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Mini-park in Egleston Square that billboard company locked up now owned by the city, which plans to re-open it
By adamg on Fri, 06/28/2024 - 12:22pm
Acklerley Communications of Massachusetts yesterday sold the small parcel where it had a billboard on Washington Street in Egleston Square to the city of Boston for $300,000, according to Suffolk County Registry of Deeds records.
For two decades, Egleston Square residents had maintained most of the 5,500-square-foot parcel as an mural-filled park with benches, but Ackerley put a fence around the site in 2021 and then offered it for sale for $1 million.
City officials announced last year they had begun negotiations to buy the land, with the goal of turning it into a permanent park.
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Comments
Make a dog park there.
Make a dog park there.
I'm hoping the city keeps it
I'm hoping the city keeps it as a park, with revenue from the billboard helping to maintain the park. It would be a step down to turn it into a parking lot or a landfill.
Landfill?
Someone has never, ever, ever, been to Egleston Square and has no idea what this site looks like or how big it is.
Ackerley got off easy
If the neighborhood can demonstrate this open pattern of use of the space for more than twenty years (and I'd bet they can) the space was already subject to a prescriptive easement-by-use in MA.
That said, the lawsuit might've cost less than the city actually paid, but would not have conferred ownership, so this sounds like one of those rare win/wins
there was a lease
between community groups and Clear Channel (who owned it before Ackerley) regarding use of the space for the Peace Garden, during which time CC had access to the billboard to update it. So the use was neither unsanctioned nor adverse to the owner.