PHOTO 1 CAPTION: Peter Looney, chairman of the Charlestown Appreciation Awards Committee.

PHOTO 2 CAPTION: Unsung heroes: Dave and Sharlene Cahill.

While many people work tirelessly and selflessly to make Charlestown a better place, too often their work goes unnoticed. But on one night each year, these individuals get the recognition they deserve at the Charlestown Community Appreciation Awards Banquet.
Established by the Charlestown Neighborhood Council in 1991, the Charlestown Community Appreciation Committee acknowledges people throughout the community whose good deeds might otherwise go unnoticed, and since its inception, the committee has recognized more than 100 individuals and organizations.
Peter Looney has headed the committee since he took over for original chairman, Tom Cunha, in 1995. The committee also includes Treasurer Bill Galvin, Secretary Jim Mansfield, Ticket Chairman Bill McCabe, as well as members Pauline Carrier, Ruthellen Chardovoyne, Judy Evers, Kathy Giordano, Marty O’Brien Sr., Kara Ryan, Pat Simpson, David Whelan and Cunha.
This year’s 16th annual banquet takes place at the Knights of Columbus Hall on West School Street on Friday, May 4. The program is dedicated to Edna Kelly, a lifelong Charlestown resident and community activist who died this year. Looney is extending an invitation to any veteran of the Armed Services who served in Iraq or Afghanistan within the past year to be his guest at the banquet. This year’s award categories include Business, Organization, Public Service, New Resident, Senior, Youth and Unsung hero.
The recipient of this year’s business award is Pat Owens, owner of the Bunker Hill Barber Shop. Owens’ commitment to helping young people in the community is demonstrated through his work with Charlestown Little League and Charlestown Youth Hockey, as well as the barber shop’s recently-established scholarship fund for Charlestown students who wish to attend prep school.
Despite what he has done for Charlestown youth, Owens was shocked to hear that he would receive the award. “I didn’t even know I was nominated until the night before [winners were announced],” he said.
The Hayes Square Reunion Committee is the organization selected for this year’s Community Appreciation Award. Since 1985, the organization, which Looney helped found, has organized reunions approximately every five years for those who grew up around Hayes Square during the ‘60s. Any leftover reunion funds are contributed to people or organizations in need, Looney said.
The recipients of this year’s Public Servants Awards are Captain Bernie O’Rourke and Sgt. Tom Lema of Boston Police Are A-1. Looney said the officers both go beyond the call of duty to improve the quality of life, including their work with Charlestown Against Drugs.
A performer at countless community fundraisers and a resident of Charlestown since the early-‘80s, comedian Tony V. is the recipient of this year’s New Resident Award.
“The way I understand it is their criteria for a new resident is anyone who moved here after 1872,” Tony V. said. “Apparently, if you don’t have a tri-corner hat, you’re new.”
Sarcasm aside, Tony V. was pleased to hear that he would receive the award. “I’m honored because few people have seen it fit to honor me for anything,” he said.
Anne McCarron is the recipient of this year’s Senior Award. Looney said McCarron has been active in Charlestown organization for more than 30 years and was a founding member of the Newtowne Christmas Stroll, a holiday event for children of the housing development. “She is also behind the scenes at all the Charlestown Court functions and a member of the Charlestown Substance Abuse coalition,” Looney said.
The Youth Awards go to Quinlon Locke and Nicole Callahan. Locke, a 15-year old Boston Latin Academy student, is involved with youth activities and works with the elderly. Callahan, an 18-year-old Boston Latin Academy student, volunteers at the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club and is a member of the Keystone Club, a community service and leadership-building organization for teenage Club members.
As always, the banquet will culminate with the presentation of the Unsung Award by the committee chairman and Mayor Thomas M. Menino. The recipients of this year’s awards are Sharlene and Dave Cahill.
Sharlene has served as president of the Harvard-Kent School’s parent council since the eldest of their three children, 12-year-old Calan, started school there in 2000. (The couple’s other children are Colby, 10, and Carly, 9). Dave). She is also involved with the Pop Warner Football’s cheerleading program and runs the concession stand at games.
Dave, meanwhile, has been involved with Charlestown Little League for the last seven years and has served as its president for the last five years. He also does maintenance work for the league and serves as a coach.

CREDIT: Courtesy of Weber Shandwick.
CAPTION: An aerial view of the Assembly Square development site.
Following the first presentation by the developers of Assembly Square in Somerville before the Charlestown Neighborhood Council on April 3, several CNC representatives were left wondering how the project will impact the community — especially in regard to traffic around Sullivan Square.
Federal Realty Investment Trust of Rockville, Md., plans to convert a 50.2-acre site in Assembly Square into a mixed-use area that would include approximately 2,100 residential units, 1.75 million square feet of office space and 852,000 square feet of new retail space. Retail space would include a cinema, a 200-soom hotel and a 340,000 square-foot IKEA home furnishings store. The entire project is expected to take between 12 and 15 years to complete and cost between $1 billion and $2 billion, according to Larry Larsen, vice president of Weber Shandwick, the Cambridge public relations firm representing Federal Realty Investment Trust.
In an effort to preserve the public’s access to the waterfront, Tom McShane of the Dewey Square Group, a consultant for the project, said that IKEA agreed to make a land swap that moved its site from land abutting the Mystic River to a parcel at the southern end of the site.
Federal Realty Investment Trust and IKEA have also committed to pay $15 million dollars towards the cost of building a new MBTA station at Assembly Square that would be located between the Sullivan Square and Wellington stations on the Orange Line. Congressman Michael Capuano has earmarked an additional $25 million in federal funding for the station, which should be operational between 2013 and 2015.
“Getting a T station in there is the most bang for your buck in terms of reducing traffic,” McShane said, adding that he expects the majority of shoppers and those working at the 19,000 permanent jobs that the project is expected to create would commute to Assembly Square via the T.
Dave Whelan of the CNC, meanwhile, is skeptical that visitors to IKEA would use the T as their primary mode of transportation, especially since the station entrance at Foley and Main streets in Somerville would be located 1,200 feet from the store’s entrance. “I’m thinking that the store couldn’t be in a worse spot,” he said.
The project is expected to generate 44,900 average daily vehicle trips to the site each day and trips will be capped at 55,000 each day, according to an April 13 memo written by the state’s Secretary of Environmental Affairs Ian Bowles that the Patriot-Bridge obtained.
McShane maintained that most vehicles traveling south would take Interstate 93 to reach Assembly Square and get off the ramp before reaching Sullivan Square. He added that plans were underway to synchronize the traffic signals to make for easier access to the site coming from this route.
Despite this claim, Whelan said Sullivan Square would be the most likely route to the site for vehicles coming this direction.
“The impact on Sullivan Square is going to be a lot more dramatic than you think,” he said. “We’re going to be landlocked.”
CNC representative Ed Grace also expressed concern that the Assembly Square development would further exasperate traffic in Sullivan Square that would already be stained by vehicles traveling to and from the Boston Water and Sewer Commissions’ dewatering facility on Alford Street and the 146-unit Little Neck Lofts condominium complex planned for Brighton Street.
In his memo regarding the Assembly Square redevelopment, Bowles called for a more extensive traffic study that would include Sullivan Square,
Meanwhile, Judy Brennan said developers should instead focus on finding alternate access routes.
“Don’t even think that making Sullivan Square bigger and better is going to work,” Brennan said. “You need to be looking at traffic patterns that make it faster and easier to access it a different way.”

Spaulding Rehabilitation Center presented preliminary findings regarding the transportation impacts of it proposed facility at Parcel 6 in the Navy Yard before the Charlestown Neighborhood Council Development Committee on Monday, but it did little to alleviate traffic and parking concerns.
Less than 20 residents turned out to the Constitution Inn YMCA to hear the results of Spaulding’s Draft Environmental Impact Report/Project Impact Report that addressed traffic volumes, employee commuting patterns and access and loading to the facility. The 300,00 square-foot, 150-bed facility will replace Spaulding’s existing hospital at Nashua Street.
An on-site, two-level underground parking garage will contain 205 spaces for employees and outpatient visitors, down from the original proposal of 300. This falls below the CNC parking requirements that mandates one space must be provided for every 1,000 square feet for commercial space. David Berson, the senior project manager for Partners HealthCare, Spaulding’s parent company, attributed this reduction to a change in the design plan, which came as little consolation to CNC Chairman Tom Cunha.
“My concern is that if there are only 205 parking spaces, people are going to be forced to park in the neighborhood,” Cunha said.
Susan Sloan-Rossiter, principal for Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, the firm that conducted the transportation study, said a survey of current Spaulding employees indicated that most of them commute to work outside of the 7:30 to 8:30 a.m. and 5 to 6 p.m. peak traffic hours. The study determined that nearly 80 percent of the approximately 720 full-time, on-site employees at the new facility would work between the hours of 7 a.m. and 3:30 p.m., and of these employees, only 28 percent typically drive to work, she said.
Cunha countered that hospital commuters would likely be traveling along the same streets at the same times as the approximately 190 school buses that depart from the First Student bus yard in Autoport on Medford Street each school day, as well as car-carriers leaving from the Autoport. This would likely result in a bottleneck effect at Gate 5 in the Navy Yard, which would serve as the main entrance to Spaulding, he said.
While Partners offers shuttle services from Massachusetts General Hospital and North Station to the Navy Yard, there are no immediate plans to add additional buses.
“No provisions for more shuttles means more people will end up driving,” said Development Committee Dave Whelan.
Whelan also said a proposal to add service from the Sullivan Square MBTA station to the new facility was impractical, since traffic conditions would already be strained due to major developments planned for the area.
In response to concerns raised by CNC representatives and others in attendance, Cunha requested that Partners conduct a transportation operations plan for the new facility that would outline equipment, a timetable and contingencies (e.g. snowstorm provisions).
Whelan also requested that Partners representatives meet with the CNC Development Committee at a yet-to-be-determined date to discuss the environmental impact of the new facility.

CAPTION: Pictured, left to right, are WGBH intern Carly Shuler; Iveliz Castaneda, a 10-year-old third-grader from Charlestown; Colby Cahill, a Harvard-Kent Elementary School fifth-grader; Danielle Gillis, production coordinator for the WGBH children’s program “Arthur;” and Stefany Franco, a third grader from the Warren-Prescott Elementary School.

Six fledgling filmmakers launched their careers last week when they took part in a three-day workshop at the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club.
The workshop, entitled “Postcards from You!,” teaches kids between the ages of 8 and 12 the fundamentals to create a one-minute video, or “video postcard,” that will be considered for broadcast in June and September during the 11th season of “Arthur,” a children’s television program produced by Boston public television station WGBH. Since “Postcards from You1” was piloted in Roxbury in January, representatives from WGBH’s educational outreach team and the production team for “Arthur” have sponsored workshops in Atlanta, Memphis and Las Vegas. Participants in last week’s workshop in Charlestown included two Club members and four Harvard-Kent Leadership and Scholarship winners, who were selected on the basis of leadership, good attendance, financial need and parental involvement.
Throughout the workshop, the kids completed every step of the moviemaking process from creating storyboards to producing and filming to acting to editing and sound engineering to promoting the film by making posters. Working in two groups of three, they completed videos based on their own ideas
“The kids are so creative,” said Natalie Hebshie, outreach coordinator for “Arthur. “We’re really just here to give them direction. We’re really just in the background”
The first video depicted two super heroes — Captain Nutrition and the Fitness Queen — as they attempted to stop a monster from gouging itself with junk food. “We’re trying to teach kids that eating healthy food is good and that you should exercise more,” said Afewergi Taffere, a 12-year-old Harvard-Kent fifth-grader.
The second video was described by Colby Cahill, an 11-year-old Harvard-Kent fifth-grader, as a scavenger hunt and a mystery that stresses the importance of teamwork and friendship.
Danielle Gillis, production coordinator for “Arthur,” said kids learned to improvise when inclement weather forced them to abandon plans to film outdoors at the Monument and USS Constitution and film indoors instead.
The kids also learned about product placement after one of them unwittingly wore a T-shirt with a visible Nike logo to a photo shoot, Gillis said.
One of the main educational goals of the workshop is giving participants a better understanding of what goes into the programs they watch. “Kids will be able to watch kids with TV with a different eye,” Hebshie said.
And while the kids hope to see their videos broadcasted nationally on “Arthur,” Gillis said the short films would likely be made available to the public on the You Tube, a popular video-sharing Web site.
Kids from all over Charlestown are also encouraged to submit videos to the producers of “Arthur.” More information can be found at www.pbskids.org.