Wu says new White Stadium will ‘change the game,’ despite some neighborhood opposition
3 min read
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu says the plan to replace Franklin Park’s White Stadium through a partnership with a professional women’s soccer team will provide more opportunity for public use.
Speaking Tuesday on WBUR’s Radio Boston, Wu said the new stadium will be available for school and public use year-round.
“This is really going to change the game,” Wu said, calling the project a “once-in-a-generation investment in the park and in our student athletes.”
The Boston Parks Commission on Tuesday approved the public-private plan, delivering a victory to Wu, who has pushed hard to get the White Stadium deal off the ground.
“Yesterday we had a unanimous vote from the Boston Parks Commission which is a huge step and looking back at the process we have gone through, we truly are closer to delivering a beautiful, renovated new stadium than at any time in the last 75 years in Franklin Park,” Wu said.
While everyone seems to agree that the current White Stadium, built in 1949, is in an advanced state of disrepair, critics say Wu’s solution to fix it is a private taking of public property.
Under the proposed plan, a women’s professional soccer team will chip in $30 million toward building a new stadium on the site in Franklin Park. The city will cover the other $30 million in construction costs. In return, the club will host an expected 13 home games in the arena, and has been promised practice time on the field as well. That should mean the stadium will be available to the city 90% of the time, according to city officials.
Wu insists the project will be a win for the city and the neighborhood. Critics, however, are concerned about the loss of field time for Boston school athletes, partial privatization of a public resource, and the knock-on effects professional sports brings, like traffic and noise close to neighbors and park land. They’ve also said the city did not do enough to communicate with the surrounding community.
Wu pushed back on that criticism, saying the city held more than 50 public meetings and fielding more than 1,000 public comments on the project, which she said helped to shape the proposal.
“I have been in city government for over a decade at this point, and this is the most that I have ever seen a large project respond to public feedback,” she said. Some of those changes include reclaiming green space and reconsidering where fences are placed.
“The soccer games will be limited to a certain time on those evenings that they take place,” Wu said. She said the site can do “double duty” on those game days, with a new, eight-lane track available for school meets and morning walkers.
While a lawsuit looking to stop the stadium project continues in court, Wu said she intends to move forward with demolition in the fall, once the lease is signed and final permits are granted. The goal, she said, is to be ready for the 2026 season.
This is not the first time Wu has faced opposition from neighborhood groups in her pursuit of big plans. The mayor and school district have backed off of a plan that would have moved the John D. O’Bryant School of Math and Science from Roxbury to the former West Roxbury Educational Complex, forcing kids in some of the lowest-income neighborhoods into buses to reach what was once a walkable school. The placement would also have moved the school from a neighborhood of color to one that is predominantly white.
Wu and Boston Public Schools Superintendent Mary Skipper had touted the plan as the best way to expand both the O’Bryant and the Madison Park Technical Vocational High School, housed on the same Roxbury campus. But they ultimately relented in the face of stiff neighborhood opposition.
Wu was also harshly criticized by North End restaurateurs when she excluded the neighborhood from the city’s outdoor dining program. Wu said that the neighborhood’s tight streets and the nearby construction on the Sumner Tunnel, along with residential opposition, made the al fresco dining option untenable in the area. Several restaurant owners unsuccessfully sued the city over the exclusion.
Wu also spoke about the pending closure of Carney Hospital and the ongoing Steward Health Care bankruptcy, the electrification of the MBTA’s Fairmont Line, and Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz’s planned fundraising trip to Boston this week.
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