Maturity becomes Fenway activists
Thomas M. Keane Jr.
Thirty years ago, members of the Fenway Community
Development Corp. were chaining themselves to buildings, suing in court,
attacking developers and battling against the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
Last month, Fenway CDC members stood side by side with many
of those old enemies, christening a newly built assisted-living center. The
mayor, the head of the BRA and other members of the city's establishment heaped
praise on the CDC. The once radical outsiders had now become mainstream.
The ideals of youth giving way to the
compromises of maturity?
The better argument is that the CDC has figured out the
system, in the process making itself far more
effective than it was in its older days.
Thirty years ago,
Out of that, the CDC was born. It aimed to organize the
area's residents. The enemies were everywhere: bureaucrats who believed the
cities of old were doomed; developers looking to make a quick buck; arsonists
trying to accomplish by fire what the courts refused to allow;
institutions that saw the Fenway as a good place for expansion.
That was then.
"Today," says CDC Executive Director Carl
Koechlin, "The neighborhood is in less desperate shape. We can accomplish
things rather than just oppose."
That's involved some growing up. Koechlin points to the
organization's once hard-fought battles with universities and health care
institutions. "At some point in the early 1990s, we went through a
maturing process. Rather than fight, we tried to figure out how we could exist,
how we could accommodate each other."
The same thing happened with the CDC's relationships with
other major players. It entered into a detente with the BRA to target
residential buildings that it could buy and save for affordable housing. It
began to work with developers such as the Abbey Group, owner of an abandoned
Sears, to figure out how new projects could benefit the community. (The result
- the
And, most recently, the CDC has
been pushing for a redevelopment of
None of this has come without controversy, however. Home to
33,000 - most of them young and looking to make their mark on the world - the
Fenway is an exceptionally fractious community. Some new groups, such as the
Fenway Action Coalition, have arisen in response to a perception that the CDC
has become too conservative. But the longest running
battle has been with a residents' group, the Fenway Civic Association.
In part, that's because the two have differing visions: The
CDC allied itself with newcomers and aggrieved tenants, the Fenway Civic
Association with longer-term residents and owners.
It also has to do with the CDC's finances. For a community
organization, the CDC is well heeled. Its budget of close to $1 million
supports 19 staffers (many of whom do not live in the Fenway) and a
well-equipped office. That money comes in large part from real estate
developments. That can create problems. One project on
Cases like that are what cause one Fenway Civic Association
member to brand the CDC a pretend civic group. Still, the CDC has built
housing, saved buildings and aided less well-off
residents. Koechlin modestly concedes that his organization is just "one
of the voices in the Fenway." And the bottom line
is this: 30 years after the CDC's founding, a once imperiled neighborhood
thrives.
Talk back to Tom Keane at