Opens 270,000 sq ft, Not All, Protected Wholesale Trade & Warehouse Space to R&D

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Please Attend To Support This Balanced Proposal

  June 28th, 7:30, City Council Chambers - 2134 Martin Luther King Jr. Way (between Center & Allston)

On May 31st the City Council majority voted to direct staff to return on June 28th with language implementing a compromise on how much Protected Wholesale Trade & Warehouse Space to open to R&D.  WEBAIC believes this compromise represents a reasonable solution to this contentious issue and requests you attend the upcoming Council meeting to show your support for the compromise and the Council members who voted for it.  As the compromise is not official City policy until this vote (and a more perfunctory future second reading) takes place, our supportive presence is required.

As stated previously, WEBAIC truly appreciates the votes of those Council members who took a balanced approach to supporting productive industrial activity that provides family wage jobs to people without a college education, while at the same time providing a large, more than adequate amount of space for R&D companies and the good jobs they provide their highly educated workforce.  This approach supports our local economy, results in a stable revenue stream for the City, provides good jobs benefiting all our citizens as well as important goods and services, and accomplishes all this without needlessly dividing our community.

The Mechanics of the Compromise: 

A Total of 270,000 sq ft of protected Wholesale Trade & Warehouse Space in the Mixed Use Light Industrial Zone (MULI) and Mixed Manufacturing Zone (MM) will be permitted to be occupied by R&D uses.  The entire 270,000 sq ft can come from vacant space but only 150,000 of the total can come from space that was occupied as of 5/1/2011 by existing Wholesale Trade and Warehouse companies. 

As the City doesn’t have comprehensive records of space utilization, it’s unclear how much Protected Wholesale Trade and Warehouse space exists in the MULI and MM, but from the available (though incomplete) data it’s clear that 270,000 square feet is significantly less than the total.  By limiting the vacant space category to space vacant as of 5/1/11, no property owner is incentivized by the compromise to take any action that would result in displacing a Wholesale Trade/Warehouse tenant beyond the 150,000 sq ft agreed to.

As in all compromises, this isn’t the ideal solution for either WEBAIC or for those on the other side of the table, but it is a significantly less negative outcome for our membership and constituency than the proposal previously on the table – to open ALL Protected Wholesale Trade and Warehouse space to R&D.

It is only through your efforts thus far that WEBAIC was in a position to reach this compromise.  Please attend the City Council meeting on the 28th to assure that all our work together comes to fruition.