Where’s an urban mechanic for downtown Boston? – The Boston Globe

The report, achieved for the town by the Boston Consulting Group and launched on Thursday, actually gives some much-needed reality telling concerning the state of the town’s core enterprise district and its sluggish restoration from the pandemic.

“Demand for workplace and retail area stays to be seen; whereas rents reached 5-year highs pre-pandemic, emptiness charges are rising, and workplace occupancy stays at 30 p.c” of prepandemic ranges, the report notes.

So, sure, the district — outlined within the report to incorporate the North Station space and the land round Massachusetts Common Hospital along with Downtown Crossing and the Monetary District — wants assist and a brand new imaginative and prescient becoming new work patterns which might be unlikely to return to these prepandemic days of bustling workplaces and bustling streets. And earlier than we romanticize these, let’s not neglect that these 9-to-5ers didn’t create a 24-hour neighborhood both.

“We don’t intend to return to the best way issues had been earlier than the pandemic, however to as a substitute push past the established order and notice a brand new, extra equitable, extra thrilling future for downtown Boston,” the report mentioned, and that’s factor.

However the large imaginative and prescient half — the potential for conversion of underutilized workplace area into much-needed new residential choices — stays long run and exceedingly troublesome. The design agency Gensler, which has studied the opportunity of such conversions across the nation, checked out 84 workplace buildings in downtown Boston and located solely 10 viable for such conversions — assuming their house owners can be enthusiastic about making that funding.

Now that’s not nothing — and definitely definitely worth the metropolis’s efforts to advertise the concept and to do what it may well to make the allowing as straightforward as doable. (Perhaps ditch these parking necessities.)

However there are smaller proposals that may deliver life to empty storefronts and extra foot visitors. Segun Idowu, Wu’s chief of financial alternative and inclusion, cited a $9 million pocket of federal restoration cash put aside by the town to offer lease subsidies to retail companies throughout the town. It can launch in December and will present a lift to an estimated 60 companies for a three-year interval.

A few of these subsidies may effectively be focused to draw new native enterprises to a “re-imagined” Faneuil Corridor, because the report notes, “to create a extra genuine connection between Boston’s historical past, tradition, and the enterprise choices on the property.” The property’s present landlord, Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., working underneath a long-term lease from the town, has lengthy been criticized for turning a serious vacationer attraction into simply one other outside shopping center of nationwide chain shops. It appears unlikely a number of extra native retailers will flip the realm into something like Chicago’s Navy Pier, an instance of a wildly profitable operation cited within the report, however that’s to not say the pier wouldn’t be position mannequin. It additionally assumes the town may get harder with the property’s steward.

Vacationers are an vital a part of the downtown panorama and all the time have been. Because the report notes, the downtown is house to at the very least a dozen of the town’s high 100 vacationer points of interest, together with historic websites, and but there too visitors is down. An all-inclusive cultural or tourism cross — with an acceptable advertising and marketing funds — is proposed as a doable answer. Positive, why not?

There are a selection of concepts that positively fall into the city mechanic mould — higher sidewalks, for instance. How troublesome is that? Town ought to merely deliver some as much as a good state of restore and widen others. Bike lanes that might truly get folks all the best way to their workplaces or retailers or eating places within the downtown would assist too.

However the report didn’t cope with the one factor with out which none of this works — public security. Downtown wants protected streets and visitors management for bikers, higher lighting and foot patrols so pedestrians really feel protected day and night time, and programming that gives higher in a single day choices for the homeless than storefront doorways.

Good public coverage is all the time a mix of the visionary and the do-able. It’s additionally a matter of understanding the distinction between the 2. Proper now downtown wants a strong dose of the artwork of the doable, whereas it really works towards these loftier objectives.

Editorials symbolize the views of the Boston Globe Editorial Board. Observe us on Twitter at @GlobeOpinion.