The opponents of the public public plan of Boston to rehabilitate the White Stadium for a new professional football team say they are taking a vote of the dead city in a call to stop the project as a “victory”, given how “stack” that is the body in the body in the favor of the mayor.
Approximately three dozen residents gathered at the 75 -year stadium in Franklin Park on Thursday morning to protest against the ongoing demolition and the work of eliminating trees that took place behind them, and criticized the WU administration and The councilors who voted against a resolution who was looking for pauses to start last week.
“Yesterday’s 6-6 draw was actually a great victory,” said Derrick Evans, who lives in Roxbury. “The large, expensive and accelerated dream project of Mayor Wu, with unanimous support, now you can not even win a simple majority in its matternly stacked municipal council.”
“The White Stadium, their children, their neighbors and Boston in general,” Evans added, “deserves deeper considerations and concerns, and a much better treatment than the heavy and hurried hand of a hurried, ambitious, derogatory and self -controlling hand .. .
Evans is part of a group of 20 neighbors who joined the Emerald Conservancy necklace to file a lawsuit against the city and Bostony Soccer Partners last year, with the aim of stopping their public-private plan. The plaintiffs claim that the project would illegally privatize public control lands.
The WU administration denies the privatization claim. Mayor Michelle Wu and her deputies have argued that Boston’s city and public schools will bring the ownership of the stadium through a lease that will make the new professional team pay the rent and use of the use of the installation with students BPS athletes.
However, the opponents argue that, such as the calendar of the National Women’s Soccer League generally lasts from March to November, BPS football teams would be displaced from the White Stadium during much of its seasons.
The plaintiffs announced this week that they filed an extended legal complaint in the Superior Court of Suffolk. The case is scheduled to go to the trial on March 18.
“We fundamentally believe that this is a public park,” said Karen Mauney-Brodek, president of the Emerald Collar conservation, in the protest of the day. “The case is in the future, and we believe there is a path to follow. We can do it for much less. We want to make sure it remains public. “
The new Boston professional football team is owned by a group of women that includes the Boston Globe CEO, Linda Pizzuti Henry, as an investor, and is ready to take the launch in March 2026.
The plaintiffs and neighbors who oppose the project favor renewal, but in a way that would preserve the stadium as a secondary school.
The Emerald Conservancy necklace published a report earlier this month that says that the reduced alternative would cost around $ 29 million: “a fraction” of the “approximately $ 100 million” that the city now estimates that its half of the project will cost.
The initial tab of the city taxpayers of $ 50 million has doubled in recent weeks, and the opponents of the project now of more than $ 200 million argue that they were excluded from the process.
“This was a total internal work,” said Allan Ihrer, who lives in Jamaica Plain. “No other plans were observed other than the option of the Professional Stadium.”
Mayor Wu says, however, that the final design of the project was informed by extensive comments from the community. She told reporters in an unrelated event on Thursday that the city has no plans to stop the rehabilitation of the public-private stadium.
“We have had almost two years of a really complete conversation about all kinds of problems,” Wu said. “We are staying with the schedule to advance this project because the community has expected enough.
“Four decades have passed on the setting of the White Stadium without concrete steps to do so, and now we have a great plan and the legal support to ensure that it occurs with clear benefits for the community and the protections for the city,” the mayor He added.
Benjamin Weber was one of the six councilors to vote against stopping the demolition, but caused most protesters, since their district plays Franklin Park. He defended the project and his vote on Thursday.
“I think the mayor creates a plan that will finally make this stadium revitalize and make it a real resource for BPS children and the community, and I want to see that this type of investment goes to my community,” Weber told Heraldo.
Of the opponents, Weber said: “I think the problem with the community process they are having is that they do not like the result, not necessarily about what happened during that process.”
In a letter to the councilors sent after Wednesday’s vote, WU described the planned renewal as the “largest investment in BPS athletics since the stadium first opened in 1949, one that will transform the facilities and opportunities for the Students from Boston public schools, Franklin Park lovers and all community members. “
Louis Elisa, president of the Garrison-Totter neighborhood association and demanding the lawsuit, does not agree. While holding a sign that said “Save Franklin Park, there is no private sports complex,” said the project aims to benefit rich investors.
“They want to take the money dedicated to the park and want to give it to people who already have a gold pot,” said Elisa. “This has nothing to do with our children.”
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