NIBBLING AT THE GREENWAY
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Boston Herald, MA
May 9 2007
Even as the Rose Kennedy Greenway is beginning to take shape, it is
still being nibbled at by those who should be better stewards of this
vast public space. Today the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority has
scheduled a public meeting in the North End on a proposed memorial
to the Armenian genocide, which Pike officials insist they are
legislatively mandated to put on the Greenway.
Actually the legislative mandate is that there be such a memorial
somewhere in Boston, and we are all for that. But Parcel 13 of the
Greenway (in the vicinity of Cross Street) is not that place. There
is near universal agreement that the Greenway should be seen as one
wonderful whole – and that most of its planning be done in conjunction
with the respected Greenway Conservancy.
Former Turnpike head Matt Amorello may be gone, but his lack of vision
and his stubborn insistence that a truckload of trees and some grass
seed interrupted by the occasional monument were all that the Greenway
needed lives on. We can and must do better – both for the Greenway
and by finding a more appropriate location for an important memorial.