BRA rebrands with forward-facing name

Now with a new name, they will NEED to hire people for new positions. What's the over-under that these are connected people (family/friends/you scratch my back-I'll scratch your back)?

from a BRA staffer in a project review: "we don't care what the community thinks".

If I say more, I'll be blackballed

Rebranding...YUCK

I hate marketing...HATE it.

More, from the bottom of the home page:

"This document [sic] was created in collaboration with Continuum, a global innovation design consultancy based in Boston, MA."

"...a global innovation design consultancy..." For real?

Extra YUCK.

Hat's off to the mayor. He promised to replace the BRA with a legit planning and development agency. And now he's accomplished that... by changing the name and logo.

Perhaps we should come up with a new name for neighborhood's. Neighborhood's are made up of people who know each other, know each other's families, and don't allow themselves to get steamrolled by developers and city agencies. With the exception of a few small pockets in the city, we no longer have neighborhoods. The BRA, or whatever it spent a couple of our millions to rename itself, saw to that. By the way, exactly how much did WE pay for this name change?

BPD has a good reputation. A $670K branding consultant can't have missed that confusion.

Slime, slime, slime.

Will Marty use this to create the illusion he did something about the BRA?

Bury the public in rebranding happytalk and make them forget all about how planning and development should be separate.

Why is the Mayor OK with this absurdity?

Check out today's Herald

http://www.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/2016/09/boston_s_develo...

for a picture of the "rebranded" Brian Golden. Dressed in a light brown sports jacket and sporting lighter-colored hair, he is truly the Golden Boy.

The whole thing is sickening. Wait until Shirley Kressel recuperates from her presumed shock upon hearing the news and rips the BPDA a new one over...several issues.

I asked Golden if the agency is giving up its Urban Renewal powers; he said no. Therefore, it's still the BRA, and no expensive consultants, new logos, re-monogrammed towels, redesigned stationery (more taxpayer money), or lipstick will pretty up this pig.

What will help, however, is for someone to sue the state Dept of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and the BRA for colluding in the illegal approval of a six-year extension of 14 Urban Renewal Plan areas covering 3,000 acres of central Boston. As of August 28, the BRA's Plan powers there are gone. Those Plans expired, and the state's unlawful approval, which violated its own regulations, is not legally valid. All it takes is one legal challenge and the whole thing will unravel. I'm amazed that all those well-paid lawyers in the BRA and the City Law Department aren't warning Walsh of the legal exposure this has created.

What would also help is to strip the BRA of its planning board power, handed to the BRA through 1960 state legislation demanded by Ed Logue, and putting it back into City Council oversight as part of their legislative function so there is some public accountability. (I know -- the City Council -- eye-roll, yawn, shrug, sigh -- but maybe if they had their rightful responsibilities, we'd get better candidates; in any case, it's direct ballot-box accountability.)

And it would also help to strip the BRA of its power to declare sites "blighted" to qualify developers for tax and zoning exemption under MGL Chapter 121A.

There are other things too, but these are the keys.

Meanwhile, Walsh is using the BRA as his gloves and mask in handing our $150 million Winthrop Square garage property to a politically wired developer in a sweetheart deal that would shock the world -- if anyone ever knew what it was, which we won't (e.g., it will unspokenly include the BRA conveniently forgetting to collect the $50 million in the developer's bid that would be payments made over time as condos are sold). I don't know exactly how the BRA plans to get ownership of this land, since both of the usual ploys -- eminent domain taking and a $1 "sale" by PFC -- will violate state or city laws, respectively. But it is the BRA, which, as a city lawyer once told me, "makes everything that's illegal legal," and which, as the BRA once told me, is "bulletproof in court," so we know somehow he'll hand it to them, and "catch me if you can." The BRA and the City (remember, they are not the same!) have already signed a Memo of Agreement allowing the BRA itself and the developer to rake off as much of the other $100 million of the bid as they wish, draining away what should go to the City as "net proceeds." From such a valuable property, the City will get bupkis, just as happened with Hayward Place, while we're about to close schools, vote for a property tax increase to pay for parks and affordable housing, etc etc.

As one former BRA director testified to City Council: "The BRA was created to throw the people off the land and do the dirty things, and keep the Mayor's hands clean and protect him from political retribution." The BRA's power is the Mayor's power; he runs it and it serves him, running interference against the City Council and the people of Boston. And he in turn, is run by and serves the development industry. The rest of us are just a plantation, a colony of which the BRA, on behalf of the Mayor's paymasters, is the imperial power.

And that's our Boston, the cradle of democracy, the hub of the universe.

Am I the only one who naturally read this as "Boston Public Display of Affection" ???