New attitude
Boston is growing on a fresh appreciation for city living
By Anthony Flint, Globe Staff, 05/23/99
For the first time since 1970, the population of Boston is expected to top 600,000 by next year - reversing a half-century of population loss, significantly altering the demographic makeup of the city, and fueling the current building boom for years to come, according to officials at the Boston Redevelopment Authority.
City researchers and real estate professionals say the influx of new residents - part of a nationwide renewal of interest in downtown living - is being led by two groups who are increasing both in raw numbers and in the wealth they possess.
The first group is young professionals with high-paying jobs in Boston's strongest economic sectors, such as financial services, medicine, and technology; the second is aging baby boomers whose children have left home, who are encouraged by the city's low crime rate to sell homes in the suburbs and eager to be less dependent on their cars.
The intensified arrival of these groups is seen as the most important factor undergirding the current building boom, where $4 billion in private investment is being pumped into the city and construction cranes dot the landscape from Lower Roxbury to the South Boston waterfront. Developers are rushing to build condos, new retail venues, cinema complexes and, most recently, a gleaming new Red Sox ballpark to accommodate what will essentially be a broader and more potent base of customers.
The expected uptick in population is leading many observers to believe the current building boom is on more solid footing than the boom of the 1980s, when the emphasis was mostly on new office buildings. Today's developers are building both office parks and residences. More conservative financing and major public works projects that are coming to fruition, such as the Big Dig and Seaport infrastructure improvements, are also providing a solid foundation for the boom.
At the same time, however, anxiety about gentrification is reaching a fever pitch in established residential neighborhoods surrounding downtown, where property values have been pushed up dramatically, in a ripple effect. Many worry that a ''new'' Boston, with a more affluent demographic mix, will end up squeezing out longtime, middle-class residents. Because the new residents are mostly childless or can afford private schools, some also worry the constituency for good public schools will be weakened.
''Cities are hot again, and Boston is particularly hot,'' said BRA director Thomas N. O'Brien. ''It wasn't that long ago we were talking about whether American cities would survive.''
O'Brien said the population of Boston has grown significantly from the 1990 Census figure of 574,283. Some independent researchers predict a population of 628,000 by next year; O'Brien said even a conservative estimate would put the count over 600,000 by the time the US Census is taken next year. The city population was 800,000 in 1950 and had dropped to 562,000 by 1980.
Acknowledging the affluence of many of the new residents, O'Brien said the city's challenge is to be sensitive to ''growing pains'' and ''to remember what makes Boston the city it is, a place with residential character where a variety of people live.''
The anxiety about a changing Boston is being felt in a greater number of neighborhoods than in the '80s, community activists say, when once rundown neighborhoods such as the South End and Charlestown became havens for $500,000 condos and trendy cafes. Today South Boston, North Dorchester, Lower Roxbury, the Fenway, Mission Hill, and Jamaica Plain are all feeling the pressures of a red-hot real estate market.
''There isn't one neighborhood that isn't suffering from the soaring rents,'' said Shirley Kressel, a Back Bay resident who is head of the Alliance of Boston Neighborhoods, an umbrella group of some two-dozen community organizations. ''We all feel like we're ants in the way of this juggernaut.''
Kressel said City Hall's unbridled support of the new development was reminiscent of urban renewal in the 1960s, when planners ''talked about how we need to move people out and get a higher class of shopper in.'' The expected population growth portends less socio-economic diversity and more homogeneity, she said - eroding the city's real-world soul.
Most real estate professionals think the demographic changes are inevitable, however. The larger number of people wanting to live in the city, they say, is intensifying a pent-up demand that has existed since the downturn of 1990, when not much was built in Boston. There has even been talk in the industry that traditional notions of the boom-and-bust cycle may not apply.
''Unless there's some dramatic financial situation like a 30 percent stock market decline, I think there's going to be a continuing, significant demand in the city, in every segment of the market,'' said Jon Gollinger, president of Hunneman Marketing Corp., who is consulting for the Pritzker family in their $1 billion development of Fan Pier.
''You just look at the demographics,'' he said. ''The empty nesters, the aging baby boomers - that bubble is a long one. Couple that with the incredible new wealth of the youthful purchasers. And then throw in the international purchaser who's been out of the party for the last couple years. It's a confluence of well-heeled buyers across a demographic profile.''
Evidence of the trend is also being reported by major companies in Boston, who say a big selling point for many new employees is the option of city living.
''I like what the city has to offer in terms of culture and variety, and I just don't want to do the commute,'' said Peter Goldman, 37, head of human resources for First Call Corp., a division of Thomson Financial, where almost 25 percent of employees live within a 5-mile radius of the company's offices, in rehabiltated warehouses in the Fort Point Channel district.
Goldman said he wasn't interested in living in the suburbs and opted for a one-bedroom condominium in a brownstone on West Canton Street in the South End.
Being close to events on Boston Common or the Esplanade was also important for Pat Kraeger, a public affairs executive at WBZ, and her husband, Larry Cohan, a pediatrician with Massachusetts General Hospital, who sold their house in Milton for a condominium in Beacon Hill. Instead of hopping in a car, they now walk to the dry cleaners or for takeout food.
''We traded space for a lifestyle and a neighborhood,'' Kraeger said. One child is already in college and another is finishing high school. ''All of my friends are a bit envious that we did it. Everybody's talking about it, at my age.''
Rekindled interest in living in the city is part of a national trend. Growth in the suburbs is still more extensive by far, but key segments of the population are being drawn back to cities such as Boston, New York, Chicago, and Denver, said Bennet Heart, attorney for the Conservation Law Foundation. Older cities are seen as gaining an edge over sprawling metropolitan areas such as Phoenix or Atlanta, he said.
''As suburban living gets more difficult - if people have to drive farther, traffic gets worse, and there aren't town centers that have a soul - then urban living will be more and more attractive,'' he said.
Bruce Katz, director of the Center on Urban and Metropolitan Policy at the Brookings Institution, which released a study in December chronicling an increase in population in a range of American cities, said a combination of factors have made cities attractive again.
Households without any children - the ''empty nesters,'' expected to increase dramatically as the baby-boom generation gets older - are joining young professionals who are delaying having children. That means more expendable income and the ability to live in an urban setting without multiple bedrooms and a yard. In addition, the drop in crime in cities is paving the way for people to move back, Katz said.
Finally, public investment in the urban landscape - waterfront reclamation, re-use of old warehouse buildings for residential downtown living, transit improvements, new cultural institutions, in some cases sports stadiums - is luring these groups who want to live close to such amenities.
''Boston is probably as well-positioned as any city in the country to take advantage of these demographic shifts. There's no other city with as substantial an infrastructure investment in its downtown core,'' Katz said.
''After 5 p.m. on weekdays and on weekends, this city is absolutely packed. That is a wonderful change from 30 years ago,'' said O'Brien, the BRA director. ''People recognize this is a place to live, to work, and spend your leisure time. That's a clear difference between Boston and other American cities, where the downtown is dead after 5 p.m. And that breeds even more confidence with people who have the capital to spend on development. There's a real confidence this city is being transformed and will thrive.''
This story ran on page A01 of the Boston Globe on 05/23/99.
© Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company.
