June 23, 2025

Good morning,

Thursday is Kate Fitzpatrick Day.

That’s when the Town of Needham will celebrate its totally awesome town manager’s retirement.

Fitzpatrick began working for the town 35 years ago as personnel director. She became assistant town administrator in 1998 and town administrator in 2001. She became Needham’s first town manager in 2005.

A retirement celebration is happening Thursday, 4:30 p.m. at the Needham Golf Club.

Fitzpatrick will also be the grand marshall at the annual 4th of July Parade.

A new — hopefully final — plan for Riverside T station

Scholars estimate that it took 26 years to build the Great Pyramid in Egypt.

Construction of Boston’s Big Dig took 16 years.

The number of years it takes to do something useful with the eyesore of asphalt at the Riverside MBTA station might land somewhere in between.

In September, developer Robert Korff of Mark Development will return to the Newton City Council to seek approval for a project that’s been in the works in various forms since 2009 and has been before the council multiple times since 2011.

The 2025 version calls for 750 housing units, along with a new parking garage for its new residents and Green Line riders, as well as 20,000 SF of retail space.

That’s an increase from 545 units in a 2024 plan, or 663-units in a 2018 plan, or a 290-unit version approved back in 2013 by a different developer (RH Normandy), which did not include the former Hotel Indigo property.

Those early proposals never penciled in, mainly because the economy shifted as the city took too long to approve each version and demanded too many concessions.  There were legal challenges too. And at one point a months-long, momentum-killing, vision planning session.

The new plan eliminates all previously proposed lab and office space. As we’ve seen with Bulfinch Co’s Muzi Ford and Northland’s Needham Street sites, demand for lab and office space has declined to make these large projects feasible.

Still, this has be one of — if not the very best — developable sites for transit-oriented housing anywhere in eastern Massachusetts.  And Korff’s 750-unit plan goes a long way towards helping address our region’s chronic housing shortage by providing homes for 750 folks and their families.

Without the labs and office, the revised Riverside plan is expected to generate less traffic — which should make neighbors happy — and allows for a reduction in parking and the removal of the direct I-95 access ramp,

Look for public hearings after Labor Day, with the goal of securing approvals before the end of the year.

Then let the building, finally, begin.

Related: The amount of office supply in the U.S. is on pace this year to contract for the first time in a quarter of a century. (Wall Street Journal, free link)

Miss last week’s Transportation Forum? Here’s the video

Here’s NewTV’s video from our event last week with MBTA General Manger Phil Eng, along with our panel discussion about the Boston Indicators report Transit Supportive Density in Greater Boston.

Thanks to our sponsor, Newton Wellesley Hospital, and to our host, Tripadvisor.

Tuesday grab bag

• The water quality in our favorite river continues to improve. But the Charles River Watershed and other organizations behind an annual river quality report card warn that progress has slowed due to the worsening effects of climate change. (WBUR)
  
  
• Here’s something to think about while coping with record heat: Tomorrow (Weds.) is Leon Day, the halfway point to Christmas. (Leon is noel spelled backward.)
  
  
• Time is almost up to submit public comments for the draft of Wellesley's Strategic Housing Plan. Email comments by July 1.
  
  
• After a decade focused on sparkling water, Newton-based Spindrift is once again marketing sodas. (Boston Globe)
  
  
• The unemployment rate in Massachusetts climbed once again in May, widening the gap between the state and the nation as a whole following a year of nearly flat job growth. (State House News via WBUR)
  
  
• The Newton Centre Plaza (the controversial corner of the triangle parking lot that’s being converted into a public space) officially opens this Saturday (June 28). Newton Beacon has more.
  
  
• Housing for All Watertown is urging the Watertown City Council to go big on housing affordability.
  
  
• Enjoy this Needham Observer interview with Jay Spencer on the occasion of the French Press’ tenth anniversary.
  
  
• Here’s Fig City News’ coverage of our chamber women’s conference.
  
  
• Sisters Valentina and Valeria Restrepo are planning to launch Luna’s Cakes & Coffee, in a former Newton Centre Starbucks.(What Now Boston)
  
  
• Need a recipe for popsicles?
  
  
• You’re familiar with the MBTA B, C, D and E- Green line trains.  But what about the A-Line which included stops in Watertown and Newton? Greta Gaffin at the Newton Beacon looks back
  
  
• If you appreciate our advocacy and events, we’d appreciate it if you’d take two minutes to post a Google Review for the Charles River Chamber here. Thanks!

Olin College taps new president

Olin College of Engineering has selected R. May Lee to become the college’s third president.  

Lee comes to the Needham-based Olin from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Troy, N.Y., where she was the VP and Chief Strategy Officer for Institutional Impact and played a pivotal role in shaping and executing RPI’s strategic priorities.

Before that, Lee was a partner at The Seelig Group, an investment firm focused on media and technology and founding dean of the School of Entrepreneurship and Management at Shanghai Tech University.

“I am incredibly honored to be chosen to lead Olin College as its next president,” said Lee.

“I am an engineer at heart, if not by training. My career has been defined by building—whether it's products, strategies or teams.”

Perhaps this example of ‘homegrown talent’ wasn’t ideal

I didn’t have a chance to read June 15, “Tech Power Players,” special Globe Magazine section until this past weekend. 

Once I did, I couldn’t help but notice a bitter irony.

In the magazine’s cover story (“Can Boston’s innovation scene get its mojo back?), reporter Robert Gavin notes that Greater Boston “lags far behind the San Francisco Bay Area, which has sucked up nearly $4 of every $5 invested in AI this year.”

“… What Boston needs to become a stronger innovation hub are more successful home-grown companies along the lines of tech stars HubSpot ($32 billion stock market value), Toast ($25 billion market value), and Klaviyo ($10 billion market value), says Jeff Bussgang, cofounder and general partner of the Boston VC firm Flybridge.”

Then Galvin adds:

“What it will take are determined founders, smart investors, and, ultimately, the approach of Red Sox slugger Rafael Devers.

“’We just gotta keep swinging hard,’ says Bussgang, ‘and connect on one or two pitches.’”

Sure, just maybe not this particular swing.

And that’s what you need to know for today, unless you need to know why you’ll soon be paying more for cable TV.

Stay cool, friends. And be extra nice to those folks working outside and in places without air conditioning.

We will miss you, Jrue Holiday.

Greg Reibman (he, him)

President & CEO

Charles River Regional Chamber

617.244.1688

Max Woolf contributed to today’s newsletter.