"A new age for an old town" by Casey Ross, Globe Staff March 01, 2015
There have been three great ages of development in modern Boston. The first began after the Back Bay was filled in the late 19th century, a radical change that triggered a historic construction boom. The second came in the 1960s and ’70s, when a “high spine” of office towers — stretching from the financial district to the Pru — began to rise over an old town.
The third is now.
Its businesses and population on the rise, Boston is in the midst of a building spree whose enormity, pace, and geographic sweep are redefining the skyline faster than any period since the early Industrial Age.
Then why is this state nearly $2 billion in the hole?
On every horizon, cranes and steel skeletons frame a city bursting with development. New skyscrapers are rising in Downtown Crossing and the Back Bay, and gritty corners long abandoned by developers are blossoming into gleaming new neighborhoods.
By the end of last year, 14.6 million square feet of new buildings were rising in Boston, the equivalent of more than eight John Hancock Towers, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority. That is a new high-water mark for a city whose prior booms — each driven by innovation and rapid business growth — created fundamental change in its layout, attractions, and architecture.
Speaking of which, after all these years of rising seas why aren't some places under water already?
Could it be we were lied to yet again by authority, officialdom, and the ma$$ media?
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Today’s boom is more residential and more about the appeal of living in a bustling metropolis — the city’s explosive growth is drawing worldwide attention, and money from all over as well. International investors are sinking billions of dollars into Boston real estate developments. Banks and real estate funds from Europe, Asia, and South America are buying trophy office towers and funding construction of luxury hotels and condominiums.
Yes, it is a rich man's paper.
Many neighborhoods are barely recognizable from just a few years ago.
So is the po$ paper because they keep getting worse and worse and worse.
Boylston Street in the Fenway, once dominated by fast-food joints and gas stations, is lined with luxury apartment buildings and new restaurants, and the tallest of them, a new tower planned for the triangular tip between Boylston and Brookline Avenue, is soon to break ground. The Seaport District is one of the fastest-growing neighborhoods in the country. And long-struggling places like Dudley Square and the East Boston waterfront are on the cusp of major transformations.
Isn't Bo$ton $omething like fourth on the inequality disparity list?
Boston has had periods of heavy building activity in the recent past, most notably in the late ’60s and early ‘70s, and in the late 1980s. But none of those booms rival the current one in terms of construction volume, according to an analysis by the real estate firm Transwestern RBJ, which examined real estate records back to the 1700s at the Globe’s request.
Only the urban-renewal transformation of the 1960s and ’70s came close to the current boom in terms of the impact on Boston’s skyline and neighborhoods. That era brought construction of Government Center, with City Hall as its provocative new centerpiece. It also kicked off the development of Prudential Center, including its signature skyscraper, which replaced vast rail yards that separated the South End and Back Bay....
“It’s absolutely extraordinary,” said Bob Richards, a partner at Transwestern RBJ. “What’s driving it is the top-tier labor talent in industries like technology and life sciences. The young people who work for those companies want to live in an urban environment.”
Not coincidentally, the city’s population is rising more rapidly than it has in decades. The rapid increase is fueling an unprecedented amount of housing construction and promises to bring new levels of luxury to the city....
It's a
Mayor Martin J. Walsh has vowed to combat the ever-rising cost of housing by building more moderately priced complexes, a promise with echoes from other eras of rapid development and rising prices.
Pffft!
In 1921, as rents skyrocketed in the strengthening economy, mayoral candidate James Michael Curley threatened to undermine “rent hogs” by borrowing $15 million to flood the market with lower-cost housing.
“I will build homes for workingmen, letting them pay for them by the month and at such a reasonable figure as to force these greedy landlords to come down in their prices,” Curley said in a campaign speech covered by the Globe.
That was then.
Walsh is taking a similar, if less strident, approach. He said he has identified 250 properties across the city for development of middle-income housing, and he is also proposing state legislation to create tax incentives for such projects.
Yeah, he's feeding their greed, but you know.... don't let that $poil the narrative.
Meanwhile, he has also repeatedly acknowledged the economic and physical improvements brought by luxury projects....
He's supposed to be some sort of Democrat and Labor mayor -- and there he is sucking corporate cock.
Today’s revival is raising the city’s profile on an international stage. The surge of foreign investment in commercial properties put Boston sixth in the world in the amount of money it attracted from foreign sources, behind only London, New York, Tokyo, Paris, and Los Angeles, according to Jones Lang LaSalle Inc., a real estate services firm....
Is it just me, or was there no reference to the record homelessness in Bo$ton?
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Yeah, why would anyone ever want to leave?
And look what they put on top:
"Cellular tracking device sparks privacy concerns" by Ellen NakashimaWashington Post March 01, 2015
TALLAHASSEE — The case against Tadrae McKenzie looked like an easy win for prosecutors. He and two buddies robbed a small-time marijuana dealer of $130 worth of pot using a BB gun. Under Florida law, that was robbery with a deadly weapon, with a sentence of at least four years in prison.
But before trial, his defense team found investigators had used a secret surveillance tool, one that raises significant privacy concerns. In an unprecedented move, a state judge ordered the police to show the device — a cell-tower simulator sometimes called a StingRay — to McKenzie’s attorneys.
Rather than show the equipment, the state offered the defendant a plea bargain.
McKenzie, 20, is now serving six months’ probation after pleading guilty to a second-degree misdemeanor. He got, as one civil liberties advocate said, the deal of the century.
His case is emblematic of the growing, but hidden, use of a sophisticated surveillance technology borrowed from the national security world for use by local law enforcement.
Say again?
It shows how a gag order imposed by the FBI — on the grounds that discussing the device’s operation would compromise its effectiveness — has left judges, the public, and criminal defendants in the dark on how the tool works.
That secrecy in turn has hindered debate over whether the StingRay’s use respects Americans’ civil liberties.
The StingRay is a box about the size of a small suitcase — there’s also a hand-held version — that simulates a cellphone tower. It elicits signals from all mobile phones in its vicinity. That means it collects information about the communications of potentially hundreds of law-abiding citizens as well as of any suspected criminals.
The Tallahassee Police Department used the StingRay or a similar device in 250 investigations from mid-2007 through early last year, according to records provided to the American Civil Liberties Union.
That’s 40 or so instances a year in a city of 290,000, a surprisingly high rate given that the StingRay’s manufacturer, Harris Corp., has told the Federal Communications Commission that the device is used only in emergencies. At least 48 state and local law enforcement agencies in 20 states and the District of Columbia have the devices, the ACLU says.
The secrecy surrounding the device’s use has begun to prompt a backlash in cities across the country, including Charlotte, N.C, and Baltimore.
In Tacoma, after a local newspaper investigation found judges in almost 200 cases had no idea they were issuing orders for the StingRay’s use, the court set new disclosure rules for law enforcement officials.
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Backlash didn't last long because I've seen nothing in the Globe since!
Think I will leave the phone at home today.
I won't be hanging up the blog for today, though. I do intend to post this afternoon.
NDUs:
Unbridled cellphone spying goes too far
From a guy who helped set up the whole $y$tem.
"Taxes singe smaller players in hot Back Bay market" by Shirley Leung, Globe Staff March 04, 2015
No business budgets for these kinds of hikes. Taxes go up. They get that. They even expect that. But this much? The business owners wonder if something can be done to absorb the shock.
Instead of compassion, this is the message from the city: Fend for yourselves. You can afford it.
But here’s the dirty little secret about the Back Bay: Yes, you’ll find the hoity-toity shopping at Gucci, Burberry, Tiffany & Co., and other fancy shops, but nearly 65 percent of businesses in the neighborhood are small and independent.
The hair salons, restaurants, bridal shops, tailors, art galleries, yoga studios, and boutiques sandwiched between high-end specialty stores and chains make Newbury and Boylston streets special. Imagine the frustration of these mom and pops: Investors from around the world scoop up buildings that drive up real estate values, their landlords get richer (even if on paper), but the tenants are stuck holding the bag — or in this case the bigger tax bill.
“There is a lot of cheap money floating around. [Investors] are buying buildings at insane valuations,” said Chris Jamison, owner and managing partner of the Mexican restaurant Lolita. “I’m now the one paying all the taxes and seeing the downside of the valuation.”
It's not making its way to me.
“It is a game-changer,” said Meg Mainzer-Cohen, president of the Back Bay Association, which represents neighborhood businesses and has been inundated with calls about the new assessments.
Some landlords are complaining too because they don’t want to raise rents to the point where they lose longtime tenants. Still, “I know the city is changing, and we’re getting a lot of high rises,” said Michelle Merrill, the Quincy woman living her dream of owning a Newbury Street hair salon, but “there has to be a happy medium.”
Doe$ there?
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Related:
"High-end hotel chain Mandarin Oriental is the latest company to reveal that its credit card systems were hacked. The company said Thursday that its hotels in the US and Europe were affected, but did not specify which ones. Mandarin Oriental operates about 30 hotels in cities across the world including Back Bay in Boston, Paris, London, Geneva, New York, Miami, San Francisco, and Las Vegas as well as Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Macau. The company said it removed the bad software from its systems. Its investigation is continuing. It did not give details on the extent of the hack or if customers’ data were exposed. Several companies have been the target of cyberattacks in the last year, including retailer Home Depot and bank JPMorgan Chase. Mandarin Oriental is a unit of conglomerate Jardine Matheson Group. The hotel group is operated from Hong Kong."
Turns out it is the United States government and the Jewish mafia of Eastern Europe that are responsible for most of the hacking. Won't read that in my jew$paper though.
