State Senate could hold sessions at Dorchester's EMK Institute

A rendering shows the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, which will open next Monday on the Columbia Point campus of UMass Boston.

It is "not unlikely" that the 40-member Massachusetts Senate might meet at a new scale model representation of the U.S. Senate on Dorchester's Columbia Point when the chamber in the State House undergoes renovations, according to a top Senate Republican.

The state Senate on Thursday received a presentation from Boston Olympics bid backers at the soon-to-be-opened Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate. Last summer lawmakers authorized $20 million to renovate the Massachusetts Senate chamber and facilities, and another $20 million for repairs and renovations to the Massachusetts House.

An overhaul of the Senate chamber, which is directly beneath the building's iconic golden dome, would present a logistical question about where to hold formal and informal sessions. Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, a Gloucester Republican, had high praise for the Kennedy Institute, and said it is possible the Senate could use the space when the chamber is closed for renovations.

"I would say it's not out of the realm of possibility and it's certainly not unlikely. I think it might give a lot of folks the ability to realize a fantasy," Tarr said Thursday.

A spokesman for Senate President Stanley Rosenberg declined to comment on the possibility of using the museum as a temporary chamber, and said Rosenberg does plan to follow through on the renovations.

"The President plans to pursue the renovation of the Senate Chamber. A timeline of the project has not yet been established," Peter Wilson wrote in an email.

Boston 2024, the organization seeking to bring the summer Games to Boston in 2024, met privately with the Senate on Thursday at the Kennedy Institute. Rosenberg has pledged openness and transparency will guide his leadership of the Senate and Boston 2024 has said a "transparent process" is one of the group's principles.

Tarr said the presentation focused in part on the referendum Boston 2024 has endorsed, which would leave the final decision of whether to pursue the games to Massachusetts voters.

"They spent a considerable amount of time talking about public process and having a referendum vote and the essentially equal importance of the vote in the city of Boston and the vote in the rest of Massachusetts, i.e., a negative vote in either case would be fatal to the effort," said Tarr, who believes the Legislature should take its own actions to protect public resources around the Olympics.

A privately funded group founded by construction magnate John Fish, Boston 2024 employs former top deputies and advisors to the administrations of Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, Gov. Charlie Baker and former Gov. Deval Patrick.

Tarr said the group might reach out to the Senate for guidance. "They indicated they may need to come to us for advice in the future, but they didn't necessarily seek any today," Tarr said.

Tarr was awestruck by the setting of the closed-door joint caucus in the facility that will host President Barack Obama for a dedication ceremony on Monday and open its doors to the public on Tuesday.

The institute honors the memory of the late "liberal lion" of the Senate who died in 2009, and the structure is located next to a center memorializing his late brother, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum.

The institute features a scale model of the U.S. Senate chamber with the only noticeable difference, according to Tarr, being an adherence to accessibility requirements the late senator helped pass. The rostrum in the Dorchester model is lower off the ground than the rostrum on Capitol Hill.

"It is an amazing resource. It is inspiring, and it's a very - it's an amazing experience to walk through that building and not only to realize the public servant that it represents but also the impact that it could have on civic engagement in the Commonwealth and across the country," Tarr said.

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