Pastor Tom Lee Has a Mission

Pastor Tom Lee has accepted the mission of stopping the sordid morals of much of our society from infesting his neighborhood in Boston’s Chinatown. He is quick to point out that there are many families in the area who are concerned about their children.

Reformer of the Month

We never hear about the courageous reformers in Massachusetts who stand against the entrenched establishment and demand change. That’s because the establishment media do not want us to know about them. Whereas, our difficulty at Massachusetts News is the multitude of people from whom to pick. We could write a book.

Reformer of the Month
Pastor Tom Lee Has a Mission

By John Fahey
February 2002

Pastor Tom Lee of the Boston Chinese Evangelical Church in Chinatown has a mission.

It is to clean LaGrange Street of the infamous Centerfold, a strip bar which several months ago set up shop in what once was notoriously known as the “combat zone,” a reference that Pastor Lee is trying to eliminate.

A civic group, The Lower Washington Street Neighborhood Task Force, shares the same mission.

Pastor Lee desperately wants the area to forge ahead with its current modernization and development of cultural attractions that can be found in Chinatown and the Theater District.

But the area, according to Lee, is regressing. “It’s going back to the way it was when the city contained these places into one zone. Prior to the Lower Washington Street area bustling with pornographic stores and strip joints, the city had contained these disreputable places in the Scully Square section of the city (now Government Center). However, once Government Center started development, the city needed to contain these places into one section, and that’s how Lower Washington Street ended up as it did.”

Pastor Lee says that this area, which is literally on the doorstep of Chinatown and is both a business and residential center, “will always be straddled with the threat of once again becoming a thriving area teeming with disreputable businesses.” And as Lee states, “The law still provides for this kind of zone in Lower Washington Street.”

In the 1960s the area could boast of many strip bars and pornographic stores. Then in the 1980s there were less than ten. Now there are only two, but Lee states that to close the Centerfold remains a formidable challenge.

The community has had two protests, on December 14th and 20th, and The Lower Washington Street Neighborhood Task Force has taken the issue to the courts.

“The issue revolves around licensing,” he says. “There needs to be two licenses, one for alcohol and the other for entertainment. Originally, the city denied the club’s request for both an entertainment and alcohol license.”

The club appealed and Judge Lopez overturned the city and granted a liquor license. The case is currently in appeal, and there is still a potential of appeal regarding the entertainment license.

“While the city did deny the entertainment licenses to the club, the issue remains uncertain since the courts can overturn the decision and the club will be in operation. The city has tried to prevent the club’s operation but with the courts, under Lopez, the issue remains precarious.”

[This is the same judge, Maria Lopez, who is married to the owner of the Boston Phoenix and is currently under investigation for her bizarre rulings.]

The Lower Washington Street Task Force is vigilantly fighting to continue the improvement of the Lower Washington Street area, but with the opening of the Centerfold, the efforts of many people for many years to clean the area seem to be in jeopardy. Now with a possibility of a resurgence of disreputable establishments, the decisions of the courts are eagerly awaited.