North Station to get a Star Market

This is how they hide gifts to developers. The tenant makes the application and promises jobs, benefits and more. So instead of the developer lowering the rent by a buck or two per sf, the taxpayer picks up the tab. The developer has to sign off by saying they need it or the project can't be done (which nobody in their right mind believes - these usually amount to about 1% of the project - but the affidavit takes the BRA and City Council off the hook). Perhaps not surprisingly, nobody ever investigates these applications for fraud, which almost all of them are at least in the lay sense of the word. Granted, it's a good lawyer's job to convince you the sky is green not blue when necessary and that fraud is legit under some circumstances.

Under Walsh there have been two such deals (I think both unanimously approved by the City Council) - one for the Rosenthal air rights project - about $5 million and another quite recently for LogMeIn in Southie - about $2.5 million. In return the developers and their execs generally contribute the max to political campaigns and for mayors they donate to any number of causes. Menino hid this masterfully during his rule - apparently there is a charity that the mayor controls and whenever there was some pressing community need - this charity magically had funds to support it which always made the mayor look like a hero. This only came to light in the last couple of years. Not sure the current status of that fund.

It can also come in the form of a white knight - for example, if the Enchanted Village needs money for saving, some annual fireworks or the First Night parade are at risk - you can usually count on the developers and their minions to step up. There's never an exact quid pro quo - but there's a reason that when a favored developer says he wants to put up a building downtown the BRA's kneejerk response is not "what's the zoning", it's "How big do you want it to be"?

Good/bad, legal/illegal - you be the judge - but it's the political grease that makes the real estate machine in this town work.

Most of the time traffic moves briskly through the area, its only congested during rush hour (a couple hours a day) and before and after some games. The majority of the time cars speed through and pedestrians get stuck on the median or have to risk their lives and hope a driver obeys the law and yields in the crosswalk (which takes awhile). There are highways all around (93 is a few blocks away as is Storrow and Rt. 1). This road should be more oriented to the people who live there and those that walk and take the T to the area. Continuing to have it be a a six lane road is one of the major reasons the area is so crappy, its unpleasant to walk in the area.

Too bad the landlord destroyed the ornate stucco about 5 years ago. It could have been a nice rehab. Supposedly McDonalds is still paying rent there and that's why no other tenant has moved in.

The junkies will be there so long as the meth clinic on Canal is. Always enjoy going to the DD on Canal and listening to how the junkies plan to scam CVS or whomever after they get their methadone. Heroin is a hell of a drug.

I used to love the old Star markets. I had no idea they had a bad reputation back then.

Back when Star Market was a family owned company based in Watertown, Star Market was a good place to shop. It was a bit more expensive than Stop & Shop, but in exchange you got a better selection of fancy groceries and better produce. Later on the company started doing stores with a significant prepared food section, like the food court they had at the JFK store. The family sold out to Jewel Corp in 1964 but remained involved in management and the stores continued to be a good place to shop.

Then Star was sold to Shaw's in 1999, a company with a completely different focus on low price generic groceries. The cultures and market positioning were completely incompatible, and the Shaw's management didn't have a clue what to do with the Star stores. They pushed the low quality Shaw's generics into Star stores in places of the better ones that Star had offered, reduced the selection of gourmet and ethnic groceries, and drastically cut the quality of the prepared food in the stores that had it. Customers revolted. They added insult to injury by rebranding many of the stores as Shaw's.

Sainsbury, a British grocer, first bought a minority stake in Shaw's in 1983 and acquired controlling interest in 1987. In 2004 they sold their stake to Albertson's, another British grocer. Things did not improve. In 2006 Albertson's sold all its US grocery holdings (which also included other regional supermarkets and drug stores) to a partnership of SuperValu, CVS, Cerberus Capital, and other investment companies. They were carved up, with SuperValu getting Shaw's and Star. Still no improvement.

Things finally started to get better for Star Market in 2013 when Cerberus bought Shaw's and Star from SuperValu, along with ACME in Pennsylvania and New Jersey and Jewel-Osco in the midwest. (Restoring the Star brand started under SuperValu ownership but Cerberus has done a much better job of it.) Cerberus has continued to restore the Star branding of older stores and has opened new Star stores. They also restored the different positioning of the two chains, with Star focused on a more premium experience and Shaw's focused on price. (Some Star Markets are still lagging. The Porter Square and Beacon Street locations are both in need of serious attention.)

The North Station location is an interesting experiment. It has gone ever more upscale than other Star locations with a big prepared food section, a full liquor license, and lots of gourmet items, making it a more direct competitor to Roche Bros and Whole Foods, but it retains non-premium pricing on staples. (That latter part is likely part of their deal with Boston for reduced rent.)