Boston Unity Soccer Partners and the City of Boston can celebrate another win: after the contentious community transportation meetings of September 27 and October 4th, the November 29th meeting on supplier diversity and community benefits was a surprising change.  Over 110 people showed up to the online-only meeting led by Mayor Wu’s staff with markedly positive community response.  

The biggest victory came in the announcement that, through the design phase of the White Stadium rebuild, Boston Unity Soccer Partner has already achieved 50% inclusion of businesses owned by women and business owners of color. Heading into the construction and operations phase, the ownership group hopes to proceed in a similar vein, again aiming for a 50% women and minority owned businesses target; they pledged, at minimum, to comply with the City development plan which calls for at least 25% inclusion.  

The Boston ownership group appears to be aiming for a similar goal to that of the Kansas City Current who claim a majority of their design and construction team working on their new stadium is women and minority owned, as well.  The Boston Unity plan, as required by the City of Boston, also includes support and apprenticeship programs to help those businesses scale up to bid and execute such large projects.  Supports like these are essential to businesses who often struggle to expand in the face of historic discrimination.  

The other big announcement was that Boston Unity was creating a “$500K annual fund to be distributed to organizations and initiatives dedicated to four pillars:  

• Investments in Franklin Park and the Franklin Park Action Plan
• Youth Sports and Development
• Health and Wellness of Black and Brown Communities
• Local Business Development”

While all this is exciting news, the public is clearly ready to hold the ownership group and the city accountable to their stated diverse hiring goals and community investment. Community members came ready with multiple suggestions to push the City and the owners even further towards their goals.  

Mohamed Barrie, program director of WriteBoston’s Teens in Print, noted that the City has not yet met its goals for inclusive partnerships and said the City should work harder on that front because “we believe in being ambitious and doing what it takes” in Boston.

Ted Loska, Boston Public School teacher and coach suggested that the Boston Unity Annual Community Fund might be used to diversify the sports offered to girls in the public schools, noting that field hockey is not yet an option in the Boston Public Schools schools even though it flourishes in the surrounding area.  

Another speaker asked the participants to consider using unionized workers in all areas, but especially in food services,  because those jobs offer a more livable wage.  The DEI firm for Boston Unity noted that might be hard with a “vendor model” for food offerings that they are considering, presumably because the employees would be paid by the small businesses invited to sell food in the stadium.  Interestingly, Fenway park and the TD Garden, home of the Bruins and Celtics, are unionized. The Patriot’s Gillette Stadium is not.

A number of people also asked that Boston Unity Soccer Partners consider helping even more with the upkeep of the areas around the stadium that frequently are littered with trash and broken benches.  

Overall,  it seemed clear that the community members that showed up to this meeting were interested to see what could come out of the City of Boston’s partnership with Boston Unity Soccer Partners even though they clearly wanted to make sure the community got the best deal possible. Of the over one hundred members present, only  two participants, self-identified as abutters, spoke up in opposition:  one questioned the parking plan again and another person expressed a variety of reservations including concern over a potential “mushrooming rat population.” 

Still, the majority of the meeting had a very different feeling to the prior contentious transportation meetings.  For context, though, even those meetings were barely contentious  next to the downright hostile community meetings around the redevelopment of the state-run Shattuck Hospital located in  another part of Franklin Park, which, in soccer terms, got “very chippy.”  

The next meeting of the White Stadium Redevelopment is January 11 at 6pm for a look at the project’s overall impact on the community.  More details can be found on the City of Boston’s website here.