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BRA rebrands with forward-facing name

BPDA logos

Meet the Boston Planning and Development Agency. And try to say BPDA three times fast.

We established a brand strategy that reflects the organizational reforms underway and will inspire greater trust and confidence from the people it serves - the residents and community members of Boston. ...

As we change internally, we need to change externally as well. Our logo has been around since we were founded in 1957, and doesn’t accurately describe us as we are now, and how we plan to be in the future. It’s overdue for a reboot. Updating our logo will signal to the community that we’ve changed - and to us that we must continually fulfill our new brand promise.

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Comments

I need me some political connections.

So in the past they were "Redevelopment". Their charter was supposed to end when they were done with their task of redeveloping. So if they've moved on to the Boston Planning and Development Agency of their own volition - isn't that unambiguously admitting that their reason for being has ended and they should be disbanded?

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Doesn't this name change invalidate some state-level legislation enabling their criminal behavior ostensibly as a "public good"?

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They'll still refer to it as BRA/EDIC in the fine print.

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If Marty Walsh would let Boston students walk to the crappy school in their own neighborhood instead of busing them to an equally crappy school in another neighborhood, he could "re-brand" the BRA more than 100 times a year with the savings.

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They tried figuring out how to do that for 10 years. And at the end, they realized it wouldn't save much because the city would still have to bus special-needs kids across the city - and pay for transportation for charter-school kids and deal with the fact there aren't enough neighborhood seats in some neighborhoods anyway.

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You can put lipstick on a pig and its still a pig.

Same with the BPDA, unless there was a big shake up in management.. it's just the same shit and same smell, we just call it something different now.

The only winners are the consultants who came up with that new name... winning all the way to the bank.

And BPDA.. Either I keep thinking BPA (additive in plastic), or PDA (public display of affection)...

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Or maybe a designer drug...

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After reading your comment BPDA does remind me of an MDMA analogue name.. MPPD, bk-MDMA, MPDE, MDE, MDA, and on and on and on.

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...

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LOL yeah every time I see the BRSA (Boston Street Railway Association) I think MRSA

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that stuff you don't want your water bottle made out of.

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$670,000 for a new name and website. What else could have been done with that money?

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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)?

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

If I say more, I'll be blackballed

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You didn't need to say anything... I think what you've already said has been established years ago. They don't care what the community thinks.

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"we don't care what the community thinks".

Why should they? They're not elected; they're funded by the developers; they're neither responsible to nor accountable to the public.

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The BRA made $60 million in 2016, and spent $60 million, paying about $20million in salaries to 240 people. They don't take money from the City (nor do they contribute), so no, they don't care what the average citizen thinks.

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They are not funded by developers. They are funded by properties they own and lease out, mainly at the Charlestown Navy Yard.

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They are funded by stealing property from the city.

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the Design Center and 12 Channel St. I'm certain they own more.

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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.

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This now makes the FOURTH "Continuum" based in Boston.. sheesh companies need to pick new names (including a Continuum I used to work for).

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Please discontinuum the further use of Continuum a name consideration.

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Well, this Continuum was founded in 1983, so...I don't think they will change their name at this point.

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try to say BPDA three times fast

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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.

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MBTA rebrand in 3, 2, 1...

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Instead of disbanding the BRA and replacing it with an actual planning agency, which the city desperately needs, we're simply going to relabel the BRA as a "planning agency."

For some reason I'm reminded of the name, "Democratic People's Republic of Korea."

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Kim Jong Un really ought to rename it "West Korea" since it is the best korea.

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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?

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I hate to break it to you but the gentrification you so lament is not the fault of the BRA. In fact in most of these neighborhoods you speak of, the BRA barely played any role at all until land prices reached astronomical prices and developers started seeking variances to build larger buildings.

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"the BRA barely played any role"

Clueless.

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How about removal, as in get rid of bring back under city control. Why do we need a $60 million a year extra government authority doing planning an development? another failure to deliver by Mayor Walsh. Schools? BRA? and oh yes doing something about the boondoggle that is city hall. No a skating rink is not an answer.

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$60 million a year would make this one of the largest departments in the city.

Just sayin'.

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Side by side up to date narrative text descriptions of Boston Precincts' Boundaries are needed with maps of Precincts. Side by side up to date narrative text descriptions of Boston Wards' Boundaries are needed with maps of Wards.

The authoritative official Document of narrative text describing Boundaries of Precincts is out of reach. The authoritative official Document of narrative text describing Boundaries of Wards is out of reach. Up to date authoritative official Documents should be online with Amendments and proper legal Citations.

examples
http://bostonwardsprecincts.blogspot.com

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This is meaningless without structural changes. I'm waiting for separate agencies of planning and development.

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"BPDA" doesn't roll off the tongue, and it's easily conflated with other acronyms for bipolar disorder, personal digital assistant, or the Boston police department. But where some look and see ambiguity, I see a shining path to clarity: we'll call them BPandDA, pronounced "be panda." As an added bonus, pandas are asocial loners who answer to no one, they spend their lives wandering around slothfully consuming all the food they can find, and they rely on the Herculean efforts of outsiders to keep them from going extinct. Has a more pitch-perfect metaphor ever presented itself?

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makes it easier for them to do backroom deals inconspicuously. How many people are going to remember these 4-letter initialisms and big long names that are confused for each other, every time they see a mention of corruption in the news, and realize it's this one particular organization.

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This is, after all, the organization that has systematically ignored the history of the Seaport district as, well, a seaport while plopping up tower after tower without regard to the vulnerabilities 30 to 50 years out.

Or are they just planning to ignore/destroy Chapter 91 in favor of a massive amount of waterfront that will run between the towers?

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BRA is very bad at planning. The Seaport makes that abundantly clear.

Almost like they thought they were making a cake or a lego layout and forgot that whole bit about "how do people get in and out of this space" and "gee, we have a lot of people - maybe we need more transit and non-car things to help with that".

The place looks like a sixth-grader's diorama of a "city for Godzilla to destroy".

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The Seaport's giant roads and lack of transit are a MassDOT problem, not a BRA problem. Not that the BRA is without blame for the state of the Seaport, but their responsibility was mainly with the blandness of the architecture and the excessively large and simplistic building footprints.

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

Slime, slime, slime.

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Big
Pain in
De
Ass

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I liked BRA... cuz we could make so many bra jokes with it :-)

"It's the fit that makes the fashion"

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

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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.

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Shirley Kressel knows and will continue to fight the devil in whatever form it may take since no one else in this city seems to have a spine to stand up to what amounts to a state-sanctioned mafia family running a real-estate racket. The BRA is only powerful because everyone is too chickenshit to take them to court on a regular basis.

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Adam, why isn't this post called "Burn the BRA"?

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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.

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If this is true, people should be in prison.

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

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Or Boston Personal Digital Assistant.

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