Hopefully, this amazing project will proceed.
Governor hopes to revive waterfront development plans tossed out by judge
By Tim Logan Globe Staff,Updated May 3, 2021, 7:40 a.m.
A month after a Suffolk County judge tossed out harbor development plans across the state — including a much-debated one in downtown Boston — the Baker administration is trying for a quick fix that would allow waterfront buildings to go forward again.
State environmental officials on Friday began the process of reapproving 17 municipal harbor plans that govern building along waterfronts from Gloucester to New Bedford, hoping that will be faster than appealing the recent court decision, which said the state has been improperly approving the plans for decades.
The ruling has thrown a number of big projects into legal limbo, not least among them developer Don Chiofaro’s plan for a 600-foot tower on the site of the Boston Harbor Garage.
Opponents of that project — the Conservation Law Foundation and Chiofaro’s neighbors at the Harbor Towers condominium complex — filed suit against Boston’s 2018 downtown harbor plan. They argued that the state erred in having then-environmental affairs secretary Matt Beaton sign off on the plan instead of the more bureaucratic Department of Environmental Protection — as is spelled out in state law.