Boston Will Soon See if It’s Ready for the Party

As the Democratic National Convention prepares to open here Monday, Boston is girding for it as if a monstrous, four-day snowstorm was about to hit in July.

Despite more than 18 months of nonstop planning, questions remain about how one of the country’s oldest cities will handle its first national political convention. What is certain is that disruptions brought on by unprecedented security measures will touch almost every aspect of daily life.

Near the convention site at the Fleet Center, mailboxes will be removed and evening collections will stop within six ZIP codes. Superior Court will be canceled.

Teenagers hoping to get their first driver’s licenses will be out of luck during the four-day gathering because state police are calling off road tests to provide manpower for the convention. Near the Charles River, a wading pool favored by toddlers has been taken over as a police command post.

Security will be so extensive that almost 40 miles of roads, tunnels and bridges will be closed. Passengers on public transportation will have their packages inspected. Downtown garages will be shut. Even soiled linens will be subject to scrutiny as hotels near the convention center wheel their laundry to a central pickup spot several blocks away.

In a city already infamous for nightmarish commutes, some companies are revising work shifts so employees can head home before the area’s most heavily traveled interstate highway shuts down each day from 4 p.m. to midnight. The train and subway stations at the Fleet Center also will be closed, causing workers in the area to craft new commute strategies.

Boston’s reputation as a labor-friendly city also is on the line, as the Police Patrolmen’s Assn. threatens to picket delegation parties Sunday night -- and possibly during the entire convention. After working without a contract for more than two years, the officers have reached a stalemate in talks with Mayor Thomas M. Menino.

Yet Menino, who lobbied for years to bring the convention to Boston, dismissed predictions of chaos in the city next week. He recalled the gloom-and-doom prophecies about Y2K -- when computers were expected to crash as the 21st century began.

That never happened, said Menino, and he called the forecasts of gridlock as the estimated 35,000 delegates, party officials and media members arrive just as misplaced.

“This convention will put the spotlight on our city, and we have done everything in our power to get ready for it,” he said. “Even with the challenges in a post-9/11 world, I am confident that this city will be great for our city and for Democrats.”

Holding the convention here presents special challenges, especially with the fear of a terrorist assault looming. The specter of Sept. 11, 2001, hovers especially close in the area, because the two planes that hit New York’s World Trade Center took off from Boston’s Logan Airport.

The city is small and densely populated. In the downtown areas where most convention attendees will congregate, some roads began as cow paths. Residents often despair of negotiating the warren of streets on Beacon Hill, where the presumed Democratic presidential nominee, Massachusetts Sen. John F. Kerry, maintains a home with his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry.

Bostonians have learned to cope by investing in sensible shoes and recognizing that in a snowstorm -- or when 35,000 conventioneers show up -- transit can be trying. But out-of-town guests may not be so understanding about the inconveniences caused by street closings and other security precautions.

“I have had to get in touch with each guest to tell them that they can’t drive up to the hotel, and that our bellmen will meet them at a substitute garage,” said Tracie Gunning, sales director at the Onyx Hotel, one block from the Fleet Center.

“I have already heard from one guest who is concerned because she is having a limo pick her up for all the parties,” said Gunning. “I had to tell her she is going to have to walk two blocks to the limo and taxi drop-off zone.”

On a visit to Boston last week, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said the safety measures in Boston would exceed the intense security at the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake City. Even without what Ridge called “multiple layers of security,” the area around the Fleet Center is noisy and congested.

It is also less than beautiful. For more than 12 years, Boston has soldiered through the “Big Dig,” a $14-billion highway reconstruction project that has been likened to building the Panama Canal under a major city. The new subterranean roadway is finally open, and much of the hulking Central Artery it replaced has been torn down.

But near the Fleet Center, hunks of the old highway remain standing. A vast “greenway” garden space that one day will occupy the artery’s former space is currently a mass of rubble. The effect is the urban counterpart of an unfinished face lift.

Aesthetics in the area have not been enhanced by the removal of public trashcans -- a further bow to convention security. Along with garbage on the streets is the steady roar of construction clamor -- the ongoing Big Dig activity coupled with a frenzied effort to convert an athletic arena into a political convention facility.

Work at the Fleet Center was set back more than a week when the patrolmen’s union picketed shortly after construction began. Menino won a court order barring the pickets. With help from the state labor management board, the mayor and the union have been in expedited arbitration, with hopes the contract dispute will be resolved before the convention begins.

Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole said her department spent 19 months preparing a plan for the convention.

“We have anticipated every possible scenario,” she said. “We have plans for terrorists, plans for counter-terrorists, plans for traffic management and plans for protesters. Hopefully, our greatest challenge will be the traffic management.”

Outside their office, just a few blocks from the Fleet Center, two legal secretaries said the prospect of traffic mismanagement was more than enough to make their lives miserable while the convention is in town.

“It is going to be a huge inconvenience for everybody,” said Nikki Brady.

Brady and Julia Hardigan, who work a few blocks from the Fleet Center, said that because their normal commuter train stop under the facility will be closed for the convention, they have worked out different routes for getting to their office.

The two said they usually carry large bags to hold sneakers, so they can walk comfortably from the station to their jobs. But transportation officials have said they will inspect large bags and packages.

“I told my boss ... ‘I’ll be here when I get here,’ ” Hardigan said.

About 10 minutes away in the city’s quaint North End, Tony Squillante said he’d be “outta here” and in Florida during the convention week.

As is his habit on sunny summer days, Squillante was sitting in a webbed nylon lawn chair on a corner in the neighborhood that for generations was home to the city’s Italian immigrants.

During the convention, Squillante said of the neighborhood he was born in: “Don’t even bother coming in here. You’ll never get out.”