December 2, 2014 — The 20-acre site — with easy access to the highway and spectacular views of the downtown skyline — is largely unnoticed by passing motorists, but it has caught the eye of the group trying to bring the Summer Olympics to Boston in 2024 as a possible site for a 60,000-seat stadium.
Though the site is barely a long javelin throw from Boston’s more celebrated business neighborhood, the Innovation District, meatpackers and fishmongers worry that their livelihood is now at risk because their jobs lack the cachet of tech entrepreneurs.
“Maybe we need to rename ourselves,” said Marion Kaiser, chief executive of Aquanor Marketing Inc., a seafood wholesaler: “New Boston Innovation Center.”
Monday marked the deadline for the local organizing committee to submit its proposal to the US Olympic Committee for how Boston would host the 2024 games; the city is among four US finalists.
Even though an Olympic stadium on their property is far from a sure thing, Kaiser and her neighbors are already gripped by a sense that powerful interests have seized control of their fate — again. The food market was evicted from Quincy Market in 1969, when Boston turned the old “meatpackers row” into the shopping strip it is today.
The New Boston Food Market also finds itself the bullseye of a wide area targeted for development.
On one side of its Widett Circle property is Boston’s municipal tow lot, where Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Revolution, reportedly is considering building a soccer stadium.
On an abutting parcel to the east is a cold storage facility that Boston-based Celtic Recycling wants to turn into a transfer station, raising fear of contamination among the food sellers.
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