Chumps in Charge.
By Jim Conley • Sep 19th, 2007 • Email This Post to a Friend •
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I’m having a hard time getting my head around the ground lease deal Town Counsel Jennifer Dopazo has negotiated with Children’s Hospital. She apparently believes that dangling half million dollar incentives (to construct) in front of the Hospital is going to result in a “building of some magnitude”, a building that will ensure taxable revenue in perpetuity.
Hey, guess who wins in the deal? Local developer Roger Cassin. The Town buys his property and Children’s is going to clean up the site.
Ain’t free enterprise great?
Update: Here’s more detail. The big idea with Children’s is to have them agree that if they don’t pursue a special permit to build, they’ll pay $500 thousand to the Town. If they don’t build (say they raze and let the lot sit empty), they’ll pay $500 thousand in addition to rent.
What I don’t understand is why the Town needs to be a party to all this. The land is not currently owned by the Town and an office building (with a research lab sprinkled in perhaps) doesn’t even come close to the forecast of tax revenue made with the initial biolab proposal.
What does it make you when $1 million in “rent” is promised so that you might upzone a parcel of land (as Brookline Town Meeting did) and then a non-profit constructs an office building at the site?
And I also have to wonder what’s gotten into Children’s that they’re willing to pay taxes to Brookline when they could be using that money to, you know, pay doctors and nurses.
Just weird.
Update (2): Here’s the TAB story on the deal.
Jim Conley is publisher of On Brookline.
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Sending Dopazo out to negotiate with Roger Cassin and Children’s Hospital is like sending Eric Gagne out to pitch against the Yankees (or the Blue Jays, or the Orioles, or the Devil Rays). Or is it more like sending out Lefty Williams — I don’t know. It just seems like Brookline keeps losing in these match-ups.
Remember that “special” town meeting when the “friendly” real estate developer was granted his zoning variances? Shouldn’t at least some town meeting members apologize for being duped?
Will the Webster $treet hotel ground lease serve as the model for Children’s extension from the Longwood Medical Area AND for how long will Children’s swallow the charade of the Town thwarting the Commonwealth’s policies regarding property tax exemption for charitable non-profits and/or Chapter 40A’s Dover Amendment for non-profit educational uses? At least with the hotel, the Town had long owned the site and used it for public parking. Here the Town is acquiring the site to assure revenues despite the state’s tax exemption and Dover Amendment policies. First spot zoning; then form over substance. And all with the cooperation of the BOS and Town Meeting. Brookline has thumbed its nose at these state policies. Very cute, but Children’s will surely come to its senses to reclaim these taxes disguised as rent and use them for its mission to help children.