The development slowdown highlights the downside of asking waterfront builders to bulk up the city’s protections against sea level rise
By Erin Douglas and Catherine Carlock Globe Staff,Updated April 5, 2024, 5:56 a.m.
In a semi-industrial corner of South Boston’s waterfront, the century-old Boston Edison power plant stands, gutted and stripped, on land awaiting condos, labs, shops, and cafes. It will all be on land that’s been built up by 5 feet and protected by a bolstered, remade sea wall to defend both the multibillion-dollar development and the homes behind it from climate change.
Butconstruction on the project, like with many others in Boston and beyond, has faced delays since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The global real estate downturn has made it harder than ever to finance massive private developments and constrained the city’s efforts to adapt to climate change. Several flood-protection projects like sea walls, berms, and elevated land are tangled up in the same large developments that now face slowdowns, with build dates made uncertain by global economic forces.
All of it demonstrates the risk of the city’s strategy — across multiple mayoral administrations — of leaning on the private sector to help pay for an essential public good, multiple coastal resilience experts told the Globe.
“If there’s no market for real estate or no financing, you get stalled,” said Bud Ris, a senior adviser for the Boston Green Ribbon Commission who advised the city on its climate resilience plan. “At the moment, it’s sort of difficult to see how all of this is going to get financed.”
In an emailed statement, city spokesperson Stacia Sheputa said Boston’s climate adaptation strategy is not wholly reliant on development. The city is targeting its attention on easily penetrated areas of the coastline such as South Boston’s Moakley Park and Long Wharf downtown, Sheputa said, and determining how to ensure that flood pathways on the shores continue to be blocked “in the case that development does not proceed at the expected pace.”
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