Cheering for goals is fine. Our real obligation is to cheer when students walk across a stage, diploma in hand, prepared to meet the future.
Rodney Singleton
Editors of the Boston Globe:
Niki Griswold’s article quotes Mayor Wu cheering that she hopes to watch Camila Restrepo play at White Stadium six years from now. I hope Camila becomes a great player too. But that aspiration rings hollow when her school, the O’Bryant, is crumbling — and the city’s answer has been to talk about moving the school rather than fixing it.
When the White Stadium project was first proposed, it was described as a $30 million renovation. Two and a half years later, with the stadium gutted to the studs, the price tag has ballooned to $325 million. At the same time, Boston Public Schools faces a severe budget crisis: teachers laid off, schools closed, and a massive backlog of aging, unsafe buildings. Yet roughly one out of every three dollars in this year’s BPS capital budget is slated for White Stadium — now a professional soccer venue built to broadcast standards.
BPS does not need an 11,000-seat stadium in the middle of a park, with no parking, limited transit access, and unresolved transportation plans. Student-athletes have already been displaced for months, and football teams won’t even be allowed to play in the new stadium.
We’ve been here before. Busing was about equal protection because schools in Black neighborhoods were underfunded. Today, Boston is again asking Black communities to accept deteriorating schools to subsidize private development.
Cheering for goals is fine. Our real obligation is to cheer when students walk across a stage, diploma in hand, prepared to meet the future.
— Rodney Singleton,
Roxbury
Boston Technical High (class of 1979)Mayor Wu says White Stadium overhaul’s cost to taxpayers rising to $135 million
The public share of the cost has nearly tripled from a $50 million estimate two years ago.
Mayor Michelle Wu shared a progress update on the White Stadium renovation project inside the Clubhouse at William J. Devine Golf Course on Feb. 6.David L. Ryan/ Globe StaffThe cost of building a new sports stadium in Franklin Park has nearly tripled for Boston taxpayers in just two years, to $135 million, a figure that Mayor Michelle Wu promised Friday would be the absolute maximum for the city’s share of the ambitious and controversial project.
The overhaul of White Stadium is now projected to total more than $325 million, with about $190 million of that coming from the new professional women’s soccer team, Boston Legacy FC, that will share the facility with the city’s school sports teams.
That’s significantly higher than just a year ago, when the total package was projected to be around $200 million, and consequently, the city’s share of that has grown as well: from $50 million to $91 million within 2024 alone, to the now current $135 million.
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At an event Friday Wu attributed the cost increases to inflation, tariffs, and expensive design changes based on feedback from neighbors and other members of the park community.
“The primary driver of why this project got more expensive is because we heard from community members that there were all of these dreams and hopes and goals, and we decided to make the project better and therefore more expensive in response to that,” Wu said.
Those additional items, Wu said, include a kitchen in a community room, and dedicated storage space for the school sports teams. The city has also made some more costly design choices, opting to put in a grass field rather than less-expensive artificial turf, for example.
But, the mayor added, Boston’s contracts with construction companies include maximum costs provisions, so the exposure for taxpayers will not go beyond $135 million.
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“This is the final budget,” Wu said, adding the White Stadium project followed the city’s usual process that evolves from a placeholder figure that is little more than an estimate into a hard number based on design changes and bids from contractors.
“There is a guaranteed maximum price contract that is required when bidders submit their bid, and so that $135 [million] is locked by a contract,” Wu said.
But the project’s critics, who have proposed a less expensive design that would be fully paid for with public funds, say they are still not on board. The White Stadium project has been challenged in court by the environmental nonprofit the Emerald Necklace Conservancy and more than 20 residents, who argue the city’s plans amount to privatization of public land and could violate environmental protections. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court agreed in December to take up the case after a lower court sided with the city.
“Luckily, no foundation has been poured, no steel has been framed, and no walls have been built,” said Louis Elisa, a Dorchester resident and member of the Franklin Park Defenders, one of the groups that has sued to stop the project. “There is still plenty of time for the city to reconsider this fatally flawed project, and instead build a much more affordable, fully public high school stadium that meets the needs of BPS students and their families — not those of professional athletes and their investors.”
Wu has touted the project as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to give Boston Public Schools students and residents access to a world-class facility, while splitting the cost of the upgrade with a private entity that will bring a professional women’s sports team inside the city.
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She argued Friday that the higher cost is worth it for BPS students.
“Our Boston kids deserve nothing less than the best,” Wu said. “This creates the chance for the facilities to match their talent and their potential.”
The project became a flash point in Wu’s reelection campaign last year when opponent Josh Kraft unearthed what he said was an internal projection showing the city might spend as much as $170 million on the project. Wu dismissed that assertion as not ”grounded in reality,” saying it was produced as a “worst case” scenario.
Demolition of the old stadium began in early 2025, when workers removed the entirety of the original structure, with the exception of the facade of the west grandstand.
A view of White Stadium in reconstruction mode on Feb. 6.David L. Ryan/ Globe StaffThe construction site was abuzz with activity midday Friday under a light dusting of snow. Yellow excavators and bucket loaders deposited dirt into dump trucks while construction workers in hard hats and fluorescent vests criss-crossed the property. Work on the foundation and utility services is underway, and construction on the new stadium itself is scheduled for the end of March, according to the city.
Should the Massachusetts high court block or disrupt the construction plans, Wu said the city has contingencies in the lease agreement. If the team backed out for any reason, for example, it would owe Boston tens of millions of dollars, which the city could use to finish the facility for students only.
The stadium deal does have backing from many members of the community, including some school athletes. Camila Restrepo, a junior and varsity soccer player at the John D. O’Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, took advantage of Wu’s press conference Friday to demonstrate her skills, juggling the soccer ball with her feet some 50 times before addressing the room.
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Boston’s investment in women’s sports and high school athletics “shows students like me that our dreams are worth supporting,” Restrepo said.
Restrepo’s dream is to one day play for Boston Legacy FC — “so Miss Jennifer, please keep me in mind,” she told the team’s co-owner Jennifer Epstein, as the room erupted into laughter.
A beaming Wu tallied how long it might be before Restrepo could join the team.
“Six years from now, we’re going to be cheering Camila on at White Stadium,” Wu said, “and everyone better be there!”