By Bill Forry

Without some fast action on Beacon Hill - and in Cedar Grove - we may be about to make a big mistake on the banks of the Neponset River. A unique opportunity to build a much-needed youth center there may be in danger of falling under the well-meaning, but slow-moving, wheels of state government.

The Reporter learned this week that the still-mysterious authority that took over from the MDC last year is about to seek out and hire a construction firm to begin transforming the stretch of waterfront land between Granite Ave. and Keystone Apartments. Three old industrial parcels wrestled from private hands over the last decade make up the property in question. The land, all taken from private hands by eminent domain, has been used for all sorts of purposes over the years: a junkyard, a tow lot, even a spray-painting business.

Thankfully, the scarred earth that runs along the riverside has a friend in Tom Finneran, the House Speaker who made the restoration of the waterfront his top local priority.

Across Massachusetts, Tom Finneran will someday be remembered as the man who kept the Pats in Foxborough. Here in Dorchester, he's our own Teddy Roosevelt, a rough and ready politician with a naturalist's vision to restore a link to the river and sea. Thanks to Finneran, we now have the bike path from Milton to Neponset and the 72-acre Pope John Paul II Park. He's also labored to preserve the Forbes Woods on Milton Hill, which provides such a beautiful vista on the Dorchester side of the river.

In 2000, Finneran masterminded legislation aimed at tying his Neponset plan together. At the urging of constituents in Neponset, Finneran cobbled together some $7.5 million to buy the old Sax warehouse property at Hilltop and Granite Ave. The huge parcel, since reduced to a rubble pile thanks to a suspected arson in November 2000, has been bundled with two other adjacent sites to make up the large property shown in the sketch on this page.

Truth be told, the old MDC had no real expectations of its own for this parcel. When the Speaker's pen-stroke brought it into the Commonwealth's hands, the doomed agency was told it was to be passive, open space. At community meetings in 2002, MDC planners showed plans for just that: a well-landscaped, passive corridor that would further connect residential Dorchester to its long-hidden river.

Even back then, however, rumblings from the neighborhood spoke to the need for a further use of the land: In addition to more green space, civic leaders saw this site as the perfect place for a new, multi-generational community center, long bandied about as a missing link in Neponset. Last year, as the MDC morphed into a new entity called the Department of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), neighbors continued to talk about the need for a structure on the site that would provide some sort of haven for local kids - and, during school hours, seniors from the neighborhood, too. Besieged with tales of bubbling youth delinquency and drug use, state Rep. Marty Walsh, City Councillor Maureen Feeney and state Senator Jack Hart spent time late last year huddling with youth workers and civic activists to weigh a new use for the a section of the site: a youth center.

John O'Toole, the president of the Cedar Grove Civic Association and a key proponent of Finneran's Neponset restoration, says that the awareness of an impending crisis among the neighborhood's teens is driving the discussion. At a Cedar Grove civic meeting just last week, the main topic of conversation was the lingering delinquency problem at the Martin Tot Lot, across the street from the now-vacant waterfront properties. Horror stories of rampant drug use, confrontations with neighbors, and even sex acts going on in broad daylight left the St. Brendan's audience in tumult. By meeting's end, the association had voted - nearly unanimously - to push the Area C-11 police to mount an aggressive campaign at the tot lot, urging that teens should be arrested if necessary to curb illicit activity there.

"We're seeing some real problems," says John O'Toole. "They're in Southie now and coming our way. If we don't put forth our best effort to get a shelter for our kids - then shame on us. Particularly when we have the potential for some resources to help."

O'Toole's speaking mainly of a partnership between volunteers like himself and the Wahlberg family, the now-famous Hollywood clan whose brother Bob remains a devoted Dorchesterite. With his brother Mark's charitable foundation as a likely engine for private funding for a youth center, Bob Wahlberg has been pushing for a more serious discussion of the youth center. Other potential donors could include such deep-pocketed OFDers as billionaire Richard Egan, the founder and CEO of EMC, Inc, who grew up a stone's throw from the Granite Ave site.

The concept has been embraced, at least in theory, by the political establishment - all but the Speaker, who to date has not made any public comments about the idea. This week, as word filtered out about the bidding process opening up, a major question mark remained: What will the state's contractor actually be doing there? Will the job call for a simple clean-up that could set the stage for a future mixed-use of the seven-acre site? Or will it be the sort of carefully-contoured, well-landscaped design - of the variety seen now at Pope John Paul II Park? The latter version worries youth center advocates, who believe such an investment would tend to preclude any room for a new facility.

At this writing, we just don't know for sure. But, for certain, there is anxiety that, in this instance, the snail's-pace bureaucracy of state government may stamp out a worthwhile idea in its infancy.

From those who labor at the grassroots level, it's been clear for a long time: We need a youth center in this part of Dorchester. It's also pretty clear that space for such a facility is at a premium. Letting all seven acres of prime real estate, adjacent to the Neponset, lie fallow while our kids whittle away their teen years on a street corner is madness. Before the state hauls in its earth movers and makes the decision for us, Dorchester needs to have that conversation in a formal way. The time is now.