TED MUM ON PLAN FOR GREENWAY
By Jay Fitzgerald
Boston Herald General Economics Reporter
Boston Herald, MA
May 16 2006
The future design of a post-Big Dig park was thrown into question
yesterday after Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and a key conservancy executive
refused to endorse a planned memorial for victims of the Armenian
genocide.
Local politicians yesterday officially broke ground on the $3.7
million Chinatown park that will anchor the southern end of the Rose
Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.
Kennedy, whose late mother’s name will adorn the entire park system
stretching for more than a mile through the heart of downtown Boston,
hailed the Chinatown park as a major milestone toward creating a
“marvelous Greenway.”
But after a Chinatown event yesterday, the Massachusetts Democrat
refused to endorse or reject a proposal to build a memorial in another
section of the Greenway near Faneuil Hall that would honor Armenian
heritage – and possibly honor the Armenian victims of genocide.
“I certainly can’t make” a decision on it, he said, noting a
conservancy board will have to judge the merits of the park plan.
Edwin Schlossberg, a member of the Greenway Conservancy Board and
husband of Kennedy’s niece, Caroline, has expressed reservations
about singling out one ethnic group within the Greenway.
Nancy Brennan, the board’s executive director, said the Armenian
heritage park is “still in discussion.”