THE TEAM LOOKING to bring a soccer stadium to Everett’s waterfront appears to have a new center forward who could help them score a win: Gov. Maura Healey.

The proposal for the 25,000-seat stadium ran into trouble at the State House last year. Language meant to speed the project along was added into the Senate version of a closeout budget bill, but it was dropped from the final version of the bill, as the House’s lead negotiator, Boston Rep. Aaron Michlewitz, said there were “unanswered questions” about the environmental impact, and acknowledged concerns from the owners of nearby TD Garden about potential competition from the stadium.

“Governor Healey and Lieutenant Governor Driscoll support a soccer stadium in Everett that would deliver an important economic development opportunity for the region and state,” Karissa Hand, an administration spokesperson, said in a Thursday email to CommonWealth Beacon.

The statement does not go into detail on whether Healey backs speeding the project along through legislation that makes a zoning change.

The Kraft Group, which owns the New England Revolution soccer team and the New England Patriots, is seeking to build the stadium on a 43-acre parcel that’s along the Mystic River and across from the Boston neighborhood of Charlestown. The polluted site is home to a defunct power plant.

“We look forward to discussion with legislative and community members to ensure that this property is cleaned up, advances environmental justice, and is put to the best use for the community,” Hand said.

Healey’s administration, in addition to working on the annual state spending plan, is also planning to soon put out an economic development package. That could include language on the soccer stadium.

Sen. Sal DiDomenico, who represents Everett and has been a key proponent of the stadium project, calling it an “economic catalyst,” recently filed his own bill after the setback in last year’s closeout budget bill. The DiDomenico bill does not yet have a hearing date.

Everett city officials have signed an agreement with the Kraft Group that calls for the company to set aside $10 million for affordable housing, four acres for a public park, and $5 million for a new community center. The site is down the street from the Wynn casino that opened in 2019.

The Kraft family has long sought a place in the Boston area to put a soccer stadium. The Revolution currently play at Gillette Stadium, the Patriots’ home field in Foxborough.

They and other project proponents are looking to remove the parcel from its standing as a Designated Port Area, which supporters say will speed up the redevelopment process, since the designation limits what can be done to sites that can support marine industrial uses. But as Senate and House lawmakers weighed whether to lift the designation last year, the Conservation Law Foundation referred to the attempt to include such language in the closeout budget bill as an “end-run around the public process” and a “gift for well-connected developers.”

Old home day at State House

The State House was the place to look ahead – and back – this week. 

The House chamber was filled on Wednesday for Gov. Maura Healey’s first State of the Commonwealth address, where she laid out her vision for the year to come. But it also served as the setting for a Beacon Hill nostalgia tour, with an unusually robust turnout of one-time State House luminaries on hand.

Former speaker Robert DeLeo was in the House. So was ex-Senate president Robert Travaglini. In the backslapping ways of Beacon Hill bonhomie, bygones are bygones, and the cast of one-time big shots also included several whose careers there came to ignominious ends. Former House speakers Charles Flaherty and Sal DiMasi, who both carry federal convictions for wrongdoing during their reign and are now working as lobbyists, were cheered when introduced by Senate President Karen Spilka, who presided over the session. Also, getting a warm welcome was former Senate president Stan Rosenberg, who was forced from office by scandal stirred by his husband. 

The biggest ovation, however, was reserved for former acting governor Jane Swift, whose trailblazing tenure as the first woman in the corner office has earned respect-filled shout-outs from Healey, and Michael Dukakis, the longest-serving governor in state history, still vital at 90.