White Stadium opponents call for meeting with Mayor Wu, draw comparison to Everett stadium project

A week after Mayor Michelle Wu bashed the Kraft Group’s proposed Everett stadium and its impact on the Charlestown community, opponents of the White Stadium project called out what they see as an “insulting and disrespectful” double standard Monday.

“We’re asking the mayor to stop doing what she’s doing in Charlestown one time and come speak to us about how we feel and how we’re going to be impacted,” said Louis Elisa, president of the Garrison Charter Neighborhood Association and Franklin Park Coalition member. “The money that she’s negotiated for this neighborhood, they found that they wouldn’t accept it in Charlestown, but they think it’s good for us. It’s not, and this is not good for us.”

Opponents of the White Stadium project, which is currently under construction through a private-public partnership to host a professional women’s soccer team, gathered in Franklin Park on Monday to express frustration with Mayor Wu’s communications.

Wu hosted a press conference in Charlestown last week, criticizing out the Kraft Group’s plan for a men’s soccer stadium in Everett. The mayor said the group’s mitigation plan for the impacts on Charlestown is a “non-starter.”

While the Kraft Group has offered $750,000 for the project’s impact on Charlestown, speakers said Monday, the neighborhoods around White Stadium are only slated to receive $500,000 in impact mitigation money.

Speakers also noted they still have not seen an environmental review or transportation plan for the White Stadium project, despite Wu’s calls for the same information for the Everett stadium.

“We said, ‘Where was the study? Where was the transportation review?,” said Dianne Wilkerson, a resident of the Roxbury and Dorchester area for 45 years. “Quiet. Crickets. Nothing. She’s demanding one for Charlestown. On a stadium that’s going to be an Everett. This is at the point where this is indefensible.”

Wilkerson said the “city of Boston and the mayor of this city has refused to even discuss it with us” and they have “never had a meeting” with Wu.

“We’re sitting here, 98% people of color, concerned that we’re about to get completely overrun and shut down,” said Wilkerson, a former state senator busted by the feds on a bribery charge.

A city spokesperson responded Monday and said the “process to shape the project design, lease terms, and usage agreement for White Stadium included more than 60 public meetings, over 1000 public comment letters, and many public hearings and votes by regulatory commissions.”

The White Stadium project has had the “most community engagement that has ever been incorporated to shape a public facilities project,” the spokesperson said, and “Mayor Wu has been directly and heavily involved,” including meeting with community members and organizations “like the Franklin Park Coalition.”

“Through this engagement, the City negotiated and signed binding legal documents guaranteeing community benefits, mitigation, neighborhood involvement, and supplier diversity for the project and the park,” the city spokesperson said. “The Mayor has also joined three community meetings with Charlestown residents on the proposed Revs stadium and held one press conference on that stadium.”

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The press conference at Franklin Park on Monday included City Councilor Erin Murphy and council candidates Sharon Hinton, Wawa Bell, and community activist and mayoral candidate  Domingo DeRosa.

Elisa stated the neighborhood residents are “concerned that we’re being neglected, disrespected and treated like second class citizens in our own city.”

Mayoral candidate Josh Kraft released a statement on the community’s press event, stating it’s “clear that the Mayor has decided Bostonians don’t deserve to have any input on what happens to their beloved community landmarks, to their neighborhoods, to their quality of life.”

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