White Stadium

The NAACP Boston Branch is calling on the administration of Mayor Michelle Wu to halt demolition on White Stadium, citing the projects displacement of BPS students from the facility, negative community impacts on parking and traffic, what it says is the city’s failure to meet equity standards, and a lack of transparency in the community processes that led to the city’s decision to lease the stadium to a professional soccer team.

Under a City of Boston traffic plan, game days at White Stadium will involve seven-hour parking bans in the neighborhoods surrounding Franklin Park during which non-permitted cars will receive $100 tickets and be towed.

A new partnership is happening in the city, intending to increase their contracting with local businesses, especially minority- and women-owned businesses, for the White Stadium project.

A Superior Court judge ruled last Wednesday that the city’s plan to lease White Stadium to a professional soccer team is not in violation of state law, clearing the way for the planned $200 million project to move forward.

Members of Franklin Park Defenders, a group led by the Emerald Necklace Conservancy and residents from the neighborhoods around Franklin Park, contend that the city’s plan to lease White Stadium to Boston Unity Soccer Partners for use by a professional women’s soccer team amounts to privatization of public park land.

Just before demolition began on the George Robert White Memorial Stadium last Friday, activists gathered Thursday evening at Lena Park Community Development Corporation’s American Legion Highway building to discuss an alternate vision for the stadium.

Mayor Michelle Wu last week appealed to Boston Public School parents for support for her administration’s controversial plan to lease White Stadium to a professional soccer team.

In 2024, national and statewide issues had major implications for Boston neighborhoods like Roxbury and Dorchester, where immigration and proposed construction projects were hot-button issues.

The Boston School Committee approved unanimously the White Stadium renovation plan, shortly after a group of community members, Franklin Park neighbors and elected officials gathered at Franklin Park to protest the project.

The Boston Parks and Recreation Commission approved last Monday Mayor Michelle Wu’s ambitious plan to renovate White Stadium, the rundown sports arena at the center of an ongoing controversy, into a larger sports facility.  The new space would be used by Boston Public Schools and a professional women’s soccer team.

As a member of the White Stadium Impact Advisory Group (IAG), observing injustice and seeking justice isn’t new to me. I see the privatization of White Stadium to women’s soccer as seminal as the harms of Urban Renewal and bussing combined

The city of Boston and Boston Unity Soccer Partners (BUSP) have created a public-private-community partnership to revitalize White Stadium for the neighborhood, BPS student-athletes and our city’s new National Women’s Soccer League team. This co-investment of more than $100 million will renew a community jewel and bring White Stadium back to prominence.