Boston mayoral candidate Josh Kraft is calling on Mayor Michelle Wu to “immediately halt” the razing of White Stadium that began last Friday, until the courts can rule on the city’s public-private plan to rehab it for a new pro women’s soccer team.
Kraft, in a statement issued Tuesday by his campaign, cited the ballooning taxpayer tab, which has grown from $50 million to $100 million in recent weeks, persistent community opposition and legal challenges dogging the project as reasons to press pause on demolition work at the 76-year-old Franklin Park facility.
“I am calling on Mayor Wu to listen to the concerns of the community and pledge today to stop any planned demolition work at White Stadium until the legal process is resolved,” Kraft said. “There are legitimate legal matters before the courts that deserve to be heard and adjudicated before any trees are removed and any demolition of the current structure occurs.
“The communities around Franklin Park and the people of Boston are not on board with Mayor Wu’s plan to pour more than $100 million in public money into a project that primarily benefits a private commercial interest,” he said, adding, “To race ahead in this moment when there are so many legitimate community concerns would be a total failure of leadership.”
Kraft, 57, who stepped down from his position as president of the New England Patriots Foundation on Feb. 1, days before formally launching his campaign for mayor, had first called for a pause in planned demolition work at White Stadium when speaking briefly with reporters after his announcement speech.
He said he attended a community meeting last Thursday that focused on hashing out alternatives to the city and Boston Unity Soccer Partners’ public-private plan to redevelop White Stadium for a new National Women’s Soccer League expansion team. No one from Mayor Wu’s office was there, Kraft said.
Investors for Boston Unity and the new pro team include Boston Globe CEO Linda Pizzuti Henry, wife of the billionaire Red Sox owner John Henry.
“Over the weekend, Mayor Wu sent out a campaign fundraising appeal to her donors saying this: ‘We don’t believe politics should be controlled by billionaires throwing around vast personal wealth — we believe it should be controlled by the people,’” Kraft, a son of the billionaire New Patriots owner Robert Kraft, said.
“Given Mayor Wu’s actions on White Stadium, where she is standing with ultra-wealthy private interests at the expense of her community, her actions don’t match her rhetoric,” he added.
Shortly after the Boston City Council deadlocked, 6-6, late last month on a vote to halt demolition at White Stadium and a related protest was held near the facility, Wu said she had no plans to halt the public-private rehab.
On Tuesday, Wu’s campaign fired back at Kraft’s “opportunistic” call.
“Kraft’s cynical and opportunistic attacks will not stop us from delivering on this long-delayed promise to BPS student athletes or derail this major investment in Franklin Park,” a Wu campaign spokesperson said in a statement. “Kraft’s glaring financial conflict in opposing this critical project should be a warning to all Boston families about where his loyalties lie.”
Wu has previously taken aim at Kraft’s potential conflict of interest with his family’s involvement in plans to build a new stadium in Everett, which has encountered resistance from the mayor and other Boston officials over traffic and parking concerns in nearby Charlestown.
The Kraft Group and Wu administration are in what appear to be tense negotiations to hammer out a community mitigation agreement for impacts to Boston, and Kraft said he would “recuse” himself from any discussions if he were elected mayor.
Some opponents of the White Stadium plan have suggested that the new pro women’s team, BOS Nation FC, should instead share use of the Everett stadium with the Revolution.
In a letter to the City Council after its deadlocked vote, Wu described the planned renovation as the “largest investment in BPS athletics since the stadium first opened in 1949, one that will transform the facilities and opportunities for Boston Public School students, Franklin Park lovers, and all community members.”
For Louis Elisa, president of the Garrison-Trotter Neighborhood Association and a plaintiff in a pending lawsuit that seeks to stop the project, the mayor’s reasoning behind the plan is “laughable.”
“You’re going to give $100 million to the Boston Public Schools, who for 35 years didn’t spend $5 million to fix up the stadium, to fix up this part that was broken, that was repairable,” Elisa told the Herald. “The mayor is going to spend $100 million in a park that, over the last 10 years, she hasn’t spent $100 million in for capital improvements.
“I mean, please. Somebody has to open their eyes and be realistic. This is not a benefit to public school children. This is a giveaway,” he said.
As for Kraft’s input, Elisa said he appreciates the sentiment but it came too late, as crews began taking a wrecking ball to the stadium last Friday, in what he described as a “Valentine’s Day massacre.”
“Day late, dollar short,” Elisa said. “I appreciate his concerns and his commitment to look at the welfare of the city of Boston and all the residents, but it’s a little bit late … They’ve already started destroying antiquities, a national monument. They’re destroying the park, this stadium.”
The project has grown from a projected initial cost of $100 million to north of $200 million, with taxpayers funding the city’s half of “roughly $100 million,” and counting, as the Wu administration has not ruled out further cost overruns.
Elisa is part of a group of 20 neighbors who joined the Emerald Necklace Conservancy in filing suit against the city and Boston Unity Soccer Partners last year.
The plaintiffs allege that the project would illegally privatize public trust land, and favor renovations that would preserve the stadium as a high-school-only facility.
Mayor Wu has denied the privatization claim, saying the city and BPS would maintain ownership of the facility through a lease agreement and that use would be shared between the new pro team and BPS student-athletes.
Opponents contend, however, that as the National Women’s Soccer League schedule typically lasts from March to November, BPS football teams would be displaced from White Stadium for much of their seasons.
The case is set to go to trial March 18 in Suffolk Superior Court. Opponents plan to protest against the ongoing demolition at the stadium Wednesday morning.