All you ever wanted to know about the BRA...
or at least -- all I could find out.
“The Boston Redevelopment Authority was created to throw people off their land and do the dirty things, and keep the politicians’ hands clean.”
--Paul McCann, former BRA director,
testifying to the Boston City Council
BRA state enabling legislation
http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/gl-121b-toc.htm
Law giving BRA power to grant tax breaks and
zoning relief to private developers
http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/gl-121a-toc.htm
BRA website
http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/
Chapter 652 of the Acts of 1960, handing the city planning role to the BRA
I moved to Boston in 1993, and knew nothing about the BRA. In my job search, I went to the BRA’s landscape designer to ask what they do. She showed me, as an example, the blueprints on her desk: a planting plan for shrubs around the parking lot slated to replace the historic PIlgrim Theater! I said, “A historic theater is going to be destroyed, and you’re worried about the bushes around the parking lot?” She answered, “Well, it’s going to happen, so we might as well get them to screen the parking.” That was all all I thought I needed to know about the BRA. I left, and spent the next couple of years trying to save the Pilgrim. It was demolished, on Mayor Tom Menino’s orders, in 1997.
I my effort to save it, I learned a lot about who’s who in Boston, how the BRA and the ISD (Inspectional Services Department) work, and how dangerous it is to interfere with the power games in Boston. I was blacklisted for, as one potential employer called it “too high a political profile,” and became pretty much unemployable in my profession in Boston, Cambridge, and probably more places I never thought to look.
I’ve spent a lot of time trying to learn about the BRA. It’s not easy; it’s a closed bunker. As an urban design professional, I quickly came to understand the basics of how it does what it does, how it has accumulated incredible power and resources, and why it must be ended.
I have been writing and speaking publicly about the BRA for 15 years, hoping to share what I’ve learned, so that others don’t have to spend years sleuthing as I did. Some people have said, “Shirley, if what you say is true, wouldn’t we all know about it by now?” No, of course not. The BRA survives because no one knows about it. Even I have only scratched the surface; I keep learning astounding things, and I know that unless the BRA is forced to post online every document in its files, no one will ever know all we need to know. Even with the documents, we won’t be able to connect all the dots. It’s too unbelievable.
When the BRA is dissolved, the public may be able to learn what it was. We will learn what it took from us for a half century. And we will take it all back.
Here is a collection of my writings on the BRA, most of them columns published in the South End News. I include the URL for columns still posted on the SEN website; my column is called “City Streets.”
The BRA is an imperial power, of which Boston is the sole colony.
