South Station Tower | South Station Air Rights | Downtown

KentXie said:
Subsidy from the city and state government. Property taxes from new construction are NOT the only source of government funding. Increase the tax rate on the rich/corporations rather than cutting them and use that to fund the subsidies.
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City revenue comes overwhelmingly from property taxes, so to the extent city government subsidies increase that is largely contingent on property taxes. State revenues come overwhelmingly from income taxes which by the constitution of the Commonwealth must be "flat." So on both counts, increasing the tax rate on "the rich/corporations" is way harder in practice than in theory.

I agree that public funds should be put to MUCH more use in expanding the supply side for low income housing than they are today. In just about no other markets (e.g., food, health care, education, transportation, etc.) do we expect suppliers of relatively higher-priced goods to provide subsidized goods to lower-income individuals as a condition of the suppliers being allowed to operate. We don't, for example, mandate that fancy restaurants and grocery stores set aside 20% of their meals for the hungry as a condition of them being allowed to open; rather we establish WIC and SNAP and NSLP and other public food assistance programs. The provision of necessities for those that can't afford them is usually the role of government, and historically government has played a much bigger role in building public and subsidized housing than it does today. That should expand. But market housing supply should also expand, because at the end of the day the vast majority of people live in market rate housing.
 
Exactly and market rate is kind of the middle ground getting screwed. Pretty much all thats being built is luxury, “affordable”, and public housing. Whatever was middle class at one time is very expensive now and the floor on prices is still upper middle class besides very few very crappy houses, that are still expensive.
 
In order to boost morale a little, I propose the "Guess the thread" game, and the object is to make your best guess based on a chunk of ten completely irrelevant and inane sequential posts from that thread. Take the 10 previous posts right before this one, and tell me with a straight face that it is obviously the "South Station Tower" thread.
 
type001 said:
In order to boost morale a little, I propose the "Guess the thread" game, and the object is to make your best guess based on a chunk of ten completely irrelevant and inane sequential posts from that thread. Take the 10 previous posts right before this one, and tell me with a straight face that it is obviously the "South Station Tower" thread.
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In my defense I posted this over 20 posts ago and nobody gave 1 single shiat, so cant beat em join em.

stick n move said:
So... can we get back on topic now?
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So Stick, not only are you claiming to be part of the problem, but you are in fact the cause ;-)

Just to be clear, I really think this would be a fun game and was not trying to be snarky.
 
type001 said:
In order to boost morale a little, I propose the "Guess the thread" game, and the object is to make your best guess based on a chunk of ten completely irrelevant and inane sequential posts from that thread. Take the 10 previous posts right before this one, and tell me with a straight face that it is obviously the "South Station Tower" thread.
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But this is how natural conversation goes, and this is how internet conversations go. Threads that go totally off the rails can be a problem, and it can be a problem if the same people are always harping on about the same nonsense. But brief "10 previous post" interludes that are tangentially related to and inspired by a given project are not a problem as long as they naturally resolve themselves and turn back to the project at hand.

This is how all discussion works in real life. If Jerry Remy, for example, kept his discussion on Sox broadcasts exclusively confined to the team and the game at hand, nobody would ever want to have him in the booth.
 
JumboBuc said:
But this is how natural conversation goes, and this is how internet conversations go. Threads that go totally off the rails can be a problem, and it can be a problem if the same people are always harping on about the same nonsense. But brief "10 previous post" interludes that are tangentially related to and inspired by a given project are not a problem as long as they naturally resolve themselves and turn back to the project at hand.

This is how all discussion works in real life.....
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This post is quite good.
 
bakgwailo said:
That would be fairly crazy given Amazon, Google, Wayfair, and Facebook essentially all doubling (or more) their presence in Boston. Maybe they will for a better designed/looking tower, too. Then again, not a big fan of the SF tower's looks, so maybe just hopefully keep the current design :rolleyes:
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Part of the idea according to BisNow is that Salesforce likes Pelli Clarke Pelli buildings. I think they'd be choosing it because of the current design, not with an intention to change it.
 
I think this discussion has gone along a related tangent and that's okay. Some people who are primarily concerned with affordable housing might oppose this building because it brings more high paying jobs into the city, hence more high housing prices. The problem is they're under the misinformed notion that the funds for affordable housing come in bulk from some other source that's not the property taxes and linkage payments that come from building large buildings next door to other large buildings.

I personally have no problem with taxing the very wealthy. The primary problem with that is its unconstitutional in this state. Yes, you can change the constitution through a long and arduous process whose end result is unknown. In the meantime, while you're waiting for that to happen you're pissing away badly needed revenue in the here and now by opposing SST. This is what I consider to be the opportunity cost of NIMBYism.
 
Could Salesforce be the anchor tenant??
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Interesting. Salesforce already has a couple hundred people in Sales and Support, I believe, at 500 Boylston (which also houses Wayfair folks, now), < 50 in Cambridge, and 1,000 or so in Burlington. I wonder who would occupy the a new Boston space for Salesforce.
 
fatnoah said:
Interesting. Salesforce already has a couple hundred people in Sales and Support, I believe, at 500 Boylston (which also houses Wayfair folks, now), < 50 in Cambridge, and 1,000 or so in Burlington. I wonder who would occupy the a new Boston space for Salesforce.
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Consolidation, I expect. BisNow's article talks about Salesforce using 11 floors of WeWork at One Lincoln until SST is done.
 
jass said:
I mean those are nice fantasy images, but what is set to be built is a bleak cave
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If they actually do NSRL, and they do the full build option, technically none of those platforms would need to exist anymore since its no longer an end terminal, just like no other stations along the way need something like that either. Id like to see them do the full build and get rid of all the tracks at North and South station and at South Station bring a street across this area to connect to a reopened dot ave. That would be yet another benefit out of the ridiculously huge amount of beneficial things that come from NSRL. If they could bring kneeland st to dot ave thatd be huge.
 
stick n move said:
If they actually do NSRL, and they do the full build option, technically none of those platforms would need to exist anymore since its no longer an end terminal, just like no other stations along the way need something like that either. Id like to see them do the full build and get rid of all the tracks at North and South station and at South Station bring a street across this area to connect to a reopened dot ave. That would be yet another benefit out of the ridiculously huge amount of beneficial things that come from NSRL. If they could bring kneeland st to dot ave thatd be huge.
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???? :confused: i was under the assumption only select trains are supposed to run through.
 
stick n move said:
If they actually do NSRL, and they do the full build option, technically none of those platforms would need to exist anymore since its no longer an end terminal, just like no other stations along the way need something like that either. Id like to see them do the full build and get rid of all the tracks at North and South station and at South Station bring a street across this area to connect to a reopened dot ave. That would be yet another benefit out of the ridiculously huge amount of beneficial things that come from NSRL. If they could bring kneeland st to dot ave thatd be huge.
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That's... um... not how that works.

NSRL (a) doesn't have the capacity to through run all trains and (b) won't be accessible from all commuter rail lines to begin with.
 
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