October 05, 2005
Old subsidies never die
Now that the Boston Red Sox have finally decided to stay put in Fenway Park, developers are kick-starting plans to build up the surrounding Fenway neighborhood, which has been stuck in limbo ever since the team began talks of knocking down a large portion of it for a new stadium back in 1999. And speaking of limbo, the state of Massachusetts has never repealed the $100 million in state "infrastructure" money it approved for that Sox stadium plan five years ago - and now it looks like the next wave of developers could look to tap that money to help their projects. ''I think it is potentially available," Boston Redevelopment Authority director Mark Maloney told the Boston Globe. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing - if the redevelopment project is a good one, fixing up roads is appropriately the city's job - but "Hey, we've got the money sitting there, we might as well use it" isn't exactly the best method of city planning.
