CAPTION: The “Liberty Hotel” is expected to open in June in the old Suffolk County jail on Charles Street.




Come June, the old jailhouse will be really rocking, though not to the tune of “Jailhouse Rock.”

The jury’s in. After years of deliberation — well, not really — the Cambridge-based real estate developers Carpenter & Company, Inc., who have been transforming the old Charles Street Jail into a new 300-room hotel, have reached a verdict. It will call the hotel “Liberty,” said Vice-President and General Counsel Peter Diana.

That’s Liberty, as in “liberty and justice for all.” Oh, the irony of it all.

Diana said his marketing team just didn’t think a name such as the “Old Charles Street Jail Hotel” or “Inn Carceration” — the goofiest name suggested to them — would ultimately cause people to stay in their hotel.

“Liberty conveys the opposite of confinement,” said Diana, who has clearly forgotten that long-term confinements in hotel rooms bring increased revenues. “Plus, the name gives it a revolutionary feel, a sort of colonial touch, which is appropriate for Boston.”

“I claim to plead ignorance on such matters,” said John Achatz, Beacon Hill Civic Association president who has worked for years on Cambridge Street developments. But he was quick to admit that he was not surprised at the name choice. “After all, Boston is the cradle of liberty, and here the hotel is downtown,” he said. “Anyway, it’s sort of a cute term for a jail.”

“A ‘catchy’ name,” Diana called it. Catchy, yes, but not catchy enough to house disruptive hotel guests in leftover jail cells. Only a few of the walls of the cells once used to house disruptive individuals in the past have been preserved in the lower two levels of the hotel. After guests check in at the main lobby on the second floor, they will pass several of the cell walls as they walk to the bank of elevators on their way to the guests rooms. Diana did not confirm that the cell walls were left there to remind guests of appropriate behavior.

While the guest rooms will be located in the newly-constructed building adjacent to the historic one, the old county jail will contain on its five floors meeting rooms, two restaurants, a bar, and a ballroom with large windows, suitable for those seeking escape from dancing the jailhouse rock with their partners.

Ten years ago, dancer Ann Logan Phillips swung from a wire twenty feet above the stage — and then, when she was safely back on the ground, found herself defying death for real. At 32, the native Midwesterner was having the time of her life: she’d just completed a grueling, thrilling run as a Rhine Maiden in a production of Wagner’s Ring Cycle that required her to act and sing, in German, suspended in midair. She’d taken a job in the costume shop at the Boston Ballet, where she was happily building tutus — a job no less rigorous, in its way, than the one she’d just left — and she was beginning to consider herself an unofficial Bostonian.

Then she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And while today Phillips is happy and healthy, she says the day she found out she had a life-threatening illness changed the whole shape of her life to come.

She’s not alone: according to the American Cancer Society, breast cancer is the second most common cancer among women in the United States, with some 213,000 new cases and 41,000 deaths expected in 2006 alone. So on October 15, when Phillips heads to the Esplanade for the 14th annual Making Strides Against Breast Cancer Walk, she’ll join thousands of other breast cancer survivors, along with a small army of their loved ones and friends, and volunteers who have decided to be active — literally — in the search for a cure.

“I feel really good about participating in the walk,” says Phillips. “There are 26 breast cancer research grants taking place in Massachusetts alone, and they’re discovering new treatments and new drugs all the time. The American Cancer Society also supports early detection and patient support efforts, so the money that we raise is going straight where it needs to go.”

Two years after her surgery and treatment, Phillips walked with a friend and felt well enough to complete only half of the six-mile distance; now, Phillips manages a team of walkers who show up each year to support the search for a cure.

And they show up just to support each other. “On our team we have mothers and daughters walking together, and sons and husbands as well,” Phillips says. “One of the moms who walked with us just to support us was diagnosed a couple of years ago, and because her kids had walked along with people who survived breast cancer or were being treated, it made them less afraid.”

That’s a theme Phillips has experienced in her own life. Ten months after Phillips found out she had breast cancer, her mother was diagnosed and, initially, didn’t want to burden her with the news. Five years ago, her mother’s cancer returned and is now managed with the drugs Herceptin and Femara, which had recently been introduced as treatment options. “She’s doing great, and in a way it’s made us closer,” Phillips says. “I’m obviously her child, but I’m able to understand what she’s going through in a way that other people don’t. We’re a lot more open with each other than we might have been.”

Nearly ten years after her diagnosis, Phillips surveys a sunny Boston skyline from the rooftop Healing Garden at Massachusetts General Hospital. A lot has changed in her life since then, including her job: inspired by the care she received at MGH, Phillips now helps coordinate research for the hospital’s cardiology department, though she still teaches dance history at the Boston Ballet.

The biggest changes, Phillips says, aren’t as visible as a line on a resume, but they’ve made all the difference in the world. She’s become an avid scuba diver — something she always wanted to try, but was afraid to do. And she’s gotten a dog, a King Charles spaniel, which she dotes on. “I was always afraid, with this diagnosis, to make a commitment to another living thing,” she says. “I’m not afraid anymore; I’ve learned to advocate for myself.”

She might not feel quite so appreciative early on the morning of October 15; she’s returning the night before from a scuba trip to Cabo, after all, and morning comes early after a vacation. But her boyfriend will be there for her, and her dog. And perhaps most importantly, her team will be there — waiting for her to take the lead and to set the example of living with a history of cancer and living with gusto.

Don’t be afraid to call 911

We hear it all the time: If we want the police to come, we must call 911.

We hear it at community meetings when Captain Bernie O’Rourke, Sgt. Tom Lema and other community service officers talk about how they can better serve our community.

We hear it at meetings with area universities, city councilors and others who are concerned like we are about loud parties and disruptive student behavior in our neighborhood that keep us up at night.

But most of us still don’t call 911.

It seems our minds are ingrained from childhood with the belief that calling 911 must be reserved for emergencies — real ones, ones that need immediate help by medics or firemen or armed policemen. We are afraid that if we tie up the 911 phone line with a non-life-threatening call, we will prevent someone else from the help they need to stay alive.

And that is just not the case. 911 is for dire emergencies, yes, but it is also for any time we need the presence of a police officer. One will not get in the way of the other. Here’s why.

BPD Sgt. Michael Fish, who recently led a group of concerned citizens on a tour of the emergency call center at Boston Police Headquarters, explained that in this city which receives upwards of 750,000 emergency calls each year, police prioritize calls based upon the sense of urgency each conveys. That means a situation that is in progress and induces a high level of terror, such as a home invasion or armed robbery, merits a Level 1 designation, while a complaint about a loud party, a group causing a disturbance on the street or a prostitute working in the neighborhood would receive a lower level designation. Emergency services are dispatched according to the priority of the call.

A call won’t tie up the lines, either. The police headquarters, located at the corner of Ruggles and Tremont streets, is Boston’s main public safety answering point where emergency calls are received and then routed to the proper emergency services. That location is backed up by a facility in Brookline, and there are even more locations throughout the state. Fish said a 911 caller never gets a busy signal, and all calls are answered.

We need to rethink our own behavior. We complain loudly about loud parties and acts of vandalism in the neighborhood, but police have little recourse when we tell them about the incident the day after it occurs.

Suffolk University has put together an extensive off-campus neighborhood response plan to crack down on their students’ behavior as a result of our complaints. Part of that plan included the hiring of police details who now patrol the north slope of Beacon Hill and the North End on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights from 11:45 p.m. to 3:45 p.m. Riding in that patrol car is Richard Grealish, Suffolk’s new director of neighborhood response whose job it to enforce the university’s policies and expectations for off-campus behavior.

Grealish asks residents to report loud parties or other unacceptable student behavior by first calling 911 — so he and the police can get to the party while it is still going on. Let’s help Suffolk do the job we asked them to do by calling that number. The police track the number of calls for each property and will report that to Grealish as well, even if they don’t actually get there.

Because there will be times when the police don’t respond to the loud party calls. At those times we need to remember that the police are tending to other issues, ones that are far more life threatening. Those are the calls we want them to respond to first — the ones that in the past kept us from using that emergency number at all.

CAPTION: Machinery blocked the entrances of several storefronts at the corner of Charles and Revere streets last week.
CREDIT: Jaclyn Trop




Mere days after Charles Street’s month-long sewer rehabilitation project concluded, merchants were slammed last week with another noisy project. On October 2, NStar began preliminary work to install an underground vault, which will hold the transformers NStar plans to install next year to add another power source to the neighborhood.

“This is going to benefit the entire area, Beacon Hill and beyond,” said NStar spokesperson Mike Durand.

The project is expected to last six to eight weeks, according to Durand. NStar will begin installing another vault at the corner of Myrtle and South Russell streets in early November. That project is expected to take eight to 10 weeks.

Durand said that the projects are preventative efforts. “Our engineers are always monitoring the system with an eye towards which areas need upgrades,” he said.

However, the construction site at the corner of Charles and Revere streets has inconvenienced businesses on the block by decreasing traffic flow and generating noise.

“At least the Boston Water and Sewer Commission informed us ahead of time and were courteous about it,” said Casandra McIntyre of Rugg Road Paper Company. “NStar is really rude. When I inquired about what they were doing, they were abrupt. I want to know what they’re doing and why it’s taking six weeks.”

McIntyre said that her block, on the east side of Charles Street between Revere and Pinckney streets, “bore the brunt” of the sewer project’s last three weeks, with no parking and only one lane of traffic. The construction equipment has been taking up two or three metered parking spots everyday, she said. “Why can’t they be parked on Revere where shoppers don’t need to park?”

NStar’s timing is the worst part of the project, McIntryre said. The project’s six-week span cuts into the holiday retail season when most retailers need to get “out of the red” and make up for lower sales during the first part of the year, she said.
Philip Ilatovsky, a framer at Beacon Hill Framery next door, said that the worst part of the new project is the noise. “We like to keep the door open and the air flowing,” he said. The construction has also complicated the logistics of the framery’s business, which Ilatovsky called “a pick up, drop off business,” because customers cannot park nearby and the equipment obstructs the view of the store.

“After the sewer project, we just took a deep breath and opened the door, and now they’ve got one of those tractors right there,” Ilatovsky said, pointing out the window. “I guess the spacing between the projects is sort of awkward.”

The Beacon Hill Business Association emailed the Boston City Council, state Representative Marty Walz, and the Mayor’s Office detailing merchants’ concerns and asking that they be informed of construction projects in the future.

“Several of the Beacon Hill businesses are being put in a difficult situation from a retail perspective as a result of a new four to six week city/NSTAR project… None of the businesses being impacted was aware of this,” wrote Teryn Weintz, the business association’s executive director.