Mayor Wu says interest is growing in downtown office-housing conversion program
'We're still going by trying to expand the footprint of what kinds of buildings will qualify for that,' Wu said.
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Actual construction, though,
Wu rattled off several other city housing initiatives: a $110 million 'Housing Accelerator Fund' to help jump-start market-rate housing stalled by high borrowing and construction costs, selling off surplus city-owned sites, streamlining permitting for big projects, implementing citywide zoning, and a newly launched 'co-purchasing' pilot program to help households team up to buy multifamily properties.
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281 Franklin Street is the first office-to-residential conversion to begin construction in downtown Boston.
Lane Turner/Globe Staff
And she fielded a separate question from Thomson about buttressing the city's competitiveness, by indicating that perhaps the most important attraction for businesses is 'making sure Boston is a city where employees, where people, want to build their lives.'
There was little indication of how some of Wu's more progressive policies — increased requirements for affordable housing, for example, or climate-friendly construction — faces resistance in some corners of the business community. A number of prominent executives have donated to her most prominent challenger in the fall election, Josh Kraft, a former nonprofit executive and one of Patriots owner Robert Kraft's sons.
To introduce Wu at the AIM event, M&T Bank regional president Grace Lee talked about how the mayor stood her ground before confrontational members of Congress in March, over immigration policies.
'Mayor Wu bore the weight of our city, the weight of our state [and], I felt, the weight of our nation,' Lee said. 'Everyone that needed a voice, she stood up for.'
Wu hearkened back to that moment in Washington when Thomson asked about the mayor's controversial rollout of more bike lanes, a rollout that Kraft targeted
'When I was sitting in that congressional hearing room in D.C.,' Wu recalled, 'and the questions were coming fast and furious and trying to, you know, call me names, and this and that, I quickly realized, ... none of these congressional Republicans have been in a bike lane meeting in the city of Boston.'
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This is an installment of our weekly Bold Types column about the movers and shakers on Boston's business scene.
Jon Chesto can be reached at
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