An investor group and Boston Mayor Michelle Wu are proposing to tear down White Stadium in Boston’s Franklin Park and replace it with a 10,000-seat sports complex that will house a professional women’s soccer team and Boston Public Schools athletic programs. Image courtesy of Stantec

A quarter-century separates Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s controversial soccer palace plans and the city’s last major sports stadium battle.

Yet despite the passage of time, there is a striking similarity between the now-$200 million proposal by Wu and BOS Nation and the ill-fated Red Sox plan for a New Fenway.

That would be the arrogance displayed by the proponents of both stadium proposals, from the mayoral suite to the teams themselves.

In the spring of 1999, Red Sox CEO John Harrington unveiled plans for a monstrous, 44,000-plus-seat New Fenway Park.

The proposal called for not only demolishing the hallowed 1912 ballpark, but also seizing a swath of buildings and properties next door on which to build the giant stadium.

Harrington enlisted the help of Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who threw the might of City Hall and its eminent domain powers behind the ill-fated stadium plan.

There was even a built-in cheerleading section at The Boston Globe, with the reporter covering the ballpark proposal dating the team’s political strategist.

Menino, Sox Walked into Buzzsaw

Yet no one in power seemed to have banked on the very predictable outrage on part of the Fenway building owners and the businesses in the footprint of the new stadium.

These include none other than the publisher of the now-defunct, but then very much alive Boston Phoenix.

The late Stephen Mindich waged a journalistic crusade against the plan, which would have ousted the spunky, alternative weekly from its digs.

Neighborhood groups, not thrilled either with the prospect of a much bigger stadium, also rallied against the plan, sponsoring charettes aimed at demonstrating that old Fenway could be saved and renovated.

The Sox owners and their backers at City Hall dismissed opponents as a bunch of cranks, insisting that engineering reports showed that it was physically impossible to save old Fenway Park.

Meanwhile, the cost of the project kept on escalating, rising by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Team and city executives’ highhanded dismissal of their critics only made matters worse.

By December 2000, just 18 months after the new stadium plan was unveiled, the jig was up.

With neighboring landowners continuing to fight the New Fenway proposal tooth and nail, and banks steering clear of the massive and risky project, Harrington put the team up for sale and effectively pulled the plug the stadium plan.

The rest is history, with billionaire John Henry and his ownership group buying the team and adopting plans, dismissed as crazy by the Sox and City Hall, to renovate Fenway Park, not tear it down.

Another Stadium, Another Battle

Fast forward to 2024 and we have another mayor pushing another stadium plan, this time for a new women’s pro soccer team, BOS Nation, whose initial ad campaign, “Too Many Balls,” was case study in arrogance, offending a wide array of fans and constituencies.

The Boston Globe is also entangled in the whole scheme, with CEO Linda Henry, wife of billionaire owner John Henry, as a minority investor in the new women’s pro soccer team.

And once again, we have a stadium plan that has enraged the surrounding neighborhoods, and proponents who just don’t seem to get it.

While the Fenway plan involved seizing part of the neighborhood by eminent domain, the proposal by Wu and team owners Boston Unity Soccer Partners calls for building a new stadium in one of Boston’s biggest green spaces, Franklin Park, where the decrepit White Stadium high school field now stands.

And while the new stadium would include new Boston Public Schools athletic facilities with a completely rebuilt field and track, the overall footprint will expand dramatically. On game days, only ticket-holders will have access.

Oh yeah, and to build this new sports palace, at least 145 trees in the Frederick Law Olmsted-designed park will be sent to the woodchipper.

Scott Van Voorhis

Project’s Cost Doubles

A new group, Franklin Park Defenders, has teamed up with the Emerald Necklace Conservancy to battle the proposal, with a lawsuit winding its way through state court. It’s scheduled to go to trial in March.

Yet Wu and the high-powered local investors behind BOS Nation and its stadium appear determined to ignore the project’s opponents and forge ahead with their plan.

Even recent revelations that the project’s price tag had doubled to $200 million, pushing the city’s portion to $91 million at a time when the city’s budget is under strain, hasn’t triggered any pause or reset.

Pressed about the ballooning cost of plans to build the 11,000-seat soccer stadium in Boston’s historic Franklin Park, Wu, during a recent appearance on GBH’s Boston Public Radio, vowed to “pay for our half of the stadium, no matter what it costs.”

So, will Wu and BOS Nation manage to succeed where Menino and the Red Sox failed?

The jury is still out on this one.

That said, there are now calls for BOS Nation to team with the New England Revolution on its plans to build a new stadium on the Everett waterfront.

It’s an idea that a prominent Boston Globe columnist has begun to push as well.

And if Wu, despite her bluster about paying whatever it takes to get the stadium built, is looking for an exit strategy, it’s there for the taking.

Scott Van Voorhis is Banker & Tradesman’s columnist and publisher of the Contrarian Boston newsletter; opinions expressed are his own. He may be reached at sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com.