On "university encroachment" (from BCNF)

[Eva Webster]

Just FYI — for those who are not in the BC Neighbors Forum.

------ Forwarded Message
From: Eva Webster <evawe...@comcast.net>
Reply-To: "BC_Neighb...@googlegroups.com" <BC_Neighb...@googlegroups.com>
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 23:27:49 -0500
To: "BC_Neighb...@googlegroups.com" <BC_Neighb...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [BC_Neighbors_Forum] Re: Lake Street's first student house ?

On 2/12/09 12:04 PM, "ash...@comcast.net" <ash...@comcast.net> wrote:

> I belive Eva, you are the one who needs the REALITY check.
>
> Residents  some not all have lived in this community most of there lives.
>
> And should not have to put up with the "UNIVERSITY ENCROACHMENT"
>
> Of our quiet neighbood.

And why not?  Just by being settled somewhere for a long time is no guarantee that the world around you won’t change.  That’s REALITY.

Hey, “ashbob” -- you are a guy named Jimmy Sloan and you live in Charlesview in North Allston.  So what “our quiet neighborhood” are you talking about?  (From your message, one would think you live right next to BC.)

In fact, you’re surrounded by Harvard’s property — therefore, of all people, you must know that, by itself, living close to an institution does not result in any more noise than living on a similar street anywhere else in the City (except perhaps during construction).

Charlesview, as I’m sure you know, is a dilapidated eyesore, both on the outside and on the inside.  Harvard wants to move it somewhere else, which gives Charlesview’s residents a chance to one day live in attractive, brand-new, well-designed housing.  So what’s with your complaining about “UNIVERSITY ENCROACHMENT”?  Folks like you (and actually North Allston in general), on balance, stand to benefit from Harvard’s involvement and huge investment in that neighborhood.  

It’s really unreasonable for some people in A-B to only kvetch and bitterly complain about Harvard and BC, and ignore the massive amount of good that those institutions provide, and will additionally bring in the coming years.

“Our quiet neighborhood”, Jimmy, is not an island onto itself  — it’s a part of Boston, and a part of the local and regional economy.  

Harvard & BC provide employment (and are poised to create additional jobs), which then sustains and spurs jobs in other sectors.  All of that generates payroll taxes to the state and the federal government (and need I remind you that state and federal funds subsidize housing for places like Charlesview, and pay for “safety net” benefits of many people in A-B and elsewhere).

No one who lives in A-B would want our neighborhood (or the rest of Boston) to have poor people beg and sleep on the streets and resort to crime in the absence of a social safety net (which is made possible by successful, income generating employers!).

So when some people in A-B gang up on those institutions, and rant and rave about “UNIVERSITY ENCROACHMENT”, it is in a way like biting the hand that feeds them (though they probably don’t make the connection in their minds; they don’t see how growth in one area of the local economy is needed to help other parts of the local economy survive).

Do residents of Allston-Brighton want to live in a city that has jobs and functions well (and therefore sustains our property values and enables a good quality of life) -- or do they want Boston to go to pot (a very likely scenario if the local universities started to contract, or stayed frozen and lost their competitiveness, while other US and foreign schools keep improving)?

Of course, when pressed, all A-B residents would say that they want all the good things that our local institutions bring (actually, the truth is that they take it for granted!) -- but at the same time, a vocal minority likes to demonstrate at every opportunity how pissed-off they are over the universities’ proximity and growth.  That attitude makes no sense.  You can’t eat your cake and have it too.

As a proof of what’s happening with jobs in Boston, see a Globe article (from 2007) predicting that the financial services companies would be shrinking employment in Boston -- a prediction that came true.  (I have pasted that article below in blue, and highlighted in red the most relevant passages, so you can get the gist quickly.)

The financial sector together with colleges & hospitals constitute the indispensable engine of our employment market — for the simple reason that they bring money from other regions of the country and from abroad.  Nearly all other jobs in the City depend on the health and competitiveness of those institutions.

But moving financial sector jobs out of Massachusetts (or even the country) is very easy, and will continue in the years to come.  What does that leave Boston with?  You guessed it: colleges and hospitals.  It is in the interest of every resident of Boston and Massachusetts to enable a robust growth of those institutions.  Our own collective economic survival and quality of life depend on it.

So I’m sick and tired of short-sighted, ill-informed, self-centered people ganging up on BC and Harvard.  Grow up already — so you can see beyond the tip of your nose, and understand the bigger picture -- what’s important both in the near and long term for YOUR City.

If someone truly can’t tolerate “UNIVERSITY ENCROACHMENT” in A-B, there are other areas within and close to Boston where one can live instead.  (Your ancestors moved across the ocean in search of a better life; I don’t see why moving to Watertown or West Roxbury would be a big tragedy.)  

The bottom line is that “university encroachment” does not bring disease, kill people, or take livelihood away from anybody.  In addtion to providing jobs, it is key in keeping up local property values (even on Lake Street).  Mixed uses, including institutional, actually make a neighborhood more vibrant, more interesting -- and if well planned and executed, it is nothing to complain about.

Thank goodness that all our key Elected Officials understand that (and are not quick to cave in to parochial thinking of some of their constituents).  I thank them for that.  

Eva

City's financial services sector at risk, report says
Chamber-backed study blames area's high costs, complicated regulations

By Keith Reed, Globe Staff  |  March 27, 2007

High costs, complicated regulatory and tax structures, and stiff competition for back-office jobs from low-cost areas in the United States and overseas threaten Boston's longtime position as a center of the financial services industry, according to a report to be released today.

For the past century, Boston's cluster of mutual funds, banks, and asset-management firms has attracted investment from around the world and created tens of thousands of jobs at places like Fidelity Investments, Putnam Investments, and the former Bank of Boston. But the report, from the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and Mass Insight Corp., a research and consulting firm, says competitive pressures and a wave of corporate mergers are shrinking the financial services sector, the third-largest in Massachusetts.

Boston could attract as many as 15,000 new finance jobs worth as much as $12 billion to the local economy by 2010, the report said, if local leaders implement seven recommendations spelled out in the document. There are roughly 180,000 finance jobs in Massachusetts, according to the study.

"This is really a turning point for the financial services industry, not just in Boston, but nationwide," said William H. Guenther , Mass Insight's president. "Do we have the opportunity to grow this sector a bit? Yes, but it's not going to grow by the ways it used to."

To preserve the industry, the report said, universities and community colleges need stronger curriculums in quantitative subjects, and a partnership between companies and colleges to develop a "talent pool" of candidates for local jobs should be created.

It also calls for a coordinated system of tax breaks, plus transportation and other infrastructure upgrades, to lure companies and workers to cheaper areas of the state outside Boston. Also recommended: expanding state government's outreach efforts to businesses in the sector.

The report also calls for state and municipal governments to revamp permitting rules to make it easier for companies to expand, and for the state to examine its regulations and taxes.

Mutual funds were invented in Boston and spawned an industry that was centered in the Financial District until a decade ago, when a wave of corporate mergers began to shift business elsewhere. Several large Boston banks, most notably FleetBoston Financial Corp., were acquired.

Beyond that, firms that are still based in Boston have chosen to put jobs elsewhere.

In February, Fidelity Investments said it will spend $200 million to expand its operations in Texas, creating more than 1,500 jobs there. In August, Fidelity struck a deal to spend $100 million in North Carolina to add another 2,000 jobs there. Fidelity also plans to create 1,200 new jobs in Jacksonville, Fla., by 2010. A Fidelity spokeswoman declined to comment, saying the firm had not seen the report. Fidelity has previously said that job growth outside of Massachusetts is part of its 20-year strategy to spread its operations geographically and better serve customers around the world.

The effect of such shifts is evident in employment data. The number of finance jobs statewide is nearly 20,000 more than in 1990. But employment in the sector peaked in 2001, when there were 186,000 finance jobs, according to the Massachusetts Department of Workforce Development.

That number has fallen every year since.

Meeting with reporters yesterday, leaders of the groups that produced the study blamed the financial services decline on a global economy that is shifting in ways that make it difficult for Boston to compete. The rise of a highly educated middle class in more places overseas means new clients for companies in those markets. And labor is still far less costly in many places abroad, while Boston is expensive even by US standards.

"Financial services companies around the world are going to want to locate close to those customers," said Jim Klocke, executive vice president at the Chamber of Commerce. "The high-end functions that used to be located here in Boston can now be located in any number of places."

Executives agreed the industry might face a problem soon as countries become more competitive. James Gallagher, senior vice president at State Street Corp., said his firm has noticed there's a growing middle class in Southeast Asia, where costs are cheaper. At the same time, State Street loses 100 or more young workers in Boston every year.

"We spend a lot of time and money training them, and then that recent student wants to buy a house and finds that they can't" in Boston, he said. "We're not interested in solving that problem by going to North Carolina, but we're going to have to explore some solutions if we're going to get ahead of that."

James Mahoney, director of public policy for Bank of America Corp., said the impact of financial services mergers on Boston has been "overblown." Bank of America bought FleetBoston Financial Corp. in 2004, he noted, but the Charlotte, N.C., company has roughly the same number of local workers as before the merger and now bases three of its biggest business units in Boston. "If the CEO is in town, it's a little easier to deal with the company.  But if a major business line is still there, the sense that losing the corporate headquarters hurts would be diminished," Mahoney said.

Keith Reed can be reached at re...@globe.com.

(Correction: Because of a reporting error, a story in yesterday's Business section about Boston's financial services industry incorrectly identified James Gallagher as senior vice president at State Street Corp. Gallagher works for John Hancock Financial Services.)
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.




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[trenchesf...@riseup.net]

Two rumors I've recently heard, anyone know if these are true or not?

1. Harvard recently bought the old Dewalt Factory Store on the corner of
Leo Birmingham and Western?

2. BU has plans to expand more toward Packard's Corner, that may include
converting the Super 88 into a Gap?

again, until I hear otherwise I'm regarding these as rumors, so please let
me know if you have solid information.
-Jake Carman

[Matthew Stanley]

The super 88 as a gap, that would be a big loss, that is one proposal that should be denied.  How many people benefit from various eaterys?  Students and residents alike I would imagine...that would be bizzare lets hope its not true... --- On Sat, 2/14/09, trenchesf...@riseup.net <trenchesf...@riseup.net> wrote: