we have a museum or two, beautiful restaurants, the best skyline view in the city, more people will want to join the good people who already live here. There is every racial and ethnic group in East Boston, and rebuilding the waterfront will be another way to celebrate our diversity.''
On the other side of East Boston, activists have joined with their Chelsea neighbors to clean up and use the banks of Chelsea Creek. A turn-of-the-century summer playground of Boston Brahmins, Chelsea slowly became an industrial port, with oil storage facilities paving over and polluting most of the accessible waterfront.
Ten years ago, the Mary O'Malley Park, facing the water on Admiral's Hill, was built for recreation, but residents want more. Some yearn for a plan that would eliminate the refineries along the creek, clean up the environment, and create Chelsea's version of the Charles River, complete with a beach.
``We're living in an urban city surrounded by water, but with no access,'' says Gladys Vega, a member of the Chelsea Greenspace and Recreation Committee. ``Our dream is to get the polluters out or get them to give something back by helping us financially in creating parks, beaches, a place to fish, a place where families can be together. It would go such a long way to change Chelsea's reputation. It would send a message that this city is getting its act together and doing something for the people and for the environment.''
In Charlestown, the call is to develop the last parcel of the Navy Yard to create jobs for residents and more open space for recreation.
Peter Looney, a lifelong resident and chairman of the Charlestown Neighborhood Council, says people who grew up in the town have always thought of the Navy Yard as a source of work. Now that most of it has been developed into costly condos, Looney and others feel it's time to reclaim what's left to fuel the economy and bring families back to the waterfront.
``Looking at Charlestown 25 to 30 years ago, it was self-contained. People lived and worked and played here, and we'd like to go back to that a little bit,'' says Looney. ``The Navy Yard is big enough to give the community three things: a place to walk and be with their families, maybe some affordable housing, and some kind of business to put people to work. That would be our ideal.''
Although South Boston has a large beach, several recreation areas, and Castle Island, some residents are insistent that the developers of the Seaport area should not take that wealth for granted.
Mary Cooney, a member of the South Boston Waterfront Committee, says South Boston residents would like a signature park similar to East Boston's Piers Park, or some other major recreational development, to balance the immensity of the convention center and other large-scale projects there.
``We do need hotel space, we do need office space, but the development needs to be more thought out so that there is better transportation, better access to the area for residents and visitors,'' she says. ``I don't think there is anything inviting about giant buildings. They don't invite pedestrian traffic for residents or for tourists to explore. I feel there is more to the Seaport than just developers making a lot of money, and we need to be vigilant.''
Vigilance is what kept a massive supermarket from going up on Battery Pier in the North End. Residents turned out in force to reject plans for an ocean-facing grocery store that would have had a better view of the harbor than most of its neighbors had ever seen. A hotel and shops will be built on the site, but the new plans have been scaled down and approved by residents.
``There have been a lot of projects that are just ramrodded down our throats,'' says Rugnetta. ``Developers and the city forget there is a neighborhood here and there are people to consider when they are building these projects. We want them to listen to our concerns.''
She and fellow activists Caruso and Giuffreda say they would love to see a community center built on the waterfront, an indoor gathering place that would complement the baseball fields and bocce courts farther down Atlantic Avenue, offering everything from children's art programs to bingo for senior citizens.
``It would be a place where everyone would come out of the house and want to meet, like the Italian theaters in old Scollay Square,'' says Caruso. ``The old-timers don't like to come down here because they find it foreign to them; all the newcomers are here. We need a place where everyone can reconnect and, maybe, connect for the first time.''
Doreen Iudica Vigue is a Globe reporter and a native of East Boston.
