SouthWest Corridor in need of repair

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ADRIAN WALKER
Park stuck in neutral
By Adrian Walker, Globe Columnist | February 9, 2006

You might think of Southwest Corridor Park as a dream deferred.

The 4.7-mile expanse, which runs from Back Bay Station to Jamaica Plain, was planned as an urban showcase. It's never become that, exactly. Stretches of it are lovely, while others bear witness to benign neglect.

Perhaps that's to be expected of a large urban park that is mostly maintained by neighbors and volunteers, instead of by the state government responsible for it.

''Things are just not maintained, to be very simple about it," Donna Johnson of the Southwest Corridor Park Conservancy, which was formed 14 months ago to advocate for the park, said in a phone call yesterday.

The conservancy was started because the parks were already woefully short on cash and attention. ''I can tell you that the people who work in the parkland are just very discouraged," Johnson said. ''This is our park and we've always been proud of it, and we're embarrassed to come out here now."

Governor Mitt Romney's proposed budget includes funding for newly established parkland along the Central Artery and on Spectacle Island. Beach preservation is slated for a modest increase. The upkeep and maintenance of urban parks, however, comes in for a slash of $607,000.

To some degree, the cut was predictable.

First, the parks system has not fared well in general under Romney. Stephen Burrington, the commissioner of the Department of Conservation and Recreation, conceded as much in an interview last year.

''When you don't have enough people to go around, and there are only so many hours in the week, even the things that any ordinary person would think there ought to be a way to do can't get done," Burrington said in November.

In 1989, when it was still being built, Southwest Corridor Park had a staff of 24. That became a staff of three several years ago. While there is as manager for the corridor, that manager has no operating budget.

This would be a shame anywhere, but it's especially troubling in the middle of the city, where green space is scarce to begin with.

''The fact that they took any whack at all -- given the condition we know all of the urban parks are in -- seems like a really misplaced thing to do," said Kathy Abbott, director of the conservation and recreation campaign of the Trust For Public Land.

The administration has its own take on who's to blame. ''You could always do more with the state parks system," spokesman Joe O'Keefe said yesterday. ''The bottom line for the past few years is that the governor has recommended greater amounts for DCR than the Legislature has provided."

That isn't true of the current fiscal year, not to nitpick. The Legislature ultimately appropriated about $1.25 million more than Romney requested.

Generally, battles about the budget are routine government business. This is different, though, because it underscores a consistent lack of concern for parks -- an area that just doesn't excite the governor.

Abbott, in a phone interview, said there has been a subtle but steady erosion of maintenance of public space, and of public expectations.

''We don't notice that the grass isn't being cut, or that the weeds are 6 feet tall, or that the litter isn't being picked up until we can get a prison crew out there. It hurts what should be a very significant asset."

So Boston is left with a huge undermaintained 4.7-mile swath that falls far short of the vision of a park that connects many of the city's core neighborhoods.

There is that new money, though, for the Artery and Spectacle Island. They figure to be lovely once they are done. Maybe someone in the administration will think to run buses to them from Roxbury and Jamaica Plain.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.

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