~ Op-Ed ~ Stadium or no Stadium? Is that really the question or just more Everett politics?

By Peter Napolitano, Candidate for City Council, Ward 1

I am a lifelong Everett resident, a former City Councilor and a taxpayer. At the last City Council meeting, I spoke about the referendum regarding construction of a professional soccer stadium and the potential to send the wrong message to the public. Ten years ago, the City Council started the process to convert lower Broadway into an Entertainment District. Four existing members on the current Council and myself as a then Councilor, worked hard to make the transformation of Everett’s defunct industrial area into a viable, income generating part of our city.

Let me ask you, what type of entertainment venue could afford to tear down this 100-year-old power plant, a building that cannot be repurposed into something else. They will need to remediate and clean up all the land to build new, safe construction? This is ultra expensive, and this project will take years to complete. Traffic is always a concern, but all the traffic studies after Encore opened show that only lower Broadway has been affected and it has had little impact on the rest of Everett. There is an argument that there is no public parking at the stadium. How much parking does Fenway Park have? Fenway Park relies exclusively on public transportation and is larger and hundreds of times busier than the soccer stadium will ever be. Fans will have to take advantage of public transportation, and those authorities have years to work out a viable transportation plan. Additionally, as the Community Benefits Agreement, which the city is currently negotiating, is worked out, the sheer number of Everett community services that will be assisted as the Kraft Group has done in Foxborough, will be a large boon to our community.

There is another part to this that gets little or no discussion. Phase Two of the Encore development across the street from the Casino was put on hold last year. Construction of a professional soccer stadium next door should bring Encore back to the table. When we started the rezoning of lower Broadway, we had a vision for the future of that area. The City Council waffling on this issue by passing the referendum and handing it off to the mayor to kill instead of being decisive. Negotiations are in the process, and the City should not leave anything on the table, but let’s not undermine the negotiations with a lot of mixed signals. All that matters is whether this is good for Everett and in my opinion, in the long run, it is.