The hot spot

By Anthony Flint, Globe Staff

Though there are other areas of huge potential along Boston's meandering embrace of the harbor - East Boston, for example, and the undeveloped piers in Charlestown - the horsehead-shaped peninsula in South Boston now called the Seaport District is currently ground zero in the city's campaign to reclaim its waterfront.

And these roughly 1,000 acres across the Fort Point Channel from the Financial District pose a challenge like no other in Boston's recent history. It's a big stretch of land - not just a parcel for a single project, but a vast blank slate where an entirely new neighborhood could be built over the coming decades.

Those who have followed the tortured planning process for the area, whether architects, politicians, or ordinary citizens, have a general sense of what they'd like the ``new Boston'' to have: a cozy scale, rather than side-by-side skyscrapers; a mix of reasons to go there, not just office buildings and hotels; and places where people can linger by the water without feeling as if they're in someone's front yard.

The problem is that no one can make this kind of neighborhood appear with a snap of the fingers. South Boston in the '90s is not like the Back Bay of the 1850s, where a handful of developers and a single-minded city government painted on the blank canvas of landfill, notes architect Alex Krieger, of Chan, Krieger Associates in Cambridge. ``It was a simpler culture then,'' he says.

In the Seaport District today, the land is either privately owned or under the control of different government agencies. A broad, coordinated plan for development, balancing profits for developers and the enjoyment of the public - something other cities have successfully implemented - seems just out of Boston's reach. In the absence of a strong planning authority, Boston's legendarily fractured civic and political process has filled the vacuum - a free-for-all of big money and big egos, political grudges, and competing agendas. So far, it hasn't been pretty.

Many believe the Seaport District development is a high-stakes test of whether the city can move beyond its tribalistic history, with urban renewal failures and suburban sprawl as constant reminders of how easy it is to go wrong. But can any kind of consensus arise from the smorgasbord of competing interests?

A look at the players, and the cards they hold, reveals the complexity of what's happening on the waterfront:

The city: Who's in charge here? In the '70s, Mayor Kevin White embraced the idea of Faneuil Hall Marketplace, but Mayor Thomas M. Menino, now in his second term, has been slower to project any sense of vision for the South Boston waterfront. The task of managing development there is largely in the hands of Thomas N. O'Brien, the director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

The BRA released an interim master plan for the area last November, but it was hooted down by critics for lacking pizazz and allowing office towers to dominate the waterfront. The BRA has gone back to the drawing board, taking suggestions from a range of architects and urban designers and hiring an outside consultant to put it all together. The new master plan is expected by the end of this year.

O'Brien has said throughout the process that all the city can do is ``get the public realm right'' - the configuration of streets, transportation, and public space - and lay down zoning restrictions for building heights and uses. But the second attempt at a master plan is said to include bolder proposals, such as a civic destination with the presence of a Sydney Opera House. And O'Brien concedes that a new office park on the waterfront is not enough: ``There needs to be a destination down there, in addition to the cultural institutions that exist,'' such as the Children's Museum, he says.

The proposed $700 million convention center, on 60 acres south of Summer Street, is one such destination. But it will be a giant building served by shuttle buses, and without surrounding development it won't generate the pedestrian activity many want to see on the waterfront.

O'Brien also has a problem of jurisdiction. He can't control the Massachusetts Port Authority, which has its own development plans; state environmental regulators also have a say in what buildings can go where. There have been calls for a waterfront ``czar'' to coordinate development for the area, but it is unclear whether O'Brien can play that role.

Massport: Doing its own thing. Massport controls much of the key land in the Seaport District, and despite its claims to be working closely with the BRA, it has been determinedly going its own way, encouraging development that will keep revenue pouring in. Massport is the driving force behind the only new private buildings going up on the waterfront: Fidelity's Seaport Hotel and office building complex, across Northern Avenue from the World Trade Center. Massport is also charging ahead with plans for Parcel F, a 3.7-acre site near the Ted Williams Tunnel entrance; parts of it will be developed by Don Chiofaro, the man behind International Place. And Massport controls air rights over a stretch of the underground Massachusetts Turnpike-Ted Williams Tunnel connector, also seen as ripe for development.

Fidelity's buildings were approved in the '80s, when far less attention was focused on the Seaport District. But to many, the buildings represent exactly the wrong course for waterfront development - a suburban-office-park style, with a token park beside a tall building and streets more welcoming to cars than pedestrians. ``Waltham on the water,'' some city officials sneer, likening Fidelity's towers to the slabs along Route 128. Massport has recently hired Krieger, who is well regarded for his urban design, to help with plans. But critics warn that office-park development will continue if there is no master plan that Massport is willing to abide by.

Private owners: Holding all the marbles. The heart of the Seaport District is in private hands. The crown jewel Fan Pier property between the new federal courthouse and Anthony's Pier 4 restaurant is owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago, who also own the Hyatt hotel chain; the L-shaped parcel along Northern Avenue and south to Summer Street, now all parking lots, is owned by local developers Frank and Jamie McCourt.

The Pritzkers submitted a proposal for an 800-room hotel, a residential complex, and four office buildings that the city initially cheered, but environmentalists and activists complained it was just more anonymous office park development, cutting off the waterfront from the neighborhood. The Pritzkers withdrew that proposal and are said to be readying a new one with much lower density and, possibly, a provision for the city to use some of the land as civic space. (The Harborlights summer music tent is there now, but its lease has expired and the operation is looking for a new home - possibly on the other side of the World Trade Center.)

Frank McCourt, meanwhile, is embroiled in a long-running feud with O'Brien. O'Brien has been frustrated by McCourt, who has benefited from deals with the city and the state that make his land even more valuable - a planned MBTA stop at the heart of his property, for example, and a land swap with the city that added to his acreage - and yet has made no move to build anything. McCourt doesn't get along particularly well with Menino, either, and is said to be happy to wait for a new administration and another economic cycle before he proposes a single building.

The architects: Here's our plan. A group of local urban designers and architects from the Boston Society of Architects released their vision for the Seaport District earlier this year. The plan moves bigger buildings away from the water and envisions development on all sides of the convention center, but particularly on the west side to Fort Point Channel; it also proposes an expanded public transit scheme, to make the area less car-dependent. Key players in this group include architects Todd Lee, Constance Bodurow, and Jane Thompson, who worked on the design of Faneuil Hall Marketplace and is now masterminding Cleveland's lakefront development.

O'Brien likes many of the BSA's ideas, though he has all but rejected their controversial proposal for a development rights marketplace. He thinks zoning is a sufficient tool to corral developers.

Harbor activists, environmental regulators: Don't make a move without us. Trudy Coxe, the state environmental secretary, keeps a close eye on development proposals to make sure they comply with Chapter 91, which sharply limits the size of what can be built close to the water. And developers, city officials, and Massport constantly check with Vivien Li, head of the 25-year-old Boston Harbor Association, who might be called the guardian of the waterfront. Li's group has two major issues: making sure there is unfettered public access to the water's edge, and keeping commercial development from encroaching on the ``working port'' functions of the district, such as cargo loading and fishing. Li put a quick halt to the BSA's idea that condos be installed on the Fish Pier, for example.

But Li also applies constant pressure for something distinctive on the waterfront, as does the grass-roots group Seaport Alliance for Neighborhood Design, or SAND. ``It can't just be another International Place,'' Li says. ``You don't take your kid on a weekend to the lobby of International Place. That's not a `new Boston.' That's boring.''

South Boston: We've got veto power. Much of the Seaport District lies closer to downtown Boston than to the South Boston residential community. Nevertheless, the politically potent neighborhood considers the district its own. And South Boston has stopped other development in its tracks, most recently Robert Kraft's proposal for a football stadium for his New England Patriots. The community, represented by state Senator Stephen Lynch, state Representative Jack Hart, and City Council president James M. Kelly, is a force that developers, the city, and Massport must factor into planning. Key issues are traffic, linkage payments for affordable housing, and assurances of development-related jobs for local residents.

What South Boston wants is sometimes at odds with what the city or the architectural community would like. For example, planners see housing as key to creating a 24-hour neighborhood, instead of one that shuts down at 5 p.m. But Kelly doesn't want too many new wealthy residents in the area, driving up housing costs and changing the demographic makeup of the district that now faithfully elects him.

Some of these conflicts are inevitable in the absence of a development Napoleon to direct the building of the new neighborhood. Developers want office buildings and hotels, to maximize per-square-foot revenue; civic activists want something more special by the water. The city and the architects want enough housing to create a neighborhood; South Boston and harbor activists say that just means gentrification.

Historically, such tensions have been resolved through compromise, but the issues have involved individual projects, not such a vast tract of land. That's why planning for the Seaport District, at least so far, has felt more like a series of stalemates than a growing consensus.

Anthony Flint is the Globe's Boston City Hall bureau chief.