Court Okays Taking City Land From South Boston Trust

BOSTON-When Mayor Thomas M. Menino refused to allow the South Boston Betterment Trust to develop 37 affordable housing units on city land it didn’t look good. The mayor had recently become embroiled in a scandal involving the nonprofit development group in which the organization lost millions of dollars in linkage payments and the stripping of city parcels smelled of political payback. The mayor received a vindication of sorts though when a judge ruled that his administration was justified in not allowing the development to go through.

The verdict states that the trust does not have an enforceable contract with the city to build on those 15 parcels of city land. According to the memorandum of the case, the trust had originally been designated as developers of the property in 1999, but that contract was for one year. After that term expired, the city did not reappoint the trust as developer. In court, the trust stated that its agreement with the city was still binding but the court agreed with the city that because it had not re-appointed the trust, it no longer had rights to develop the parcels.

Lawyers for the trust reportedly insist that it was denied the right to develop those parcels because of its involvement in the linkage payment scandal and the mayor’s desire to disassociate himself from the trust. The trust was established to collect linkage funds, which are payments that developers are required to give to the city to benefit the community to compensate for the disruption caused by their development. The trust signed a linkage deal over three years ago to get payments from firms developing the waterfront in its area. City officials at the time wanted to get South Boston’s support for the proposed convention center that would be built in that district.