On television, Boston’s Fenway Park looks like one of baseball’s most inviting stadiums. But for decades, the area around the stadium, the mythic home field of the Red Sox franchise since 1912, has been a forlorn, often forgotten section of Boston. While nearby neighborhoods blossomed, Kenmore Square-Fenway remained an awkward mix of automotive shops, low-rise retail, student housing, youth-oriented bars and empty parking lots.
Only one-quarter of the year, when the Red Sox played home games, did the neighborhood come alive with thousands of visiting baseball fans.
“It was a place you always went through rather than to,” said developer and Fenway property owner John Rosenthal.
Today, however, the Fenway and Kenmore Square area is in the midst of a major transformation and renewal. Led by the owners of the Red Sox, an alliance of public and private interests has brought a rush of investment and new life into the neighborhood. The investments, a mix of residential and commercial properties, are a result of rezoning that Boston spent five years developing before it went into effect in 2004.
Last year, the Trilogy, a 536-unit apartment complex, opened off Boylston Street, adjacent to Fenway Park. Last season, a couple of Red Sox players lived in the Trilogy (which also has rental apartments reserved for Harvard University medical students).
The Hotel Commonwealth, which has lively bars and restaurants, has emerged as one of Boston’s hotspots since its opening in 2003. Closer to Fenway Park, there’s now Game On!, an upscale sports bar developed by the Red Sox owners. Across the street, the once-rowdy Cask ‘n Flagon watering hole has been reborn as a posh nightspot.
The most dramatic changes in the area, though, are yet to come. On Lansdowne Street (across from the Green Monster, the stadium’s iconic left-field wall), restaurateur Patrick Lyons is merging two rock ‘n roll nightclubs into one 2,500-seat theater, a switch designed to attract a less-raucous crowd. Beneath the stadium’s bleachers, the Red Sox are renovating a batting cage into a restaurant that will have seating looking onto center field. (It hasn’t been decided whether the curtains will be closed during games, but they will be open all other times, including batting practice.)
In addition, the Red Sox have acquired two smaller commercial properties where they plan to open restaurants. Developer Steven Samuels, who built the Trilogy complex, has another 215-unit apartment development under construction nearby.
The biggest project in the pipeline is a $450 million, 1.3 million-square-foot complex that Rosenthal plans to build atop the Massachusetts Turnpike, a highway that divides Kenmore Square from the Fenway neighborhoods. The project would have 300 apartments and office and retail space.
The government is a key player in the building boom. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is reconstructing its bus and subway station in Kenmore Square, while the state has a beautification-safety project under way on Commonwealth Avenue. On the drawing board are $55 million in state transportation improvements, including reconfigured roads and a new rail station.
“The image of the area is changing,” said Randi Lathrop, deputy director for community planning at the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the city’s planning agency. “These projects will give new life to the street.”
Added Lyons, “There is a dramatic change afoot for this area. It is being fueled largely by the 800-pound gorilla, which is the Red Sox, who want to see Fenway Park be a destination and not just a place where 81 games are played every year.”
Janet Marie Smith, architect for the Red Sox, said the organization has a straightforward plan for Fenway: They want it to be more than baseball.
“While Fenway is a neighborhood ballpark, a criticism of it is that it goes dark from November to April,” said Smith. “We want the streets around Fenway to have an entertainment — and a baseball — feel to them.”
Perhaps the most important turn in the fortunes of the area has been the 2002 sale of the team itself, to an owners’ group headed by John Henry. Before then, Red Sox owners had maintained that Fenway Park was a lost cause, and the stadium needed to be replaced. Very early in their stewardship, Henry and his partners declared their intention not only to keep the old ballpark, but to breathe new life into it.
Improvements to the ballpark itself, including adding seats atop the left field wall and on the roof in right field, were immediately popular, though some of the club’s moves have been controversial. The Red Sox opposed Rosenthal’s initial plan to put his planned high-rises behind the outfield, contending the buildings would tarnish the view from the stadium; as a result, Rosenthal moved the project farther west and over the turnpike off Beacon Street.
Importantly, the Fenway-Kenmore area also has remarkable assets. They include a proximity to downtown, major hospitals, the park system known as the “Emerald Necklace,” and cultural institutions that include Symphony Hall and the Museum of Fine Arts.
George Thrush, a member of a city advisory committee on the Fenway area and director of Northeastern’s School of Architecture, said that despite the recent troubles in the real estate market, redevelopment of the neighborhood now has momentum.
“These development projects are just merry-go-rounds,” said Thrush. “You have to get on at some point.”