Franklin Park abutters erupt in rage over city's White Stadium plan

A meeting held in Franklin Park June 11 to discuss parking and transportation issues around White Stadium was contentious at times with residents yelling at city officials on hand to discuss the finer points of their lease agreement with a professional women’s soccer club set to make partial use of the re-built facility in Franklin Park next year.

“For me and for my brother and for my brother’s partner, it’s going to destroy our way of life,” said Carl Williams, an attorney who lives on Humboldt Avenue, about a block away from the park. “You guys sold the crown jewel of the Emerald Necklace. You know that on the Boston Common it is against the law to make a public/private partnership, and you sold us out.”

Williams and other Roxbury, Dorchester and Jamaica Plain residents at the meeting, held at the William Devine Clubhouse, expressed ire at the city officials present, including Dion Irish, Boston’s chief of operations and representatives of the Parks Department, Transportation Department and Boston Public Schools. Many remain upset over the city’s agreement to lease White Stadium to Boston Unity Soccer Partners, an investment group seeking to use the Boston Public Schools-controlled stadium as the home turf for Boston Legacy Football Club.

The dispute has been entangled in a lawsuit, which remains the subject of a Supreme Judicial Court review this month.

Under the terms of the lease, the team is entitled to 20 games per year at the stadium. Under the city’s current plan, parking in and around the park will be restricted on game days. Soccer spectators will be required to take shuttle buses from remote lots or MBTA stations or to use public transit or ride share services to travel to and from the park.

Other visitors to Franklin Park will be required to request a parking pass that would enable them to park for a limited time. Residents of the surrounding neighborhoods will be required to obtain a resident parking permit to park at their homes.

City officials billed the meeting as a “fair”, and asked residents who attended for input on specific decisions, including a choice of colors for the carpeting to be used in the interior of the grandstands.

Residents were also asked to weigh-in on just how far from the stadium the restricted parking zone should extend — a half-mile, three quarters of a mile, one mile, or a mile-and-a-half.

But many who turned out weren’t interested in engaging in those exercises.

“Democracy is not f—ing multiple choice,” Williams shouted at the city officials.

Officials in the administration of Mayor Michelle Wu began meeting with members of Boston Unity Soccer Partners in September of 2022, according to copies of emails obtained by the Boston Herald, and crafted a request for proposals for the redevelopment of the stadium while consulting with the investors. When the request for proposals was released in April of 2023, Boston Unity Soccer Partners was the sole bidder.

Critics say that the Wu administration did not adhere to protocol followed in other instances in which community members were consulted before land is put out for a public bid.

“The mayor of Boston called seven meetings to meet with the residents of Charlestown who are concerned about the potential traffic impact of the soccer stadium in Everett,” said former state Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, a Dorchester resident. “She was concerned about environmental and traffic issues, so she called the meetings and she goes to the meetings, and she showed up in person. She has never agreed to have one conversation with us.”

Others in the meeting questioned the larger impacts of the city’s current parking and transportation plans.

“I mapped the routes from the satellite parking lots as they are laid out,” said Dorchester resident Marti Glynn. “Two of them go down the VFW Parkway, the West Roxbury Parkway, Centre Street, the Arborway. Anybody know what’s the common word his here? Parkway? It is illegal in Massachusetts to travel with commercial vehicles on a parkway without a special permit.”

Priscilla Andrade, who lives on Montebello Road, said she visited businesses on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain to ask whether they had been informed of the game-day parking restrictions.

“None of them knew this was happening,” she said.

Dorchester resident Reggie Stewart noted that the city’s parking restricted zone for game days could reach as far as Harambee Park in Dorchester’s Franklin Field, where he regularly walks. Stewart and others said game day restrictions could affect churches, the Roxbury YMCA and local businesses such as the District 7 Café in Roxbury and the Midway Café in JP.

“I don’t see how this radius makes any sort of sense,” he said.

The city’s new Parks Commissioner Diana Fernandez Bibeau said commercial parking districts, which generally have two-hour limits, would not be affected by the parking restrictions.

“Commercial zones are going to continue to operate as normal,” she said.

But Stewart and others noted that many of the businesses people currently patronize are in areas with residential parking.

“On game days, their businesses are effectively shut down,” he said.

Stewart asked city officials whether patrons of the Harvard Street Neighborhood Health Center, which sits across from Franklin Park on Blue Hill Avenue, would be able to park without being ticketed and towed.

“Are you all even considering the way in which you upend Black life?” he said. “Health care, houses of worship, businesses or just parking on our streets. This is just normal, everyday interaction of human beings. You’re turning it completely upside down.”

The city officials present did not respond to most of the residents statements. Following the meeting, Irish said city officials would seek to incorporate residents’ concerns into their transportation and parking plans.

“There are definitely a lot of strong feelings that we definitely want to hear to help inform an improved version that includes the feedback we’re hearing tonight,” he said. “I think people really understand how the game-day parking restrictions will impact them, what accommodations can be made for them for special events.”

Irish said the city hasn’t yet decided on the size of the parking restricted area and noted that some people don’t want a parking-protected zone at all. The zone is meant to discourage stadium visitors from using on-street parking near White Stadium, but as currently envisioned by the city, could restrict neighborhood residents from hosting parties and cookouts on game days.

“We’re going to continue to try to find ways to get that type of granular feedback that is going to be important to what the final product is,” he said.