Feb
26
The Globe’s take on Harvard/Allston
Posted by nathanael. Filed Under politics | Leave a Comment
Interesting editorial in the Globe this morning -
Harry Mattison, an outspoken member of the Harvard Allston Task Force, says the land-banking is choking the commercial life of the neighborhood. “It’s the drip, drip, drip of property warehousing, encroaching blight, and establishment of a real estate monopoly,” he says.
Faust won’t commit to a moratorium on buying additional properties in Allston, as City Councilor Michael Flaherty recently suggested. But that would be a sensible plan if Harvard fails in its effort to lease its empty land holdings.
Unfortunately, given the level of discourse on that site instead of a reasonable discussion on livable streets we get non-sequitur knee jerk responses like -
Give me a break. Stop being cry babies. If you have the muscles, why don’t you buy the land from Harvard? Until then, you should be on knees that Harvard owns the land. If you don’t like looking at empty land, move away, who asked you to live there in the first place?
For a more thoughtful and cogent examination of the issues, see Allston: State of Play in 2009, where Dylan Matthews interviews Harry Mattison and Brent Whelan.
-via allston02134
Feb
25
Bike all broke?
Posted by nathanael. Filed Under photos | Leave a Comment
bostonfixed is curious if this works. Any idea?
-via Boston Biker
Feb
14
Inertia vs Momentum
Posted by nathanael. Filed Under misc | Leave a Comment
In other less than cheery news, Harry Mattison has more on Harvard School of Public Health putting stronger root down in Longwood. The space they have over there really is cramped, dirty and disjointed, but given the Global Financial Clusterfuck(tm) it’s apparently more logical for them to creep up into on Mission Hill than continue working on plans for an Allston campus.
“With the economic environment making the pace of Allston less certain, we did not feel as though we could pass up the opportunity to lease a significant amount of space so close to our main campus.”
Feb
11
Justice, half done
Posted by nathanael. Filed Under photos | Leave a Comment
Well this is terribly upsetting. Jashawn Robinson walks in the murder of Heureur Previlon. From Wicked Local. Co-assailant Cleveland Martin was found guilty last December.
Witnesses testified and prosecutors said that Robinson and Martin armed themselves with a pair of carving knives on the night of Aug. 25, 2005, and specifically sought to hire a cab driver from a Brookline-based cab company because those cabs — unlike Boston’s — do not have partitions between the driver’s and passenger’s sections, according to a statement from the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office.