Webster St. Redux.
By Jim Conley • Jul 16th, 2007 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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Ah, the good old days. Back in 1998, the Brookline Board of Selectmen were trying to gin up public support for their hotel project on Webster St. (where the Marriott nows stands). There were lots of problems in using this site and in November of that year, the Town’s Development Director Amy Schectman tackled these concerns in a memo to the Board titled “What about Centre Street?”
I’ve had a copy of this memo for some time and you can click here to view a copy.
The reason I have held onto the memo for all this time is because it struck me as an egregious breach of the public trust for taxpayers to fund a town official’s public relations campaign on behalf of a for-profit enterprise. (Profit indeed. The developers who built the hotel made nearly $20 million on its sale).
The memo is a revealing glimpse into Brookline Town Government and the haughty disregard with which Brookline Town Hall views residents.
More, it also shows that the Farmer’s Market operating out of the site where the hotel was to be built was in the way. In fact, Arlene Flowers the market’s director is characterized by Schectman as “dead set against” the proposed hotel and the memo accuses Flowers of circulating a petition to keep the market open (at the Webster St. location).
Then Schectman writes that the hotel at Webster Street “does not preclude a development at Centre Street at a later time and when market conditions change and justify larger development.”
There’s no place left in Coolidge Corner to put the farmers. And wouldn’t it be convenient to the Town Hall team if the farmers were out of the way once those market conditions change.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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If the Town could claim executive privilege, it could be just like the Bush administration. In particular, I enjoyed the “usual suspects” exhibit titled: “Known Positions on Hotel.” No, it’s not about hotel sex. When 240 TMMs and members of various Town agencies and other supposed “insiders” search this exhibit and not find their names listed, they will be furious!
It should be fun going through this Memo with a fine tooth comb, identifying all the power people in Brookline (and by deduction all the powerless people in Brookline). I assume the members of EDAB reviewed and approved this Memo before Amy sent it off to the BOS. Thus, even though Amy is gone from the Town payroll, we can point fingers at EDAB members.