BOSTON – In this city dotted with landmark-filled communities, Charlie Jacobs has built one of his own. The history is shorter. The landmarks – like the statue of an exuberant Bobby Orr from the 1970 Stanley Cup – honor events that happened a couple of generations ago, not a few centuries ago.
The neighborhood is getting busier – and not just on hockey and basketball game nights.
“This didn’t used to be a community,” Jacobs said from his office in the Boston Bruins’ headquarters. Jacobs, a native of Buffalo, is CEO of the Bruins, which his family has owned for nearly a half century. He’s also one of the third-generation CEOs of his family’s $4.3 billion hospitality business, Buffalo-based Delaware North.
For three decades, the Bruins and Delaware North have been vying to turn this arena section of Boston into a vibrant place where people spent time – and money – even when there’s not a Bruins or NBA Celtics game at the TD Garden.
They did it, and that’s why Jacobs is standing here today, looking out his 14th-floor conference room at sweeping views of the city, and talking about “community.”
Years ago, he added, “there was nothing here but (subway) lines and a highway.”
It was a problem that should sound familiar in Buffalo, where progress has been made in the Canalside neighborhood near KeyBank Center, but the streets are nowhere near as busy as they are on game nights.
Today, in a similar neighborhood of Boston, there’s much more. A renovated arena, a hotel, multiple restaurants and a food hall, a luxury-living apartment complex, a cinema, a grocery store, and the office tower Jacobs is standing in now.
With those things come what you need most: People. Every day.
In 1975, when Jeremy Jacobs Sr. bought the Bruins, he made the deal over the phone. Afterward, he headed to Boston to see the Boston Garden, which he also bought.
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