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Forget Widett Circle.
If Boston Mayor Michelle Wu wants “a temporary new approach” to alleviate the Mass and Cass drug and homeless nightmare, she should consider utilizing Fenway Park.
The ballpark is empty and will remain empty until the spring when the hapless Boston Red Sox return for another dismal season. The last placed hometown team’s last 2023 game was Sunday in Baltimore.
Not that relocating the tent dwelling for down and out drug addicted souls from Mass and Cass is a solution to the problem. But relocating them to Fenway Park for the winter would give Wu time to come up with a better idea.
It would also bring the homeless in from the cold. It would end the practice of tearing down the tents only to have them shortly reappear and give Boston time to clean up the crime-ridden area.
Pitching their tents in the enclosed structure of Fenway Park would at least provide some relief from winter storms as well as a sense of security. Crime and violence at Mass and Cass has been an ongoing problem.
It would also allow Boston Police the ability to recognize and take out drug dealers currently operating in the open-air Mass and Cass drug market. These are dealers who prey on the 100 to 150 or so drugged out residents who make Mass and Cass their home.
Authorities would have much more control if the drug addicts were housed in Fenway Park where they would be protected from predators, at least temporarily.
The Fenway Park idea is proposed in the wake of a failed neighborhood $10 million proposal to relocate the homeless encampment at Mass and Cass (Massachusetts Ave. and Melnea Cass Boulevard) in the South End to a proposed permanent recovery campus at nearby Widett Circle on land owned by the MBTA.
Wu, while thanking the residents for their idea, said the plan was not feasible and Gov. Maura Healey shot it down anyway.
Wu’s ultimate plan is to send homeless drug users to city owned Long Island to be treated at existing structures that need restoration. To do so, however, the city needs to rebuild the Long Island Bridge that was demolished in 2014 for safety reasons.
While the city has received a key permit to rebuild the bridge, it still faces opposition from Quincy officials and residents. The only road to the bridge goes through the Squantum section of Quincy.
That solution, if it ever takes place, is in the future. Wu needs to clean up Mass and Cass now, if only on a temporary basis. It would at least show that she was on top of the problem.
However, getting Fenway Park to agree to the proposal is another thing.
The park and the Boston Red Sox are owned by John Henry who also owns the Boston Globe, which his wife Linda Pizzuti runs.
The owners have been staunch supporters of all things progressive and woke, including minority rights, diversity, inclusion, civil rights, equity, LGBTQIA+ rights, child trans rights, racism, illegal immigration, drug addiction and homelessness, so the idea is worth considering.
Not only would it be a helping hand to the city and the state, but it would also make national headlines and boost the image of Henry, the Red Sox and the Boston Globe.
The idea is not as far-fetched as it seems. John Henry made his progressive credentials quite clear when he bought the Red Sox and changed the name of Yawkey Way, named after philanthropist Tom Yawkey, his predecessor, to its original name of Jersey Street.
Henry said he was “haunted” by Yawkey’s alleged racism. The Red Sox under Yawkey were the lasts major league team to hire a black player.
Lost in the renaming was the fact that Jersey Street, like the neighboring streets in developing Boston in 1850, was named after an English noble—George Agustus Frederick Child Villiers, the 6th Earl of Jersey. His family, like the family of the others, made its fortune from the slave trade before the English abolished it in 1833.
But that’s another story.
Peter Lucas is a veteran Massachusetts political reporter and columnist.
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