‘I can’t deny the fact that you like me, right now, you like me,’’ Sally Field famously told the audience at the Oscars in 1985. It might also be the reaction of East Boston residents when the Institute of Contemporary Art announced its expansion across the harbor to a new gallery space called “Watershed’’ to be located in the neighborhood’s shipyard.
For newcomers unfamiliar with East Boston, the ICA’s expansion is an invitation to an exciting new area of the city. For those who always saw East Boston as one of the city’s great neighborhoods, it is vindication. Either way, it expresses a familiar trend where the success of a neighborhood depends on external endorsements.
The North End, today considered one of the country’s great urban communities, wasn’t always that way. In 1959, city officials referred to it as “the worst slum in the city.’’ It took New Yorker Jane Jacobs to shame Boston’s leaders into recognizing what it had. “You should have more slums like this,’’ she chided.
South Boston was once one of the poorest ZIP codes in the United States — a gritty enclave closed off to newcomers. With the opening of the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 2004 and the rebuilding of the Seaport, it’s become one of the hottest real estate markets in the city.
In the South End, an open house can sometimes fetch offers six figures over the asking price. In 1970, entire row houses were practically being given away. That’s when the fledgling Boston Ballet moved to the neighborhood. The ballet saw the potential of the area long before it was obvious.
With each neighborhood, it took a credible outsider to extol the virtue of a place before the masses followed.
This latest outsider, the ICA, represents the gold standard of external validators.
These places were great long before they were “discovered,’’ of course. And with changes come challenges: congestion, construction, gentrification, to name a few. But when an institution like the ICA sets its eyes on a neighborhood like East Boston, it injects energy and excitement.
It also lets the outsider flex some of its own political capital to get things done for its host community. For the ICA, that includes the establishment of a dedicated free water shuttle from East Boston to the mainland, a good idea that’s lain at anchor for too long. After all, Venice, Stockholm, and Amsterdam all have harbors with water transportation. Boston shouldn’t miss the boat.
Meanwhile, the ICA’s expansion plans are as bold as they are unique. It’s billed as a first in the museum world to expand exhibition space into a condemned building within a wayward shipyard.
That it is in a neighborhood that is well off the glitterati radar makes it all the more relevant.
We’ll see what the redevelopment brings. But right now, ICA, we like you, we really like you.
Mike Ross is an attorney and former Boston city councilor. He writes regularly for the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @mikeforboston.
