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Making history on Patriots Day week

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Making history on Patriots Day week

Happy Patriots Day Weekend, one of the best weekends of the year to be in our chamber communities.
 
Leading up to the 127th Boston Marathon on Monday, go here for suggested places to dine, shop and visit in Newton, Needham, Watertown and Wellesley
 
And this video from Chronicle documents some of the history along the route in Wellesley. (While the Swellesley Report talks about this guy who doesn't like hearing one of things in the video.)
 
A reminder that road closures in Newton start at 7 a.m. on Monday and 8:30 a.m. in Wellesley, although I never understood why Newton streets close earlier, considering that the racers reach Wellesley first.
 
Arrive early and catch Marathon Grand Marshal David Ortiz leading the racers.
 
Stay late and watch the stragglers who will especially appreciate your cow bells and cheers.
 
This is also, of course, the tenth anniversary of the marathon bombing, that ended in a police shootout in Watertown, moments none of us who lived through will ever forget.
 
Lasell names its first African American president
Lasell University elected Eric Turner to serve as the school’s 10th president this week.
 
Turner, the current provost, will become the first African American president in Lasell’s 172-year history, effective July 1. He succeeds Michael Alexander, who is retiring after 16 years of leadership.
 
As president, Turner will also lead Lasell Village as CEO.
 
Turner won't be needing a campus tour. Before joining Lasell in 2017 as VP of graduate and professional studies, Turner chaired the university’s board of trustees and was a Lasell Village trustee.
 
The Newton resident also brings considerable private sector experience, including key roles at State Street and IBM. He was also deputy state treasurer and Lottery chief served under Treasurer Joe Malone.
 
And Turner is well-known to our chamber community. He’s been a long-time member of our scholarship committee and was named to our 50 Most Influential Business Leaders of Color list in 2020.
 
 
Needham makes history too
For the first time in its 312-year history Needham’s Select Board has a female majority.
 
The milestone was the result of Tuesday’s town election after voters returned incumbent Marianne Cooley (in photo) and elected newcomer Cathy Dowd. Results.
 
Dowd became just the 12th women to serve on the five member board in town history.
 
Voters also returned Adam Block by a slim 52-vote margin to the Planning Board and approved ballot measures to revoke the civil service requirements for police chief and authorizing the town to grant additional retail liquor licenses. (Deadline to apply for one of the new licenses is May 9.)
 
Then on Wednesday, during the first Select Board meeting of the new term, Cooley was reelected board chair after her colleague Marcus Nelson was nominated, but declined to serve due to time constraints. 
 
Linkage fee for housing now on the books in Watertown
 
The Watertown City Council approved a zoning amendment Tuesday that would add a $11.12 per SF linkage fee to new commercial developments and major renovations over 30,000 SF.
 
The funds will be used for affordable housing.
 
While the chamber aired concerns about the proposed zoning amendment, we always supported using linkage as one tool to address the housing shortage.
 
We’re thankful to the Planning Board and City Council for supporting a two-payout compromise (half upon receipt of certificate of occupancy, the balance 12 months later) and for listening to the concerns of the business community.
 
 
BTW, Boston voted this week to increase its linkage fees, although the city agreed to delay the rate increase to January and then phase-in the rates, two ideas we also suggested in Watertown, without success.
 
And in case you missed it, scroll down to watch the video from our chamber life sciences panel discussion yesterday.
 
Other need to knows
 
  • For seven years Framingham SOURCE has been filling a news gap just west of us. But editor Susan Petroni has announced she no longer has the capacity to keep reporting on shoestring revenues. Read what else she said here. And please: Support your favorite independent local news sites financially.
 
 
 
  • Newton has been awarded an infrastructure grant for intersection safety improvements at Route 9 and Parker Road. (Newton Patch)
 
  • YardArt, the community-wide celebration of creativity and fun in front yards, porches and windows in Watertown continues through the end of this month, with a guided tour today at noon and a bike walk next Sunday.
 
  • Newton League of Women Voters is bringing back Civics Challenge, April 30, 4 p.m. at the Cabot School. Compete for prizes while engaging in an test of our federal, state and local government, the constitution, voting rights, current events, and history. Register.
 
 
  • One last reminder: Chamber member nonprofit 501c(3) organizations are invited to apply to be the charitable beneficiary of our 2023 Charles River Chamber’s Annual Golf & Pickelball Tournament in August.  Apply by April 25
 
Happy Nehoiden Day!
 
Today (April 14) is Nehoiden Day, first declared in 1980 to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the Land Deed that set aside the land that is now Needham and Wellesley. 
 
The commemoration honors the Native Americans who lived here for some 7,000 to 8,000 years before the English, according to the Needham Historical Society’s Gloria Polizzotti Greis.
 
 
The shot heard round the suburbs (we hope)
 
Finally, heading into Patriots Day, here’s hoping the elected boards and planning officials in our west suburban communities feel inspired by the historic thing Lexington did this week.
 
Lexington’s Town Meeting voted, 107-63, to become the first in the state to rezone under the MBTA communities law, more than a year-and-a-half before their required deadline.
 
Not only that: Rather than allow for multi family, transit-oriented, housing to be built by right on roughly 80 acres, as required, they rezoned 227 acres, reports Andrew Brinker for the Globe.
 
In doing so, Lexington set "an example for how peer jurisdictions should think about the MBTA communities law — not as a ceiling for housing capacity, but the floor,” the Globe Editorial Board wrote earlier this week.
 
“The reason that’s the right approach is because the MBTA communities law does not actually require any new construction — it just requires jurisdictions to allow for new construction of multifamily units should developers be interested. And so the larger the total area that’s rezoned, the more likely it is for the town to build a meaningful number of new housing units within a reasonable time frame. It’s a modest but foundational element in addressing the region’s housing shortage.”
 
Revolutionary, eh?
 
 
And that’s your need to knows for today, unless you need to know that there will be no Need to Knows newsletter next week.
 
?Be back in your inbox on April 28.
 
Go Celtics!
 
Greg Reibman (he, him)
President
617.244.1688
 
PS. In case you missed it watch yesterday's panel discussion exploring how the life science sector is doing and what's happening inside our local biolabs.
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