General Boston Discussion

[Johnnyrocket891]

Boston recently released a Climate Action Plan.

The few articles I've seen about it mostly just mention they plan to study possibly implementing congestion pricing (good!), but that's also just a sliver what's in the 200+ page document. Has anyone else done a deeper dive? Thoughts?

Boston's Climate Action Plan

Boston’s 2030 Climate Action Plan is Boston's roadmap for how we will reduce our carbon emissions and protect our neighborhoods from climate change, while centering climate justice. Achieving our 2030 and 2050 emissions goals will provide benefits to every neighborhood in Boston: energy...

www.boston.gov

Climate Action Plan? It’s basically a long essay that says drive less or pay more now, trust us later while billionaires and the political class fly around in private jets and yachts lecturing everyone else about saving the planet. I’m all for real, long‑term infrastructure fixes, but when the state Legislature blocks audits voters already approved and then comes back asking for more tax dollars, it’s hard not to call this nonsense.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Climate Action Plan? It’s basically a long essay that says drive less or pay more now, trust us later while billionaires and the political class fly around in private jets and yachts lecturing everyone else about saving the planet. I’m all for real, long‑term infrastructure fixes, but when the state Legislature blocks audits voters already approved and then comes back asking for more tax dollars, it’s hard not to call this nonsense.

Who cares if the world burns and Boston is underwater...at least I got my tax cut, amirite?

 

[Blackbird]

I don't know about Fidelity, but by 2019 most State Street employees were strongly encouraged to take two Flex days (as they were then called), and that was considered mitigation for the announcement that the company would soon get rid of assigned desks and reduce their office footprint and cram everyone into fewer buildings. Covid delayed that for a while, and now everything has reversed.

The cynical part of me says it could be a ploy to encourage people to quit and minimize eventual layoffs.

 

[Johnnyrocket891]

Who cares if the world burns and Boston is underwater...at least I got my tax cut, amirite?

Paying more taxes only makes sense if policy serves the public — otherwise you’re just funding the same failures again, like bank bailouts that privatize gains and socialize losses on working Americans which created modern day slaverly against the American working class.

What happened to working from Home? Guess the corporations had a change of heart. Drive back into the city 5-days week.

 

[DBM]

Who cares if the world burns and Boston is underwater...at least I got my tax cut, amirite?

The clown emoji is such a perfect deployment here, in light of the continued drivel being spewed by Johnnyrocket.

 

[DBM]

Paying more taxes only makes sense if policy serves the public — otherwise you’re just funding the same failures again, like bank bailouts that privatize gains and socialize losses on working Americans which created modern day slaverly against the American working class.

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

 

[Justbuildit]

That's kinda annoying that they are trying to get out of 245 Summer. That's literally right at South Station.

No, they HAD been trying to sublease, but now they're announcing they're going to stay in both buildings for the foreseeable future (from the Globe article).

Last year, Fidelity had started trying to lease out its headquarters building at 245 Summer St., because it is preparing to move into its rebuilt Commonwealth Pier campus later this year. Now, because it needs more space for workers, Fidelity will instead hold on to 245 Summer as well as the new Commonwealth Pier facility.

The company had intended to make Commonwealth Pier, formerly known as the Seaport World Trade Center, its new headquarters. Now, it’s not clear which address in Boston will carry that distinction.

Fidelity, through its Pembroke real estate affiliate, has long owned the property on the pier as well as the Seaport Hotel and two adjacent office buildings along Seaport Boulevard, through long-term leases with Massport. The old World Trade Center was mostly torn down and rebuilt to create a modern waterfront office complex; the 700,000-square-foot-plus project will include more than 600,000 square feet in offices. Restaurants and a public plaza are slated to open in the pier complex this spring, with employees starting to move into offices there in late summer.

 

[jklo]

No, they HAD been trying to sublease, but now they're announcing they're going to stay in both buildings for the foreseeable future

Sounds more like they can't find someone to sublease it, so may as well continue to use it until the lease runs out.

I'm sure it's pricey.

 

[stevebikes]

The cynical part of me says it could be a ploy to encourage people to quit and minimize eventual layoffs.

Oh that's definitely how it was received at State Street, especially since it only (initially) applied to employees in the US, many of whom had seen their local colleagues replaced with workers in "low cost locations" over the years. I stuck it out until they gave me severance, though

 

[themissinglink]

Brothers restore historic Boston ‘ghost sign’ on West End building: ‘This is gonna go away if we don’t do anything’ - The Boston Globe

Muralists are breathing new life into a faded sign for the Holt & Bugbee company painted on a Canal Street building.

www.bostonglobe.com

Ghost signs — faded, hand-painted advertisements from years past — can be spotted on the exteriors of brick buildings all over Boston. The century-old traces of paint carry a sense of nostalgia in many Boston neighborhoods.
Now two brothers, muralists and sign painters from North Carolina, are breathing new life into a ghost sign on a building in Boston’s West End, one of the last standing after the neighborhood was largely demolished in the 1960s.
[...]
The painting process is just as much a part of restoring history as the finished sign itself, said Jack Williams. “By doing everything by hand how it was done back in the 1890s, you’re ensuring that you’re still getting these human characteristics in the letters,” he said. “A lot of these signs are really wonky. But that’s how they originally work. And I think that there’s beauty in the fact that it was made by a person. Some may call them mistakes, but they add to the elegance of the hand painted sign.”
Holt & Bugbee, a family-owned business, celebrated its 200th anniversary last year. The enormous advertisement has been painted on the Wakefield building since the 1800s, when the company was still based in Boston.
Like many other businesses, Holt & Bugbee got pushed out of the West End’s Bulfinch Triangle and into the suburbs during the urban renewal efforts of the 1960s. The company is now based in Tewksbury. The Williams brothers are collaborating with the West End Museum and the Holt & Bugbee foundation, which is financing the $51,000 project.

 

[BACsop]

Two years ago, the city set aside $100 million to jump-start stalled housing development. It’s finally using it. - The Boston Globe

Through the Boston Accelerator Fund and the state’s Momentum Fund, the city and the state are kicking in $10.5 million to get a 110-unit mixed-income development in Roxbury's Nubian Square moving along.

www.bostonglobe.com

 

[stick n move]

Did anyone else know this? I knew that this happened in chicago, but had no idea it also happened in boston.

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Its crazy the scale of some of the projects that were capable of being done before like filling/building the entire back bay, chopping down the hills downtown…etc. This would be almost impossible to do today.