East Boston

Our Mayor, Our East Boston

Nestled beyond Logan Airport is one of the city’s most densely populated neighborhoods: East Boston. Mayor Menino’s extensive quality of life upgrades to East Boston build on the community’s history, adding services while alleviating congestion. And the Mayor has often stood up for the community, opposing poorly planned airport expansion and ill-considered toll increase proposals for East Boston residents.

The Mayor’s success in redeveloping Maverick Gardens revitalized an aging public housing project, transforming it into a beautiful waterfront mixed-income community. State Senator Anthony Petruccelli, an East Boston native, whose mother grew up in Maverick Gardens, called it, “a model of what public housing should look like across Massachusetts.”

The Mayor’s Transportation Action Plan for East Boston enhanced pedestrian safety, improved traffic and provided more resident parking, including a Central Square redesign and new angled parking on Sumner Street. Central and Maverick Squares are both East Boston Main Streets districts, where the Mayor’s influential Main Streets program revitalized storefronts and promoted local business.

East Boston residents called for more green space, and Mayor Menino delivered. The East Boston Greenway project is a park along the historic Conrail railroad track connecting previously neglected parts of the waterfront to Pier’s Park, as well as the Boston Parks Stadium, Wood Island Bay and Belle Isle Marshes. The City of Boston’s purchase, added acres of new parkland and several miles of pedestrian trails and bike trail through East Boston’s center and along Bennington Street.

The Mayor understands that green space can also be active space, a philosophy achieved in the construction of the new East Boston Stadium, which features multi-sport fields, a playground, track, cricket area, leisure space and parking lot. The Mayor worked to renovate Breman Street Park, adding extensive playgrounds, a multi-purpose spray pool, sprawling lawns, a community garden, an amphitheater and a restoration of the historic WPA wall, involving local artists.

Our forward-looking Mayor is committed to investing in youth. In East Boston,  he supported ZUMIX, which provides top-quality cultural programming as an alternative for young people coping with negativity, and as a method of promoting cultural understanding and acceptance. Mayor Menino also supported schoolyard initiatives at the Curtis Guild, Kennedy, Adams, Otis and O’Donnell schools. Mayor Menino played an integral role in transforming the Engine Company 40 Firehouse into a larger and more inspiring space for this wonderful program.

 Launched in 2005, the “B-Smart” program realized the Mayor’s vision for building safe neighborhoods, in a large part by cracking down on motor vehicle theft to target at-risk youth.