The Globe ran an editorial yesterday telling us that having an actual race for mayor this year would be good for the city. Kind of a snoozefest if you ask us. You may love our Mayor for Life, but it's not newsworthy to ask him to earn that status by running against some other people. So far those people are looking like city councilors Sam Yoon and Michael Flaherty, plus the inevitable fringe candidates. [Kevin McCrea officially launched his mayoral campaign yesterday. --Ed]
But Menino will probably win at least another term (an incumbent Boston mayor hasn't been defeated since 1949), and the editorial brings up the question of the physical mark that he will leave on the city, which we don't think gets talked about enough. As the Globe points out, he did try to build a 1000-foot tower (above), and failed. Menino hasn't brokered consensus about what to do to make the Rose Kennedy Greenway more appealing than a highway median; officials are just now starting to talk about height limits there, which seems about fifteen years too late. The Globe also forgot to mention the not-so-successful bids to move City Hall and build something in that big hole in Downtown Crossing where Filene's Basement used to be.
Post contributed by Alex of Urban Boston. Image from the BRA.
So we wonder: What have the Menino years left us so far, and what will they leave in the future? Sure, we'll build a statue of him eventually, but what about the kind of monument he really wants (or should want)—something great in the city that we can thank him for?
The Big Dig happened without him, and the biggest building news of his term was probably that we didn't build a new Patriots stadium, Red Sox ballpark, City Hall, or much of anything on his beloved Southie waterfront.
Does he care what he leaves behind? Do we?
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