March 9th, 2001
Bid to Sell Naming Rights Runs Off Track in Boston
By Carey Goldberg
New York Times
Where, the naysayers demand, will it all end? Will the landmark Quincy Market downtown become, say, McDonald’s Market? Or the floriferous Public Garden become, say, the Fidelity Public Garden?
The focus of their complaints is a plan by the Boston subway system, the oldest in the country, to borrow a stratagem from sports stadiums and auction off the naming rights to four of its busiest stations.
Bidders, who do not seem to be lined up out the door, have until next Thursday to submit offers; they would have the right only to add their names to station titles, not replace them.
For years, stadiums have sold their names to corporations in deals sometimes bringing in tens of millions of dollars, and the tactic is spreading to shopping malls, museums and convention centers.
But Boston’s plan, experts on naming rights say, is the first they have heard of involving subway stations.
And in a city this stuck on its history and civic pride, the idea has evoked enough opposition, and enough questions about the worth of such a deal, that interest looks decidedly damp. At least, no potential bidders attended a pre-bid meeting on Wednesday, subway officials say.
Already, the officials say, they have dropped any minimum bid for the deal. Originally, they set a minimum annual fee of $500,000 to $2 million for each of the four stations: Downtown Crossing, Back Bay, Sullivan Square and South Station.
One opponent, Jerold S. Kayden, a Harvard professor of urban planning and the author of “Privately Owned Public Space: The New York City Experience,” (John Wiley & Sons) described the idea of selling subway names as “a small phenomenon in and of itself, but another example of creeping privatization.”
“It’s another step down the path of degrading the public realm,” Professor Kayden said. “The message is subtle but pervasive: Government can no longer provide traditional public facilities and services, such as parks, mass transit, perhaps even police and fire, on its own without the assistance of private money.”
A reader, David Hornstein, wrote to The Boston Globe: “It feels increasingly like the Evil Empire, but we’ve replaced pictures of Lenin with logos for Fleet, State Street, etc. The obvious question becomes, why stop with train stations? Next in line will be parks, highways, streets and children.”
Another reader, Joseph Wheelwright, wrote, “Post a bond or raise taxes if you must, but do not make us say the names of corporations when we describe where we go.”
Even Ralph Nader weighed in. He and his anticommercialism organization, Commercial Alert, wrote a public protest to Gov. Paul Cellucci of Massachusetts, denouncing the plan as “hucksterism that degrades history and community in favor of crass commercialism.”
Transit officials, however, argue that the sale would let them attract needed money without raising fares. The cost of a subway token already rose last year to $1 from 85 cents.
And among commuters one recent morning, the plan seemed to draw a warmer reception.
“Any way you can subsidize public service without detriment to the public is a good thing,” said Glenn Fratto, a school administrator from Arlington.
And Boston’s pride in its history?
“Does this look historic?” Mr. Fratto asked, looking at the shiny steel columns and hanging signs of the Park Street station. “You’re in a subway. What makes it different from the Fleet Center?” He was referring to the old Boston Garden, now rebuilt and renamed after the banking giant, FleetBoston Financial.
And Kerrie Kemperman, a graduate student from Somerville, said: “It’s a transit system. It’s not a work of art.”
It is a transit system that officially celebrated the 100th birthday of its first subway in 1997, and has undergone many a transformation in its many years. Known officially as the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority—and familiarly as the T—it was previously called the Metropolitan Transit Authority, as in the old song, “Charley on the M.T.A.” In the 19th century, it was the Boston Elevated Railway Company.
The transit authority’s life has been complicated of late by a change in its financing arrangements. A panel convened last year to help it adjust advised that it increase its nonfare income; the naming rights are part of that strategy.
The public response to naming rights has varied, said Jim Grinstead of Revenues from Sports Venues, publishers of a weekly newsletter. A local advisory referendum supported selling naming rights to the Green Bay Packers’ new field, he said. But in Denver, Mr. Grinstead noted, public sentiment so opposed renaming Mile High Stadium that some residents are suing to stop it.
Generally, said Dean Bonham, chairman of the Bonham Group, a sports and entertainment marketing company, “The populace has become much more accepting of the reality that corporations are going to be attaching their names to highly visible public facilities.”
The apparently meager corporate interest may change. Joe Pesaturo, a spokesman for the M.B.T.A., said that the authority “is getting word that interest exists” and that “we need to find a way to advance that interest to the next level.”
But Bostonians can be stubborn. Many still refer to the Downtown Crossing stop as Washington Street, and to the Hynes Convention Center stop as Auditorium.
Might passengers simply ignore the new names, if they appear?
Yes, said Khalida Smalls, coordinator of the city’s Transit Riders’ Union, “I can pretty much promise we will.”