CREDIT: Courtesy of Colliers Meredith & Grew

CAPTION: An artist’s rendering of the office building proposed for 480 Rutherford Ave.

Following recent backlash from some members of the Charlestown Neighborhood Council against new projects planned along Rutherford Avenue, the owners of the Hood Business Park presented a proposal this week to build a $45 million, four-story office building in that area.
At Tuesday’s CNC meeting, Lynnfield-based Catamount Management Company unveiled plans to build a 143,200 square-foot office building at 480 Rutherford Ave. on the site of an abandoned 1950s brick warehouse. The development would have available space for a restaurant on the ground floor, as well as 215 on-site parking spaces. Symmes Maini & McKee Architects and Engineers of Cambridge are designing the project, and construction is expected to begin in fall 2008 and take approximately one year to complete.
Catamount acquired the project site, along with the former Charlestown headquarters of the HP Hood dairy, in 1995 and developed the first building in the Hood Business Park the following year. According to project manager Yanni Tsipis, all the properties were subject to Article 80 review (which examines the impact of citywide development on nearby communities) during the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s master planning process in 2000.
“All impacts of the Hood business development were analyzed as part of that BRA process,” Yanni said.
In addition, Yanni said Catamount would be actively involved in the city’s Rutherford Avenue Corridor Study, which aims to facilitate traffic flow in the area by reconfiguring the roadway.
“Besides Bunker Hill Community College, the Hood Business Park has the most frontage along Rutherford Avenue, and we are aligned with the city’s interest in seeing Rutherford Avenue succeed on many levels,” Yanni said.
Yanni added that at 58 feet, the project would fall below the city’s 60-foot height restriction for the area.
Meanwhile, Catamount principal Stephen J. Kaneb said he hopes the project will continue the company’s decade-long tradition of being a good neighbor to the community.
“We look forward to this as an opportunity to build out for on our front door to Rutherford Avenue,” Kaneb said. “This gives us an opportunity to dress everything up and put our best face forward not just for the community, but also for occupants of the business park.”

CAPTION: Charlestown Boys & Girls Club pre-teen specialist Zizi Abdel-Ghaffar (center) is seen with Club members Taylor Adams (at left) and Li Mei.

Last year, Zizi Abdel-Ghaffar was brought on board to help reinvigorate the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club’s pre-teen membership after 10- to 12-year-olds were identified as the age group most in need of outreach, and so far, the results have been impressive.
Abdel-Ghaffar, who was named the Club’s pre-teen specialist on Dec. 26, brings extensive experience in the field of youth counseling. The daughter of a daycare provider, she began volunteering as a youth worker for the City of Cambridge as a high school student and continued this work while attending Suffolk College. “I literally would leave class to help them as often as I could,” she said. Abdel-Ghaffar worked in real estate for a short time after her earning an undergraduate degree from Suffolk in 2004, but she was unsatisfied with the position and soon returned to youth work.
In her current role, Abdel-Ghaffar allows members to help plan activities at the Club — an approach that she hopes will sustain their interest and put them at ease.
“I want them to have a voice in what they’re doing because that’s going to keep them going,” Abdel-Ghaffar said. “We’re really trying to set the comfort level with the kids, then go from there.”
To date, Abdel-Ghaffar has launched the Townie Study program, which offers kids cash incentives to those who come in and do their homework quietly. She is also heading up evening cooking classes that will include “behind the scenes” tours of local restaurants.
“I want them to know how big the world is outside the Club,” said Abdel-Ghaffar, adding that a number of field trips are currently in the works for pre-teen members.
Abdel-Ghaffar and members are also now planning to open a pre-teen center in the basement level of the Green Street site that would contain book games, furniture, a television and possibly a ping-pong table. “It will be almost like a mini Club down there,” Abdel-Ghaffar said.
Taylor Adams, a 10-year-old member, said Abdel-Ghaffar’s efforts are helping to break down cliques within the Club.
‘Some kids used to come and hang out with just kids from their schools or their neighborhoods,” Adams said. “Now, they’re getting to know more kids.”
Abdel-Ghaffar is also considering launching separate support groups for male and female members.
“This would be aimed at helping the kids get to know each other better without distractions and to open up discussion about what’s bothering them,” she said.
As the year progresses, Abdel-Ghaffar also hopes to introduce more activities to keep pre-teen members interested in the Club.
“I want to change it up for them so they have a reason to come to the Club every day,” she said.
For more information about the Charlestown Boys & Girls Club, call 617-242-1775.

Jeff Felder of Boston Public Works repairs a light at the Navy Yard Tuesday morning.

The Charlestown Neighborhood Council Basic Services Committee held three meetings last week regarding current and proposed operations at the Autoport on Medford Street.
The first meeting concerned a proposal to park a fleet of 80 vehicles from Boston-based Partners HealthCare at the Autoport. The vehicles, which provide service for area hospitals, are currently parked in Somerville, and Partners is now exploring several other sites, including the Autoport, according to CNC Basic Services Committee chair Bill Galvin.
Galvin said less than half of the vehicles in the mixed-sized fleet are diesel and would be powered with heating blocks, while four vehicles are “green.” Most of the vehicles would be on the road between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. and would follow existing truck routes.
On-site vehicle maintenance would include oil and anti-freeze changes, but major repairs would take place elsewhere, Galvin said. Autoport officials also told Galvin they didn’t anticipate this operation would increase employee parking on the premises.
Another proposal would bring one of two national facilities for testing wind-turbine blades to the Autoport. The 52,500 square-foot enclosed building would stand between 40 and 50 feet tall and be used to test blades horizontally for durability and rigidity. It is expected to be operational by 2010.
This effort will be made possible through a partnership between the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport) and other state agencies, as well as a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
The final meeting concerned the stockpile of salt used to deice city streets that is presently stored at the Autoport.
Galvin said this operation had changed dramatically since it was first proposed three years ago as a small, covered pile that would be temporarily situated adjacent to the Mystic River. Since that time, Galvin said the salt pile had grown in size, was moved closer to the Newtowne housing development and is now a permanent fixture.
No representatives from the Autoport were in attendance at the meeting, but Basic Services Committee members compiled a list of questions for them. These inquiries including whether salt was present on cars at the Autoport following the unloading of salt, the hours when deliveries took place, how long the salt pile was uncovered for during the unloading process and when the next delivery would take place.
Galvin also said he planned to ask Autoport officials what monitoring of the operation is conducted by city and state agencies and who was responsible for an Autoport-funded study of the impact of salt on the community that was undertaken last year.
Follow-up meetings are planned at which representatives of Autoport, Massport and other agencies will respond to Basic Services Committee requests and inquiries.

CAPTION: Mariane Pearl delivers her lecture in the auditorium at BHCC.

PHOTO 2 CAPTION: Mariane Pearl signing autographs in the BHCC Art Gallery. Standing beside her is Adele Sicuso, BHCC graphic designer, and seated to her left is Pelonomi Khumoetsile-Taylor, director, of Diversity & Inclusion for BHCC.

International journalist and author Mariane Pearl spoke to a standing-room crowd on Feb. 21 as more than 400 turned out at Bunker Hill Community College to hear her speak about her husband, his death and his legacy. Pearl was five months pregnant when her husband, The Wall Street Journal’s South Asia Bureau Chief Daniel Pearl, was kidnapped and brutally murdered by a militant fundamentalist group in Pakistan in 2002. Their son was born in Paris four months later.
Determined not to be broken, Pearl wrote “A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Daniel Pearl.” The book was later made into a feature film starring Angelina Jolie. In November 2007, Pearl published a second book, “In Search of Hope: The Global Diaries of Mariane Pearl.”
Her resolve was evident as she spoke to the BHCC community about her experience; Pearl said, “You try to use what they (terrorists) are trying to destroy.” She went on sharing her philosophy, “They want to destroy hope. I will preserve it. They want to silence me. I will speak out. They want to paralyze me. I will take action.”
Pearl said that she would not be broken by what had occurred. “I knew we were beyond the physical threat and this was a threat to the spirit,” she said. After hearing of her husband’s death, Pearl told the audience that she grabbed a gun and ran out of her house, “It is not hard to kill someone who has hurt you so much,” she said. Then in thinking about it, “I realized that the only thing I could I could do was to have courage, and the only courageous thing to do was to put that gun down.”
Sharing her story has been a way to keep Daniel Pearl’s legacy alive. Pearl said it is also a way to keep the terrorists from silencing him. She said she hopes that by sharing his story, Daniel can serve as a role model to young people—especially their son, Adam, for whom she wrote her first book that has since been translated into 18 languages. Pearl spends her time now traveling the world reporting on “women who stories of personal triumph represent human resilience.”

CAPTION: State Rep. Eugene O’Flaherty.

Gov. Deval Patrick introduced a bill in January that would limit access to Criminal Offender Record Information, leaving the Joint Committee on the Judiciary with the challenge of balancing the interests of an individual who has been convicted of a crime with those of his potential employer.
“On one hand, we need to help people who have had transgressions in life and done their time find their way back into society so this isn’t a weight on their shoulders for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, we have to look after the interests of businesses,” said State Rep. Eugene O’Flaherty, who chairs the Joint Committee on the Judiciary and serves on the governor’s Anti-Crime Council and the CORI Commission.
Under current law, an individual can request their criminal record be sealed after 15 years for a felony conviction or 10 years for misdemeanors. The governor’s new legislation would prohibit sealing of sex offenses but would allow sealing of a felony record after 10 years, and a misdemeanor after five. The bill further instructs the state’s Criminal History Systems Board to not provide CORI-certified employers access to records that are eligible for sealing under the new timelines. Criminal justice agencies, however, would continue to have full access to sealed records.
“CORI was never intended to turn every offense into a life sentence,” Patrick stated in a Jan. 11 press release. “All but a handful of people incarcerated are eventually released, and they need to get back to work. These reforms require decision makers to make an individual determination about whether an applicant is rehabilitated, rather than excluding ex-offenders categorically. If we want to reduce crime and help people reintegrate successfully, this is a smarter approach.”
Still, O’Flaherty said reformed offenders are at a disadvantage because of policies like that of the Boston Housing Authority, which mandates no one convicted of a crime can be a BHA tenant. “This sets people up for failure and ends up costing more money,” he said.
While O’Flaherty supports reintegration for reformed offenders, he points to the 2002 fatal stabbing of Alexandra Zapp at a Burger King in Bridgewater as one instance where the state failed by withholding an employee’s criminal background. Paul Leahy, a convicted Level 3 Sex offender who was working as a custodian at the Burger King, was convicted of the crime, but since Leahy was deemed to be out of touch with the public in his role as janitor, Burger King was never informed of his criminal background prior to Zapp’s murder.
O’Flaherty also said experts believe a core group of young offenders, including many who are convicted on handgun charges, view a jail sentence as a rite of passage and refuse to take advantage of self-improvement programs while incarcerated. “There’s a whole subculture that needs to be broken,” he said.
“We need to separate, as best as we can, individuals who we know get in trouble but want to assimilate back into society when they get out, as opposed to those who opt to do their full time so they don’t get parole officers and can return to the same type of [illegal] activity,” O’Flaherty said.
To address this disparity, O’Flaherty suggested that Massachusetts should adopt something similar to New York’s Certificate of Rehabilitation, a document verifying that an offender has taken advantage of self-improvement programs while incarcerated.
O’Flaherty also applauded the efforts of Sheriff Michael Ashe Jr. of Hampden County, who championed making treatment for mentally ill individuals available in the prison system.
Meanwhile, John Regan, executive vice president of government affairs for Associated Industries of Massachusetts, is concerned that Patrick’s bill doesn’t successfully balance the rights of offenders and businesses.
“The [bill] begins with the assumption that if you have a criminal past, you’re automatically excluded from employment,” Regan said. ”We have many members, by the virtue of what they do, that prove that’s an incorrect assumption.”
While Regan believes businesses should have access to the criminal histories of potential employees, he realizes that CORI information isn’t always accurate because it comes from courthouses throughout the Commonwealth that often rely on antiquated databases.
“There ought to be a concerted effort to make sure that the information in the databases is as close to 100 percent accurate as it can get,” Regan said, adding that AIM would be willing to help defray of training individuals to use and access the CORI databases.
Regan said most employers can look at a prospective employee’s criminal record and decide what to do and that decision won’t necessarily hinder an offender’s chances of employment.
“Just because you have a record doesn’t mean you can’t get a job,” Regan said.