Tracking Implementation + Impact

Waterfront Civic and Cultural Space Planning Study

In 2024, Isenberg Projects was selected to produce The Waterfront Civic and Cultural Space Planning Study in collaboration with Agency Landscape + Planning, on behalf of the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture (MOAC) and the Boston Planning & Development Agency (BPDA).  In line with Chapter 91 waterfront protections, the study offers guidance for future developments to include civic, cultural, and affordable retail spaces, with a focus on neighborhoods like Dorchester, Fort Point, Charlestown, and East Boston. Through equitable planning, design, and tenant selection, this initiative presented an exciting opportunity to empower local arts and culture. To see the study’s goals, process, and final reports read the case study at:

Three years ago, we led a study for the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture (MOAC) to inventory and understand civic and cultural spaces along the waterfront. These are just one of many kinds of FPAs, or facilities of public accommodation, that are mandated by law along the waterfront.

Boston is a city that is grappling with space, notably how much and what kind. Take housing, for example. Nearly everyone can agree that there should be more housing available in the city, but imagining a solution (let alone enacting one) is an entirely separate challenge.

Amongst Boston’s creative community, there is consensus that we have a severe shortage of cultural space in the city, and we are losing more of it every day. We’re happy to see that this dialogue is breaking containment (The Globe’s Editorial Board has entered the chat) but there is a staggering amount of work to do to start serving Boston’s creative community.

Let’s back up. Three years ago, we learned a lot about civic and cultural waterfront spaces, specifically: how many there are and who is using them (Agency made a map), how many are vacant (a lot), and how the process to tenant one works (it’s complicated). We created a series of recommendations for MOAC and Commonwealth partners to use to improve the system, reduce vacancies, and make the tenanting process go more smoothly. We are thrilled that many of these recommendations have been adopted and are being implemented, but that’s only the beginning.

While well outside the focus area of our study, we also recommended that MOAC zoom out and conduct a Cultural Infrastructure study of the entire city to better understand where cultural assets exist across the city and who has access to them. We were thrilled to see MOAC announce this project late last year and eagerly await the results.

There is a lot more work to do to ensure Boston’s creative community has spaces to produce and enjoy culture, but here’s a roundup of some of the changes we’ve noticed that have come from our study: 

5 Necco Street

A January 2025 Request for Proposal (RFP) for non-profits to lease the ~4,750 SF space at 5 Necco Street adopted many of the study’s recommendations into deal terms. Including:

• Rent is set at $10/year triple net.
• The landlord commits to a defined “warm vanilla shell” delivery before the tenant takes occupancy.
• Subdivisions and co-applications are permitted.
• The lease is ten years with renewal contingent on compliance.
• Evaluation criteria are structured, named, and disclosed up front.
• An annual business plan is required for the life of the lease.

232 A Street

Our study’s recommendations are also shaping deals early on during the license-negotiation stage. 232 A Street, being developed by Breakthrough Properties and Tishman Speyer, is committing 8,000 SF specifically to civic/cultural uses, more than double what Chapter 91 requires. Breakthrough has also committed that the civic/cultural tenant will not be responsible for pro rata real estate tax pass-through, and that base rent will be set with MOAC input.

MOAC

MOAC is taking steps to gather information and make the process more transparent. One of our recommendations was to acknowledge that Chapter 91 alone cannot deliver the cultural space Boston needs, and to build the citywide infrastructure required to close the gap. This work would hand in hand offer major improvements to the current FPA tenanting process

• MOAC re-launched the Cultural Space Needs Register to build a roster of creative organizations organized by their spatial needs. This will be an asset to both FPA tenanting and larger city-wide cultural space initiatives.
• Research from this study informed the City’s new Supporting Cultural Space Models page which catalogs the specific comparable-city models we identified.
• MOAC’s Website is prominently highlighting Fan Pier Civic/Cultural Space prominently as a “current opportunity” on its page, taking a first step at making Chapter 91 RFPs more accessible to creative organizations. 
• MOAC also recently announced an effort to build a city-wide Cultural Infrastructure Plan, working toward one of the recommendations we identified during the course of our study

What Remains

There is still work to do! Several of our key recommendations have yet to be picked up. Here’s the ones we think are most important:

A public-facing web portal centralizing information on Chapter 91 civic and cultural FPAs, was one of our short-term recommendations that has not yet launched, but would be a major asset to both nonprofits and the development community.

The portal would be home to another recommended tool to be created: standardized tenanting terms that clearly define a Civic/Cultural FPA space and allow developers and the state to speak a common language about needs.

We’ve also advised that the City of Boston build a formal cohort program for space operators allowing successful operators to lead and incubate participating organizations through crafting a business model and physical space.

It’s easy to assume that space is all that’s needed to keep culture thriving in Boston. But there is a whole world of policies, economics, and bureaucratic processes that keep creatives from accessing cultural space in the city. By understanding these in a limited way through Chapter 91’s waterfront protection laws, we can start to establish principles for improving access to cultural space across the entire city.  

We have been honored to take on this work in collaboration with MOAC and a suite of city and state agencies and are so excited to see real changes have come from it. We’re excited to see what’s next and will keep fighting to create and preserve space for Boston’s creative community!