Forget the just-canceled IndyCar race or the failed Olympic bid. If you’re wondering why Boston gets tarred as the land of “no,’’ the answer lies in an empty retail space on a bustling corner in South Boston.
For a few years, Southie real estate owner Michael Norton had been working to put a restaurant on his property at East Broadway and L Street. But he couldn’t line up a liquor license — and not for lack of effort. Because of an archaic state law, the city doesn’t have enough licenses to meet the demand, and it’s tough to make a sit-down restaurant work without one. A would-be restaurateur who tries and fails a few times can’t wait indefinitely for a better result.
Recently, Starbucks proposed a coffee shop in Norton’s space. The idea met zoning requirements and gained some public support. Even so, the Seattle chain ran into ferocious criticism — some of it from nearby residents, but much of it from existing business owners who serve coffee and just don’t want the competition.
If only there were an “easy’’ button — like in the Staples ads — for getting a business running in Boston. Granted, this latest Starbucksgate is a headache for one landowner in a politically active neighborhood of the city. But it hints at the travails facing lots of people who want to invest their own money, energy, and talent in Boston.
Not long ago, a Dunkin Donuts opened without incident not far from the proposed Starbucks site. But at public meetings Monday and Wednesday, various speakers threw everything but the coffee-bar sink at the proposed new shop. It would encourage double parking. It threatened the safety of moms with strollers. It would add traffic, presumably because the shop would attract many new patrons — even though opponents also insisted it “isn’t needed.’’
Even Norton’s inability to crack Boston’s insane liquor-license process became a strike against the Starbucks. “He told us it was going to be an Italian restaurant, not another coffee shop,’’ one abutter said. (Norton didn’t want to comment on the dispute.)
Mayor Marty Walsh has bills on Beacon Hill to ease up on licensing rules in Boston. Yet he, along with two city councilors, sent emissaries to oppose the Starbucks plan. And on Thursday, the Walsh-appointed Licensing Board rejected it.
Business-licensing snafus get far less attention than high-profile civic debacles do. Last weekend, after organizers of the Grand Prix of Boston shelved plans for an IndyCar race over Labor Day, there was plenty of hand-wringing about how the city keeps saying no to big ideas. First the Olympics, supporters fretted, and now this?
Yet large-scale spectacles like those run into trouble, often over the amount of taxpayer support required, in many other cities. I worry more about how Boston discourages much smaller ideas — the privately funded restaurants, coffee shops, small development projects, and other business plans that fall into a regulatory and political vortex, or are never even proposed to begin with.
In Boston, we push the “difficult’’ button in lots of ways:
¦A finicky approval process helps explain why most of the buildings in the booming Seaport were designed by the same handful of firms. Architects get hired less for the boldness of their vision than for their ability to clear permitting hurdles, even as everyone from Mayor Walsh on down complains about the blandness of recent architecture in Boston.
¦When fabled live music venues close, it’s tough to replace them, partly because of the liquor license shortage that bedevils restaurants and partly because few neighborhoods welcome new clubs. Some promoters put on shows in illegal venues, but for musicians who need official gigs to survive, it’s harder to get by in an expensive city.
¦If a city tourism official calls the producers of “Top Chef’’ or the Boston Calling music festival to warn about potential labor troubles ahead, is that a helpful heads-up — or a subtle attempt by Walsh’s administration to make them hire union members? Allegations along these lines are now the subject of a federal investigation; even if there was no crime, such tactics create bad word-of-mouth about the perils of putting on events in the city.
In every instance, the “difficult’’ button has its defenders. One person’s “government micromanagement’’ is another’s “advocacy for working people’’ or “community control over the neighborhood fabric.’’ More than one speaker at the Licensing Board meeting Wednesday called for protecting small businesses from the predations of global corporations like Starbucks.
But here’s an alternate theory: In Boston, we fall too easily for altruistic-sounding rationales for rent-seeking, obstructionism, and behind-the-scenes intrigue. That dynamic may not be what killed the Grand Prix, but there are plenty of other victims.
Dante Ramos can be reached at dante.ramos@globe.com. Follow him on Facebook: facebook.com/danteramos or on Twitter: @danteramos.
