The panic over the Millennium project is not really about a too-big building.  It's about power.

Two years ago, the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority thought itself in the catbird's seat.  Legislation passed in the early 1960s exempted the MTA from local zoning rules along the entire Boston stretch of the Turnpike.  If you wanted to build, you only had to deal with the Pike. No pesky zoning boards, no annoying community groups, no whining politicians.  Moreover, the MTA, despite being a governmental body, was one of those odd, quasi-independent agencies that was immune from the rules — such as competitive bidding — that bedevil most of government.

Most proposed developments are subject to a complex system of checks and balances that, more often than not, weed out the good from the bad and make the outrageous into the acceptable.  When the MTA first floated the Millennium project two years ago, it was not the project per se that was so scary, it was that no one, except the MTA, would have anything to say about it.

Two years later, that's all changed.  During the last several months the Boston Redevelopment Authority has been taking an increasingly aggressive posture vis a vis the Turnpike Authority.  The BRA now claims that any development over the Pike, including, of course, the proposed Millennium development, will be subject to the same processes that other large-scale city developments face.

What that means is that the MTA will have to follow what is called an "Article 80" review.  That review, which will take months if not years, requires a series of submissions to the BRA that provide detail and justification for a project on a host of grounds (such as environment, shadow, traffic, density, architecture — virtually everything imaginable).  At the end of the process, the BRA can do one of three things.  It can certify the project, meaning it can allow the proposal to go forward.  It can certify with conditions, meaning that specific changes must be made before the project can be built.  Finally, it can deny the project.

The BRA's position is that, for all intents and purposes, its decision to certify or not is final.  If the BRA doesn't certify the Millennium project, then it won't get built.  Period.

Why the change?

Two years ago, the state legislature passed legislation requiring the MTA and the city to enter into a Memorandum of Understanding about air-rights development.  Until the MOU was signed, the Turnpike was prohibited from moving forward with any development.

The MOU was signed, in the spring of 1997.  Many, myself included, criticized the MOU as weak.  It created a citizens advisory committee process, for example, that gave the MTA the power to pick nearly half the citizens sitting on the committee — an odd thing to give a developer.  It also subjected the MTA to an Article 80-like process, but then it undermined that process by setting up an arbitration process for the city and the MTA if some proposed project was not certified.

The BRA argues today, however, that the arbitration process can only be used in the rarest of circumstances — only if it has acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner.  It's not clear the Turnpike agrees with this reading, but the city is holding firm — and I think it's right.

So is it better to have the BRA instead of the MTA running the show?  Absolutely.  The BRA is by no means infallible.  But its agenda differs from that of the MTA.  The MTA is acting like a profit-driven private developer, pushing for a bigger and denser project that maximizes returns to the Authority's bondholders.  The BRA is more like a disinterested public agency.  It wants economic growth, certainly.  But it also is committed to preserving and enhancing the Boston that's currently in place.  It's obvious to me that the Millennium project doesn't do that.  I suspect it will become obvious to the BRA as well.