Carole Charnow, President of the Boston Children's Museum; Mayor Menino; Senator Jack Hart; Danielle Pillion, Executive Director of the Friends of Fort Point Channel; and Boston City Councilors Bill Linehan and Felix Arroyo sound off air horns to celebrate the Fort Point Channel dock opening / Photo Credit: Friends of Fort Point Channel
Boston’s Fort Point Channel is a a lot less stinky and a bunch more fun thanks to the City of Boston, and the many nonprofit organizations, residents, and property owners that have worked for many years to clean it up and create opportunities for public enjoyment.
That’s why it was so exciting to attend the Annual Meeting and dock opening ceremony for the Friends of Fort Point Channel, a fantastic organization on whose Board of Directors I am privileged to serve. Mayor Menino and Senator Jack Hart joined us for a celebration of the five boating docks that have just opened for the season. All of these docks have been built in the past decade, following the vision laid out in the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s 2002 Watersheet Activation Plan for the Channel.
Image of the Future from the Fort Point Channel Watersheet Activation Plan / Image credit: Goody Clancy
The maritime industrial past of the Channel lives on. It is evident in the historic seawall, the warehouses that have been preserved along its edges, and the historic bridges that still span it. But after decades of decline, it is getting a new life. No longer a polluted “no man’s land” the Channel is finally becoming what the writers of the Activation Plan hoped it would be: Boston’s Next Great Place.