Thursday, February 25, 2010
Southfield- The Movie
Heading south on Route 18 in South Weymouth a sign on the left says “Southfield”. Turn down the well kept boulevard and one can feel an odd sense of isolation as they pass beyond the barrier of loneliness into the vacant landscape of a new Twilight Zone known as Memorial Grove Road. There is evidence of life, a mowed lawn, freshly painted fire hydrants and new street lamps glowing in the night but something is missing; people. Oh there is the occasional dog walker, and once in a while a lost motorist happens by, and there is always the security guard, there to make sure we don’t stray too far into the void; but beyond that there is nothingness. Past a fossilized Skyhawk, a war relic of days gone by, leads to old rundown buildings, fallen over fences and empty children’s play structures, all adding to the eeriness of the South Shore’s most famous ghost town, the former Naval Air Station.
It is this place that in 1997, as part of the U.S. Navy’s Base Realignment Law, was vacated and a new tenant, the Tri Town Development Corporation, was given a never before seen, twenty year chance to make something out of nothing. It is here that the Federal Government in 2003 said, “take this 500 acres of land for free and make of it what you can” and nothing was done. There was talk, lots of talk, but then lots of nothing too. So Tri Town gave the land to LNR Properties, or whatever name they went by then and said, “here, take this land and let us know what to do with it” and again more of nothing happened. Oh yes, there were plans, and there were meetings, and there were even laws; “we’ll put in a connector road from Route 3, we’ll put in a movie studio in the fall, we’re going to have houses and businesses and golf courses and it will be wonderful”, but more than anything else, there was nothing.
As the years of nothingness rolled by, there was talk that, “if they could only get their hands on more land, they might be able to do something” but alas, in the end, the Federal Government didn’t have much confidence in their nothingness plan and decided they wanted to “sell” the rest of the land. After all, somebody should make money, why not our Federal Government? And then of course there was our local legislators, who realize how difficult it must be to do nothing all year, so they decided to let Tri Town have until 2053 to make something.
When the 2009 recession hit, surely nothing could be done then, or, not done. There was no money to be had. The winds of conservative fiscal restraint snuffed out the fires of liberal thinkers’ dreams of getting something for nothing. The vultures began to circle above their nothing plan and fingers were pointed; and as the bankruptcy specialists began poking around, it was decided that a tax was needed. Imagine, after all these years, coming up with the novel idea of a tax. One million dollars was pushed across the table and for a little while longer at least, there was something. When our Governor threatened to cap the tax break for the film industry our elected officials cried, “wait, what about the make believe movie studio at Southfield” and so a tax for one is promised to another and like watching an old dirigible float away, we wait for something to happen that never does.
Someday, when you’re out for a ride, take a left at the sign that says “Southfield” and enter a place where nothing happens to nobody every day but remember, that just like in the Twilight Zone, the road goes on forever.
POSTED BY STAN on February 25, 2010
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