It’s been a few months since we’ve checked in on Boston’s plan to spend $100 million to rebuild White Stadium for NWSL club Boston Legacy F.C., how’s that going?
The city of Boston’s project to overhaul Franklin Park’s White Stadium will cost taxpayers $135 million, up from a previous $90 million estimate — an increase Boston Mayor Michelle Wu has attributed to inflation and the rising costs of materials and labor….
She also said that Boston Legacy FC, the new professional women’s soccer team that is partnering with the city to pay for the project and will share the space with student athletes, will put in more than $190 million for its portion of the redevelopment.
That puts the total cost of the project at more than $325 million — an eye-popping increase from the $200 million total the project was thought to cost last year.
Awesome. Wu’s criticism of New England Patriots heir Josh Kraft, who back when he was running for mayor last year claimed the stadium would end up costing the city $170 million, as not “grounded in reality” does not look so great about now — politicians of the world, you should have learned always to take the over on stadium cost predictions.
Wu didn’t only blame inflation for the rising price tag: She also said the “primary driver” was “we heard from community members that there were all of these dreams and hopes and goals and we decided to make the project better, and therefore more expensive, in response to that.” You little people with your big dreams for things like public water fountains, we did this for you! For you, I say!
Spending $135 million in public money toward a $325 million stadium could be worse — it could be $325 million toward a $325 million stadium — but it’s still pretty bad: The expansion fee for the women’s soccer team was only $53 million, meaning the city is now spending 155% more on a stadium than the franchise itself is worth. Boston will also get a snazzier place for high school soccer teams to play, sure, but the city could have skipped such Legacy-demanded expenses as a beer garden and just rehabbed the stadium for school sports for an estimated $20 million, so, yeah, not great. There’s still a lawsuit ongoing against the project, but given that vertical construction of the stadium structure is set to start next month, it’s going to take a ruling really soon to keep taxpayers from being on the hook for the full cost, whether that’s $135 million or wherever the bouncing price tag eventually lands.
Let’s be clear about what’s happening at White Stadium, because the framing coming from City Hall is dishonest.
The Emerald Necklace Conservancy put forward a plan that would have preserved White Stadium as a true public asset for Boston Public School students and the surrounding community for under $80 million. That option existed. What residents are witnessing now—a public price tag ballooning to $135 million and a total project cost exceeding $325 million—is not the result of community “dreams and hopes.”
Mayor Wu’s claim that community input was the “primary driver” of these cost overruns is absurd and insulting. Residents did not ask for a professional sports complex layered with private amenities. They did not ask for a beer garden, large-scale commercial infrastructure, or a development model that prioritizes a private franchise over public use.
What the community did ask for was transparency, safety, and respect—especially for the Black and brown neighborhoods that will bear the brunt of increased traffic, over-policing, displacement pressure, and the erosion of generational wealth. Those concerns were ignored. The plan was not meaningfully adjusted to protect the people who live here.
This project was sold as being “for the community,” but the numbers now tell the truth. Boston taxpayers are being asked to spend far more on a stadium than the franchise itself is worth, while a far more modest rehabilitation for school sports—estimated at roughly $20 million—was never seriously pursued.
Blaming residents for the exploding costs is a convenient cover for a project that was fundamentally flawed from the start and was never designed with the surrounding community as its priority. The community didn’t break this plan. The plan was broken.
Thank you for the information. I wish I could say I am surprised that the development went this way. I am not at all surprised, frankly.
In order to know whether the city is getting anything reasonable for it’s money, we would have to know how the public funding is being spent.
“The city” or “the schools” do not need and do not benefit from any of the amenities that the private for profit FC will build and use.
There is a case to be made that some of the training facilities could benefit the ‘public’, but we don’t know whether most of those will be fully available to the schools and other organizations seeking to use them.
Overall, it seems to me that for $100-130m, the city could have built it’s own necessary improvements (infrastructure), built any number of training centres, strength and conditioning centres, basketball and tennis facilities and sundry other items.
Is this anything more than a case of the city jumping in and now refusing to jump out regardless how much additional money “must” be spent?
At $30-50m it might be reasonable for the city to partner with a professional franchise to revamp the entire park area. It just doesn’t seem like they are getting anything like a good deal at $135m or whatever the final number will be. And how is the full cost of the development being determined? $325m seems like a lot for a small school/NWSL facility, even with the ‘additions’.
By comparison, the proposed new Revs stadium in Everett (?) has an estimated full development cost of about $400m including the commercial side but not including decontamination ($80m) or the $20m “public park”.
apologies… sentence two should have read “many of”, not “any of” the amenities.
Since this is Boston, one can never ignore the role of race in public policy. Franklin Park, and the White Stadium where Mayor Michelle Wu’s city government wishes to place its professional soccer and entertainment venue, began to suffer neglect once white flight started 70+ years ago. Meanwhile, the public schools have been left to decay.
So now the City wants to site a facility no community would tolerate, in the Black community, knowing full well this will stimulate real estate speculation and drive out the remaining working class Black residents. Evidently, they have no place in the envisioned new, tech-friendly Boston.
The money for the Stadium comes out of the capital budget for the underfunded public schools. And just to make its intentions clear to all, the Wu administration installed the fencing that bars the community from using the parkland surrounding the construction site on ML King weekend of 2025.
Sadly, “The Progressive Mayor”, Michelle Wu, is just continuing Boston’s long sordid history of racist public policy.
I can answer John Bladen’s question about public use of the soccer team’s amenities. The team is building out the west grandstand, which is where their training facilities, locker rooms, etc. will be located. All of these facilities will remain locked and are for team use only. Only the seats, bathrooms, and hallways to get to them will be available for public use. On nights when the soccer team plays, the public will be able to access the “Grove,” where they will be welcome to pay for the food, drinks, and swag on offer there. There is no community benefit to this. As for the Mayor’s claim to the “biggest contribution in the history of the city” (and who does that remind you of…), once you take out the $190 million in construction costs for the team’s west grandstand and Grove, what’s left won’t even cover the city’s bond debt expense on the $135 million (and counting) that Boston taxpayers are being soaked for.