The Beacon Hill Times follows the progress, or lack thereof, on Cambridge Street through direct observation and interviews with the project’s supervisor John Lepore.

Progress during the week of October 29 – November 2

Traffic signals: Best Electric is still on the job, although by Friday the lights were still not operable.

Street paving: Getting closer. The trailer was moved, so the electricians can now move the traffic control boxes from the street onto the plaza in front of the Hurley Building. This will allow that section of the street to be finished.

Plantings: From City Hall to Bowdoin Street, the plants in the median have been pretty much destroyed by Red Sox revelers. Some damage also occurred down to Joy Street. Branches were broken off the newly planted trees.

Street lights and traffic lights: Lepore says some of these were also damaged.

Steven Greenberg, executive director, BCJH; Governor Patrick, Emily Lowenthal, Havurah on the Hill; and Paul Gass, president, BCJH.




Governor Deval Patrick spoke recently to 350 people at the historic Vilna Shul on Phillips Street, home of the Boston Center for Jewish Heritage at the monthly Havurah on the Hill event in a program co-sponsored with the Young Leadership Division of Combined Jewish Philanthropies.

Patrick emphasized the possibility of success and growth from one generation to the next. Pointing to the humble immigrant origins of the Shul, Patrick reflected on the young, urban professionals that populate it today. He also spoke of his own disadvantaged youth in Chicago and urged the capacity crowd to be active in shaping a positive future for the next generation.

City Councilors Michael Flaherty and Bill Linehan got so many calls complaining about towing cars on street cleaning days that they convened a hearing on October 29 to find out what was going on.

A few Bostonians testified that they had been unfairly towed. Dave Harvey of East Broadway in South Boston said he was against the towing, explaining that his car was towed when his business trip was extended and he couldn’t get home to move it.

But the majority of the attendees, including a Beacon Hill and a North End resident who said their cars had been towed under the program, said that towing 27,000 cars from Boston streets between April 15 and October 26 is the one effort that has made Boston cleaner. Don’t do anything to compromise the program, they warned. One person said until this program went into effect, Boston looked like one imagines a third world city would look in terms of cleanliness.

“This hearing makes us nervous,” said Mark Paul of Prince Street, “watering it down, backing down. Only since the city has had the courage to do private towing has our neighborhood not been a pigsty. We will not go backwards in the North End.”

South End, Back Bay and Beacon Hill residents said basically the same thing.

City officials agreed. “If you remove this program, the street sweeping will be ineffective,” said Joe Canavan, supertintendent of public works.

Flaherty said he learned from the hearing that downtown Boston residents wanted clean streets. “I heard it loud and clear from downtown neighborhoods — more towing, more street cleaning,” he said.

But he also said he was pleased that Dennis Royer, chief of the city’s public works and transportation departments, agreed that some parts of the program need changes.

Everyone agreed on those changes.

At the top of the list is that tow companies should not tow cars after the street sweeper has passed by, even if the signs say no parking until a designated time. Canavan said three companies were suspended for 10 days and one was eliminated from the program because they engaged in that practice.

Everyone also agreed that restructuring the contract so the city collects more revenue is desirable, as is shortening the posted time from four hours to two hours for the sweeper to do its job. There also needs to be recourse if a car is damaged, Councilor Mike Ross pointed out. The schedules should be adjusted so that the sweeper comes after, not before, trash pickup, and the times around schools should be changed so as not to conflict with pick-ups and drop-offs.

Flaherty said he supports extending the program to every street in the neighborhoods that want it, and that no one should have to get petitions signed to make that happen.

Moreover, he said, the towing and street sweeping program should be year-round. Finally, he asked Royer to make Boston even cleaner by installing more trash barrels and doing a better job of emptying them.

Flaherty and Linehan both called unfair the fact that 70 percent of the towing goes on in five neighborhoods — South Boston, Roxbury, East Boston, the South End and Charlestown. But no one presented any evidence of unfairness. As the largest and most populous neighborhoods without an abundance of private driveways, they would naturally have more cars on the streets.

A South Boston resident said that towing for street cleaning was keeping out non-Boston drivers who drive into his neighborhood and park on a neighborhood street while they catch the Red Line to work. A Roxbury resident said the towing program was getting rid of the cars without license plates that sat in her neighborhood for months.

Flaherty said he was surprised at a “sting” operation the city conducted with a female police officer in plain clothes who tried to convince a tow truck driver to unhook an unmarked car she had purposefully left in the street sweeper’s path. The tow truck drivers did not literally let the officer off the hook when she pleaded, nor could they be bribed, a common practice in the old Boston.

Flaherty said he still has concerns that the signs announcing cleaning times might be confusing to some residents.

But Ed Burke of the Fenway said the councilors weren’t giving their constituents credit for being smart. “People learn the hard way,” he said. “The signs are clear. If you can read, you can follow the signs.”

SIDEBAR

Street cleaning towing by the numbers:

Cars towed between April 15 and September 30, 2007: 24,937

Cost of a tow: $110 plus a ticket of $40, $20 storage fee per day

Tickets for street cleaning issued between April 1 and September 30, 2006: 142,388

Tickets for street cleaning issued between April 1 and September 30, 2007: 110,740 (a 22 percent decrease.)

Percentage of cars towed owned by non-Boston residents: 22

CAPTION: Toscano officials David D’Alessandro, Andrew D’Alessandro and Richard Cacciagrani worked hard to get the re-tooled restaurant up and running in four months.




Toscano re-opened for business on Friday, October 26, with a slightly different name and a beautiful new look. Even though Toscano officials had not yet announced they were open, neighbors must have been paying attention, since the restaurant was full all weekend, said owner David D’Alessandro of Charles Street.

His team has dropped the word “Ristorante” that preceeded the old Toscano name, beefed up the staff to 40 people, lowered the prices about 15 percent, and, under the direction of restaurant designer Peter Niemitz, renovated everything from the higher ceilings to the crisp new kitchen to the oiled walnut floors. It looks vaguely Arabic, vaguely Italian, and rustic, but dressy at the same time. “It’s like an old place in Tuscany,” said D’Alessandro. “We wanted it to be like some place you’ve never been in Boston.”

D’Alessandro’s favorite feature of the new décor appears to be the light fixtures, which are hand painted in bright colors by glass artist Ulla Darni of Copenhagen. But he also points with pride to the five different seating areas for 148 diners, including a private room, and the decorative doors that open into different areas of the restaurant. He chose antique doors from Seret & Sons in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to hang against some walls.

The menu includes such tried and true Tuscan items as quail and venison, along with fresh, seasonal dishes. Ten to 15 specials will be offered every night, he said.

D’Alessandro bought the restaurant on February 1 and closed it in mid-June for renovation. Observers have estimated the four-month re-do cost around $3 million. At the same time the restaurant was being renovated, the building owner also invested funds in restoring the Egyptian revival building’s façade, a project that had been approved by the architecture commission but not implemented for a couple of years.

The outlook was brilliant for the Red Sox nine that day. They were at City Hall. Papelbon may have even been dancing. TV and radio sportscasters were having the best day of the year.

But there was no joy on Cambridge Street. “They’re trampling the plants,” said John Delano of Hancock Street. “They’ve destroyed them.”

This time it was the fans who struck out, and it was the neighborhood that suffered. Boisterous boosters hoisted themselves onto the median to get a better look. They climbed up the newly planted trees, breaking off limbs as they went. They pounded the ground so hard that the irrigation system broke, said John Lepore, the engineer who manages the street’s almost complete reconstruction project for the Massachusetts Highway Department.
The plantings were pretty much destroyed around Somerset Street, and some were damaged as far down as Joy Street.

“It now looks like a trough where you feed pigs,” said Lepore.

He called the scene a disaster. “What a shame,” he said. “Up near City Hall there wasn’t a plant left standing. The rose bushes are all gone.”

He also said fans had damaged some of the new street lights.

He said the plants had been paid for by the city, and it would be Boston’s responsibility to repair the damage. “Why should I dish out all kinds of money to fix something if the city is going to organize a parade that damages it,” he said.

City officials were aware of the problem but were not specific about what they will do now. “The city will work with the state to do an assessment and the damage will be taken care of,” said Meaghan Maher, a spokesperson in the Mayor Menino’s press office. She did not know the time frame or the cost.

She said it was likely that in the future the Cambridge Street median would be fenced off or lined with barriers. “These areas will be taken into consideration when the routes are planned, and those areas will be protected,” she said.

Hill House also took a beating. Those who were working in the offices at 74 Joy Street reported they heard a commotion outside. When they looked out the window, they saw both men and women urinating on the front steps and into the paved areas around the Beacon Hill Nursery School.

Luckily, said those occupying Hill House, the children had been sent home early, since nursery school officials realized that the parents would not be able to get to the school to pick up their children.

Aging gracefully

A few weeks ago it was surprising to read a letter to the editor in the Boston Globe from Mark Neff, the president of the Home Builders Association of Massachusetts. He wrote that “our housing stock in Massachusetts is becoming increasingly obsolete.”

Since probably 90 percent of our readers live in housing that is anywhere from 80 to 150 years old, we wondered: Is he talking about us?

Apparently not. When we called him he said our neighborhood is great. He said he was referring mostly to suburban communities, where people want bigger houses than they did in the 1970s and where they want houses with 2007 technology. Sometimes, he said, it is hard to retrofit older houses with today’s technology.

We could have said that we do it all the time here, since we have no other choice.

Instead, we listened to him describe the homebuilding situation in Massachusetts. He said Massachusetts was third from last in the number of building permits for new homes on a per capita basis. A lack of supply of new housing keeps all prices high and makes it more difficult for prospective buyers to find any house, never mind if it is affordable.

“You can’t have a growth economy and at the same time exclude people from the housing market,” he said.

He’s got a point.

But one thing we’ve learned from living in a historic neighborhood where you can’t do just anything to your house: Old houses aren’t obsolete. They are wonderfully adaptable. While many city folk tend to live in relatively small spaces, they can, if they have the money and the inclination, create a house as big as those McMansions in the suburbs. Some houses on Chestnut, Mount Vernon and Brimmer streets are 10,000 square feet in size. And if you want a bigger one, you could follow the example of a couple with young children at the corner of Exeter Street and Commonwealth Avenue who are combining two row houses to make one with almost 21,000 square feet.

There is also new technology such as the small, high velocity heating and air conditioning tubes that can be inserted into standing walls. Some technology, such as computer networking, no longer has to have hard wiring at all, so you don’t need to renovate to plug in.

And our houses are naturally energy-efficient. The side walls we share with our neighbors keep the heat in. Thick brick and stone walls keep the cold out. Windows, remarkably, don’t often need replacing. They can be tuned up and tightened. You’ll do better at stopping air leaks by installing interior storm windows than replacing them with new windows, even if the architecture commission allowed you to do so.

Aging housing stock is a perjorative term that new-home builders throw around. But just look around. The age our houses carry makes them more beautiful, more environmentally friendly and more interesting than anything being built today. This renovation issue shows you how some of your neighbors have dealt with their old houses. We bet you wouldn’t trade the one you live in for any new house, even if it were given to you.