Monday’s Boston Globe featured a detailed business piece regarding the future of the Everett waterfront in the area of lower Broadway.
The Globe reporter pointed out what we have known for quite some time, and that is, this area of Broadway can be transformed and very well might be transformed but the road to that place is filled with obstacles.
The first impediment to change is a company called Constellation, now trying to have the property it owns sold by March.
We reported this two months ago.
Constellation is trying to sell the area of the waterfront now crowded with brick smoke stacks that reach for the sky, and a generating plant, also of brick and cement which hold the last two working electric generators fired by oil in Greater Boston.
The brick generating plant is probably 5 million bricks and generators that stand four or five stories high and weigh tons and tons.
If billionaire businessman and Patriots owner Bob Kraft wants to build a soccer stadium on this 45 acre site, then he will have to outbid another energy company presently negotiating with Constellation for the sprawling property.
Constellation knows what it is doing but has little to no real interest in who the property is sold to, except, we presume, the highest bidder.
Then there’s the Coast Guard and the waterways officials all agreeing that the sale for something new can’t come to pass because the property is fronted on a major harbor waterway and waterways are protected from changing from anything other than what they are today.
The Globe piece reiterated what we had to say months back…Kraft could build a bold, beautiful soccer stadium on the site if allowed, if he is the purchaser. Remediating the site would be a giant effort. One hundred years of contamination will cost many millions to clean up and to cart away.
The city is all for a soccer stadium as it should be.
The reality of a lower Broadway featuring major league entertainment anchored by the casino and its hotel, and the planned for auditorium across the street, would be quite the development worth untold millions in taxes to the city and changing forever the picture of the city held by the outside world as a place for smokestacks and antiquated, polluting electric generators.
Whatever happens, it begins with the sale of the Constellation land.
If I were the mayor, I’d hire a major league lawyer to guide Constellation to sell the property to Kraft.
The city needs an insider for this deal to be carried off to the city’s advantage.
Much is at risk concerning the sale of the Constellation property.
It is, in fact, the future that is at risk.
The Globe pointed this out Monday with a business story. We agree.