Real estate development in Boston is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get . . . approved.
(Although Boston Mayor-for-Life Tom Menino does. Just ask Don Chiafaro.)
Regardless, there is some real estate activity underway in the Hub, as Wednesday’s New York Times chronicled in a Square Feet feature that provides a better overview of local residential development than anything the Boston Globe or the Boston Herald have published recently.
To wit:
As Boston’s Economy Grows, Demand for Rental Units Outpaces Condo Market
BOSTON — Investments in multifamily rentals have been one of the few hot spots in a sputtering economy, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Boston area, where a high-tech economy is enjoying comparatively strong job growth.
In the last several weeks, city officials have allowed developers of three buildings with nearly 1,000 units to decrease or eliminate condominiums in favor of additional rentals. Over all, the Boston Redevelopment Authority expects construction to start this year on 21 buildings with a total of 1,855 apartments, nearly all rentals, compared with just 600 starts last year. Of those units 830 were once planned as condominiums, said the authority’s director, John Palmieri.
So BRA doesn’t stand for Boston Rejects Advances.
Who knew – reading the local papers at least?
(Pictured: Millennium Partners’ proposed Hayward Place residential development in Boston’s theater district.)
Campaign Outsider 
(1) By cute attempt at turn-of-phrase (BRA stands for “Boston Rejects Advances”) you appear to have completely misjudged the BRA. I challenge you to find one project that the BRA Board has rejected. One. They don’t know how to reject applications. They occasionally require small changes, but the BRA is virtually a rubber-stamp for what the mayor wants — and the mayor only demands changes on a small fraction of the development proposals. The BRA is intensely pro-development from top to bottom. It’s more like “Boston Ram-It-Through Authority.”
(2) The Boston Globe has been all over many of the various elements in the NY Times story you reference as they happen, such as conversions of projects from condos to rentals; if anything it is the NY Times that is late to the game. More accurate criticism would be that the Globe failed to write a single summary story that wrapped it all together in context like the NYT did. But that’s how the local/national media work: local media cover the story on a regular basis, and then the national media steps in with a high-level summary only after those trends are already fully fleshed out locally.
I don’t get your problem with #1, Michael. I didn’t say “BRA Rejects Advances.” Everyone (locally, at least) knows that Boston=Tom Menino.
As for #2, why all the hating on national media? I do get the Globe and the Herald delivered every day – I just don’t find them all that comprehensive on every issue. Which is what that post was actually about.