A couple of hours later, after a memorable dinner in an open-air room on the harbor’s edge that feels like a public market in Sydney or Seattle, the scene suddenly seemed surreal. The portico of the massive convention center shone from the hill. The modern Institute for Contemporary Art shone against the harbor.
And one thought kept echoing through my tiny brain: Menino was right.
You know Tom Menino — mayor of Boston, likes to get his way, always said the waterfront is the city’s future, even as one developer after another left nothing but dirt-strewn parking lots behind.
But gradually, and then suddenly, something changed. Berkowitz was on the phone yesterday saying that his Legal Harborside served 2,000 people on Sunday. That’s even before his third restaurant, with a retractable roof, opens on the top floor this weekend.
“It’s exceeding expectations,’’ he said coyly.
The nearby Morton’s steakhouse is going full-blast. The Italian grocer J. Pace & son serves 1,000 sandwiches on a good day. You have pioneering restaurateurs from Jerry Remy to Barbara Lynch, the latter the most talented chef on earth.
This morning, the boldfaced world will gather for the official groundbreaking of two new Joe Fallon buildings totaling 1.1 million square feet of research and office space, the headquarters of a pharmaceutical company called Vertex.
To put this in perspective, the $800 million development will mark the largest private construction project currently underway in the nation. It will employ 1,200 construction workers and, later, 1,800 full-time Vertex workers.
“I can remember the days when I was talking to the Pritzkers,’’ Menino said, referring to the Chicago family that owned Fan Pier. “We’d fight every gosh darn day, we’d work out our issues, and then they’d have a family fight over it.’’
