White Stadium, which sits in one of the most active areas of Franklin Park, has been neglected by the city of Boston for decades. When City Hall stopped caring about our park, neighbors cleaned it up ourselves. We cared for the park when others saw only decay.
Now, as our city is being rejuvenated, some see Franklin Park as an opportunity for profit. But we will continue to protect it. Designed by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Franklin Park is the centerpiece of Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace and is truly a work of art.
It is revered in the same way as Olmsted’s Central Park in New York and the grounds of the US Capitol in Washington. Franklin Park is also on the National Register of Historic Places, alongside the Lexington Battle Green and the North Bridge in Concord. Amid Boston’s crowded city streets, the park is our oasis.
It’s where families come for picnics and games of catch. We come for summer festivals or to visit the zoo. We jump rope, play tennis and basketball, or learn to ride a bike.
We visit with longtime neighbors, make new friends, or take a nap on a blanket in the sun. The Massachusetts Constitution protects open spaces like Franklin Park from the kind of private development recently proposed by a group of for-profit sports investors who want to make White Stadium the home of a National Women’s Soccer League team. The project is being fast-tracked , ignoring state environmental laws and community concerns.
The Franklin Park Defenders, a coalition of local residents, neighborhood groups, and park advocates, have sued to stop the for-profit redevelopment of White Stadium and we are willing to take this fight all the way to the Supreme Judicial Court. Our constitution is on our side. We want to see White Stadium renovated as a public stadium that meets the needs of Boston student-athletes and the community.
In fact, the city has already said it would put $50 million into renovating the stadium. Instead of listening to the communities around Franklin Park, however, the city is backing an expensive private project, with luxury boxes, beer gardens, jumbotrons, and merchandise stores, that would destroy Franklin Park’s ability to serve our neighborhoods as an open and welcoming natural environment. Advertisement Under the soccer team’s plans, the majority of weekends from March through November will be disrupted by a major professional sports event.
On game days over 10,000 fans will come and go from our park. Some will ride on shuttle buses that will circle narrow city streets for hours on end. With the nearest transit stop a 20-minute walk from the stadium, many attendees will travel via Uber and Lyft, further clogging neighborhood streets.
And despite the team’s claims otherwise, many attendees will no doubt bring their own cars in the search for scarce on-street parking. The soccer team plans to hold night games. And the new zoning regulations will allow concerts.
Not just the cultural festivals we have now but also nationally known live acts. The investor group will also seek a liquor license as part of the deal. Our entire neighborhood will change.
The noise and commotion, not just from alcohol-fueled fans but also from the cleaning services, food deliveries, staff and vendor arrivals, TV satellite trucks, trash trucks, and security vehicles, will make a peaceful weekend in the park a thing of the past. We shouldn’t be forced to accept that immense disruption just to get the high-quality public stadium that our families and Boston Public Schools athletes have deserved — and been denied — for decades. The predominately Black and brown families who live around the park have heard talk of “environmental justice” in recent years.
We hoped that new laws designed to protect open space meant our space: our playgrounds, where our families play, picnic, and take a nap in the sun. The law says we have a right to that! Advertisement Mostly low-income and working class, we know we are not the Back Bay, Brookline, or Concord, where a project like this would probably never be considered. But our families and children deserve open space just the same.
To the private investors behind this project, and the city leaders fast-tracking it, we implore you to recognize our humanity. Please don’t destroy our park. Jean McGuire is a Roxbury resident, founder of METCO, and the first Black woman elected to the Boston School Committee.
Louis Elisa is a Roxbury resident, founding member of the Franklin Park Coalition, and president of the Garrison Trotter Neighborhood Association..
