It has become one of New York City’s most popular spots in recent years, a small, somewhat unassuming burger stand nestled in a corner of previously almost unknown Madison Square Park.
It’s called The Shake Shack, and although it doesn’t seem like much, in a city of Michelin Star restaurants and celebrity chefs this humble stand is as popular as anything else in town, with lines in nice weather frequently snaking hundreds long. What beckons locals and tourists alike is the Shack Burger, which has been named New York’s best in a slew of recent rankings, along with creamy frozen custard and, for those who want, cold beer.
More important than any particulars of its culinary success, however, is the Shake Shack’s impact on a previously underutilized public space. Madison Square Park has gone from sleepy afterthought to destination greensward almost overnight. In 2003, the Madison Square Park conservancy envisioned the food kiosk as the cornerstone in a larger renovation project aimed at injecting life back into the space. Five years later, that plan has been a success, and because the shack was partially financed by the conservancy, a portion of the proceeds for every burger and every concrete (a super thick frappe) sold goes to help with park maintenance.
Thus, it is no surprise that the Shake Shack was one of the key stops made during a recent fact finding mission to the Big Apple by Boston officials, who went in search of ideas to improve and revitalize Boston Common. Along with the Shake Shack, the officials also visited the more upscale Boathouse in Central Park and a Bryant Park cafe.
The consensus reached by the delegation is that the Common, occasionally marred by crime and vagrancy, could greatly benefit from a restaurant or a full time food kiosk that would bring more people and more vitality to the space.
“Attracting people to a park makes a park busy and make that park safe,” said Councilor Mike Ross, who was part of the delegation. “The busiest parks tend to be the safest and nicest parks. There’s no reason the Boston Common could not be a catalyst for the entire downtown area to be drastically improved.”
Ross said that no specific idea is currently being considered, but that the discussion will certainly continue in the coming weeks.
Stewart Desmond, deputy director of the Madison Square Park conservancy, said that a food kiosk can indeed bring positive uses to the park, and that the success of the Shake Shack has exceeded even their loftiest expectations,.
“For us it has been a tremendous success in bringing life and safety to the park,” said Desmond, and even those who originally opposed the building of the food kiosk now believe the change was for the best.
But any similar project in Boston has hurdles to overcome, not least among them convincing the Mayor Menino’s office and the public at large that the idea is a good one. The Mayor’s office would not commit to the idea, saying only that it remains open to any ideas for improving the Common.
One stumbling block would be the acquisition of a liquor license, never easy in Boston. A previous restaurant venture near the Frog Pond did not succeed because diners could not have wine with dinner.

Seeking for the second time to unseat incumbent Diane Wilkerson, challenger Sonia Chang-Diaz squared off with the veteran state senator in a debate at Emerson College Wednesday night, covering a range of issues from education to casino gambling.
The debate, moderated by State Representative Martha Walz, demonstrated little substantive difference between the two progressive Democrats on most key issues. Instead, it brought to light the same question that was central to their last electoral contest for the Second Suffolk District seat: do voters want an experienced voice, or fresh perspectives on old problems?
“We need new leadership to tackle some serious problems,” said Chang-Diaz in her opening statement, stressing her experience as a public school teacher and her deep ties to the community.
Wilkerson, who has served the Second Suffolk District since 1992, stressed the importance of her statehouse experience, particularly the value of the seniority she has built up over her 16 years in office. “We don’t want to lose that,” she said, while acknowledging that she and Chang-Diaz differed very little on many key issues. “The difference is I’ve been doing it,” she said.
Both candidates weighed in on one issue that is of particular importance to Beacon Hill and Downtown: the coexistence of residential neighborhoods with ever expanding institutions, particularly universities.
Chang-Diaz pointed to the recent agreement between Suffolk University and the Beacon Hill Civic Association as an excellent example of how public involvement can help shape private and institutional development for the better. The agreement, she said, could help provide a road map for future discussions between institutions and communities.
Wilkerson also stressed the need for communities and institutions to work together, saying that transparency was the most vital part of the process. Ultimately, she said, both the neighborhood and the institution will benefit from working together. “There has never been a project that I’ve seen that has not been made better by the public process,” said Wilkerson.
Both candidates took strong stances against casino gambling, differing only in their willingness to criticize Governor Patrick. Chang-Diaz lamented the regressive nature of casino gambling as a revenue source, as it tends to take money from low income people who can least afford to use it, but praised Patrick for facing the realities of the state’s budget shortfall. Wilkerson, meanwhile, lambasted the Governor and those behind the casino plan for looking for “the easy way out” of the state’s fiscal problems. She cited a recent study that showed up to 20% of Massachusetts residents would wind up with a gambling addiction if the casino were to be built.
Neither candidate would endorse the idea of using an increase in the gas tax to help cover a $20 billion shortfall in the transportation infrastructure budget. “This is not the right time for that,” said Chang-Diaz, a sentiment echoed by Wilkerson, though both said changing gas prices might make the idea more palatable in the future. “I don’t think either of us can give you an answer of where that $20 billion can come from,” admitted Wilkerson.
On the subject of education, both Wilkerson and Chang-Diaz said that adding more charter schools was not the right solution for struggling city schools. Wilkerson said that more accountability was needed from teachers and administrators, and said that the old property tax method of funding education was no longer sufficient or fair. Chang-Diaz, who worked for several years as an urban public school teacher, said that making oppositional distinctions between charter schools and district schools was not a productive part of the conversation. Although Chang-Diaz did not get into the specifics of how she would boost funding for education, she did promise to be a tireless fighter for public schools.
Ultimately, the debate was not one that translates well to written report: purely on the issues, there was little to distinguish the candidates. The choice for voters will come down more to personal instinct about each candidate competence and abilities. In their 2006 contest, Wilkerson barely held on to her seat, beating Chang-Diaz by less than 800 votes after a recount. The eight term senator has long had the support of voters, but she became politically vulnerably after pleading guilty to four counts of income tax evasion in 1997.

CAPTION: Meredith Barges (second from right) with three women union organizers from SITEMEX, an independent union. Independent unions are a rare breed in Mexico, where most unions are controlled by government and business interests. SITEMEX organizes workers in the Mex Mode maquila, which is a Korean-owned garment-manufacturing maquila that produces garments for companies like Puma, Nike, American Eagle, U.S. universities/colleges, etc.

Meredith Barges, of South Russell Street, Beacon Hill, recently visited communities in Mexico as part of a 12-person U.S. delegation to assess how economic globalization and free-trade agreements are affecting the lives of ordinary people . In particular, the delegation looked at the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the root causes of immigration, two issues being hotly debated by the presidential candidates this election year.
As corporations and business interests praise NAFTA for expanding economic opportunities for workers in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, others have countered that it has had negative consequences for workers’ livelihoods and has caused vast economically motivated migration.
“One of the promises of NAFTA was that it would create more jobs in Mexico and alleviate poverty. However, the results have been mixed,” said Barges.
To gather information and bring back firsthand accounts, the delegation met with labor organizers and factory workers, talked with migrant workers, and discussed free-trade policy with government representatives from both Mexico and the United States. They also visited communities in the city of Atlixco and the town of Vicente Guerrero.
Since NAFTA went into effect in 1994, Mexico has seen a significant increase in the number of low-quality jobs, a decrease in profitable farming, and millions of Mexicans immigrating to the United States, both with and without documents.
In Mexico City, the group met with staff from the Center for the Promotion and Defense of Human and Labor Rights (CEPRODEHL), who travelled from their office in Mérida to share strategies for promoting workers’ rights in maquiladoras. Maquiladoras (or maquilas) are factories, mostly foreign-owned, that import materials on a duty-free and tariff-free basis for manufacturing and export finished products. Under NAFTA, thousands of maquilas have opened up in Mexico and now account for 17 percent of Mexican employment.
But in maquilas, poor working conditions and low wages are the norm, with most workers earning minimum wage -- which in Mexico averages about 50 pesos per day or $0.54 USD per hour.
“Talking to organizers and maquila workers we found that there is always the threat that factory owners will move their operations to El Salvador or China or some other country where labor and environmental standards are even lower,” said Barges. “In effect, ever-loosening trade restrictions keep wages low.”
This, combined with recent hikes in global food prices, has created a situation in which it is nearly impossible for Mexican workers to earn a decent living and support their families.
At a meeting with the Authentic Workers’ Front (FAT), a prominent independent union, the delegation explored the links between labor-rights violations and migration. Said Secretary of Labor Bertha Lujan, “There aren’t enough jobs in Mexico, and the jobs that do exist keep getting more dangerous… The causes are so strong that people will risk their own lives to cross the border.”
It is estimated that 3.2 million Mexican immigrants, documented and undocumented, now work in the United States – despite the increasingly perilous journey and U.S. government crackdowns. Remittances (at $24.7 billion USD in 2007) represent Mexico’s second-largest source of income.
According to the group’s findings, the United States will continue to see moderate increases in immigration and decreases in wages – both in Mexico and the United States – until U.S. policymakers renegotiate NAFTA and other free-trade agreements for the benefit of corporations and workers.

The Friends of the Myrtle Street Playground hosted a Yard Sale on Saturday June 7 that was a huge success. Hadley Coldren (Joy Street) and Daniel Bittner (Garden Street) as well as Grant Coldren (not pictured) helped to run a lemonade stand during the sun-filled day. All proceeds from the lemonade stand and yard sale will help fund the weekly summer events at the playground. Left over clothing and toys were donated to a local family shelter.

A public school is key at the Government Center Garage

Beacon Hill and West End residents should be paying close attention to some new activity along the neighborhoods’ flanks.
The Raymond Company, a local real estate development company, bought the Government Center garage last year. They want to demolish the garage, build anew, and make some money along the way. They want to get everything in place to begin building by 2010, when the current office tenant’s lease expires.
Good for them.
There is a lot of support for demolishing the garage, a holdover from the 1960s Government Center renewal plan.
Another plus is Becky Mattson, the chief operating officer of the company, who has garnered good will for her team in the mixed-use development she is in charge of down in the Bulfinch Triangle. That is where a new Stop & Shop will go.
Judging from the sentiments expressed at the project’s first community meeting last week, there are four knotty problems to work out from the neighborhoods’ point of view.
The first: How much parking does this site need?
The garage now has spaces for 2310 cars, but it is never full. Nevertheless, one bar owner in the Bulfinch Triangle was worried that taking that parking away will hurt his business.
But after thousands more residents move into the new apartments in the Bulfinch Triangle and into the garage site’s proposed residences, this owner’s clientele will probably shift from being mostly out-of-towners to mostly neighbors. They won’t need parking. While parking must be included in this project, we can’t build car parks on the assumptions of the 20th century. Roads in and around Boston are already so clogged that driving is no fun and slower than other forms of transportation. If we are to have room to drive at all, we must begin to consider a post-automobile world, and this is a good project on which to start.
Another problem has to do with the site’s large size—more than five acres if the city and the developer can work out a deal to incorporate adjacent city land into the new development. Audience members stressed that such a big site requires breaking its appearance into smaller units. The developers seemed to agree.
But Raymond does want to build tall—as tall as the buildings in the financial district. So this is the third knotty problem. While the buildings on the site would step down toward the Greenway, the one closest to Cambridge Street might be as tall as the JFK building. Bostonians are unaccountably opposed to height, as if smaller buildings will somehow bring the city back to its 19th-century heyday.
But tall is green in creating density, which is good in the right location—which this is. The building’s shadow won’t compromise residences or many offices. Set in the middle of several T stations and a bus station, the site has the transportation infrastructure to handle a significant number of people. Tall buildings can make the street just as lively as lower buildings if they are built right. And a new tall building would take attention away from the adjacent JFK building, which blights the street with its grimy windows and asphalt plaza where a garden should be.
Tall buildings are green in another way—they make money. We want Raymond to make money, because we want him to be able to afford something for us in return. The city’s adjacent land contains our local police station, a homeless shelter and dribs and drabs of other uses. A police station will have to stay and we have no objection to the shelter.
But if the adjacent neighborhoods and the new community created by the residents who move into this site are to thrive, we desperately need one thing: a public school
This is the place for it.
The downtown, Beacon Hill, the North End and the new residences in the Bulfinch Triangle can’t keep families without a public school in the neighborhood. The Eliot and the Quincy simply don’t have enough spaces for all the nearby children who want to go. We watch helplessly as our local kids move to Brookline or Winchester where the parents don’t have to shell out $25,000 a year to educate a child.
The situation is unacceptable, and City Hall has to recognize that if our neighborhoods are to have a mix of incomes and ages.
We want this project to go forward. We support the height. We’ll tackle the parking. We’ll look at the designs and put in our two cents. But without a public school, the benefits for the surrounding neighborhoods are negligible. Incorporating one is the best way to get this project on the fast-track.