Big Dig Snafu Delays Boston Greenway Projects

Engineering and safety concerns threaten to slow the surface development that will cap Boston's 15-year, $15 billion Central Artery/Third Harbor Tunnel project.

The Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, the 27-acre crescent freed by the Big Dig with the removal of the elevated portion of Interstate 93, is zoned for parks, civic structures, and private development. But the complex engineering required to build over the tunnel is a major hurdle, particularly in the aftermath of July’s ceiling collapse in the Interstate 90 connector tunnel. Repair work, an engineering review of the Big Dig tunnels, and a reassessment of the Greenway could lead to further changes and delays.

Safety concerns, and politics, delayed the development agreement for the first major Greenway project, the Daniel Libeskind–designed New Center for Arts and Culture.

With the development agreement in hand, the developer would need six months to assess “all the things necessary to construct our building on that site,” says New Center chairman, developer Ronald Druker. “We don’t know what we're building on.”

Building on top of such extensive and varied underground structures will test designers and puts the onus on Big Dig officials to relay mountains of engineering data to developers.