Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

Status
Not open for further replies.
Re: Filene's

If I see something like this on Washington St or Franklin St I'm going to be a very unhappy camper:

tOjJk.jpg
 
Re: Filene's

statler said:
And before that:

http://i.imgur.com/vK9JJ.jpg

Which is exactly why I'm worried about MP's reputation.
Click to expand...

Totally legit point. And I didn't realize how sterile the granite wall is next to CVS (vents for the Orange line??). But I don't think it's fair to compare with what was there in the 1950's. That type of retail rarely exists anywhere anymore and those myriad of theaters wouldn't be economically viable today.
 
Re: Filene's

And just to be fair most of the Hawley St side of Filene's was a wall like that + loading docks, which sucks but is pretty much unavoidable.

As long as they keep it confined to Hawley St I'll be happy. (Happier if they can avoid it altogether though).
 
Re: Filene's

^ ya, very concerned with how they will put in 500 plus parking spots. if it has to be there, it better be on the ass of of the building.
 
Re: Filene's

AmericanFolkLegend said:
Isn't Bina Osteria there. Used to be one of the most high-end restaurants in Boston, failed pretty quickly with its uber-avant garde menu and reopened as a less fancy place.
Plus there's a sushi place there as well I think. EDIT: I might be thinking of another block of Washington.
Click to expand...

In terms of the sushi place, you might be thinking of the failed attempt to bring a large sushi restaurant to one of the vacant spaces. I believe it was to be called Exotic Sushi or some similarly terrible name. They had signs up announcing the restaurant as coming soon but it never happened. This was maybe 3-4 years ago now. Instead they have been using the space for art installations.
 
Re: Filene's

i love the concept lets hope the final result is a lot more classy looking like the copley place tower and our skyline will be looking pretty damn good
 
Re: Filene's

Stat, I don't disagree with you on the streetscape issue. The Avery Street towers were designed to be "Fort Apache" on the wild frontier. Where now gym members pay for lateral thrusts, pec enlarging, pumping iron and exertion on a sweaty mat, persons once paid for similar sounding activities at the Hotel Avery.

The appeal of fortress architecture diminishes when the "frontier" moves elsewhere. I do wish fortress planners and designers would do a better job by planning for future street level adaptation.

Building at Filenes is nothing like building residential high rises in a "red light" district. So there is no excuse for a street level fortress this time.
 
Re: Filene's

ledjes said:
A question for you Boston history buffs:

Assuming this gets built, when was the last time that this section of Washington Street from State (including 45 Province) to Kneeland has had a critical mass of residences? Do we have to go as far back as pre-great-fire?
Click to expand...

http://www.trekaroo.com/photos/0000/7935/973813-Filenes_Basement-Boston.jpg

Ledges -- Washington St in the area of Summer / Winter had already become less residence-centric sometime between when Ben Franklin was born 1706 and the early 1800's of the Tontine Crecent

Certainly by the time of the fire -- everything in the immediate area was either shops or warehouses

However after the fire the Washington Street area around Lafayette Corp. Center and Hayward Place had a lot of residences including of course #5 Exeter Place where "Mr Watson was wanted by Prof. Bell..."

Note howerver in the era of the great department stores -- not many people lived in the DTX area-- they just came to shop or to work in the shops -- at one time there were 7 department stores around today's "DTX" including: White's; Raymond's; Gilchrist's; Kennedy's, Chandlers and of course Filene's and Jordan's
 
Last edited:
Re: Filene's

tobyjug said:
The appeal of fortress architecture diminishes when the "frontier" moves elsewhere. I do wish fortress planners and designers would do a better job by planning for future street level adaptation.
Click to expand...

In thinking a bit about this issue, I've begun to wonder to what extent residential towers can actually benefit the city. The Ritz is perhaps the most egregious example, but aren't they all to a certain extent simply a vertical version of the despised gated communities of suburbia? Do high end residences filled with high end residents really bring more activity to the street? Is the building foot print large enough to add significantly to the selection of accessible neighborhood amenities?

This comment applies to any tower -- I can think of very few that do anything physically significant for the surrounding neighborhood. Yes, they make for good eye candy from a distance, but what do they do for the man on the street? The one exception regards the office tower, which at least brings a bunch of working and middle class stiffs to the area during the day.
 
Re: Filene's

HenryAlan said:
Do high end residences filled with high end residents really bring more activity to the street? Is the building foot print large enough to add significantly to the selection of accessible neighborhood amenities?
Click to expand...

Obviously I have no studies or evidence but I find it hard to believe that they don't. It's not like the wealthy residents go from their condo to the parking garage, hop in their Maserati, and leave the city. Somebody beyond tourists must be sustaining some of the more expensive shopping areas in the city. For example Newbury and along the Four Seasons. More residential is always good in my book and I'd rather have it in tall towers than townhomes or 3-4 story apartments.

Peterborough
http://www.bostontipster.com
 
Re: Filene's

HenryAlan said:
In thinking a bit about this issue, I've begun to wonder to what extent residential towers can actually benefit the city. The Ritz is perhaps the most egregious example, but aren't they all to a certain extent simply a vertical version of the despised gated communities of suburbia? Do high end residences filled with high end residents really bring more activity to the street? Is the building foot print large enough to add significantly to the selection of accessible neighborhood amenities?

This comment applies to any tower -- I can think of very few that do anything physically significant for the surrounding neighborhood. Yes, they make for good eye candy from a distance, but what do they do for the man on the street? The one exception regards the office tower, which at least brings a bunch of working and middle class stiffs to the area during the day.
Click to expand...

Unfortunately, this is the only type of residential tower you'll find within the downtown area as the plots are too valuable to support anything less than ritzy condos. That's understandable. The problem of course isn't that the wealthy would go straight to the parking lot and drive out of the city. The problem is finding enough wealthy people who is willing to spend the amount to live here. This problem is further exacerbated by wealthy people who are buying the condos as investment.

Some people even believe that anything less than expensive condos shouldn't be built within the city proper, and when this happens, it makes it that much harder to enliven certain areas.

The "cheap" and "easy" alternatives is the build dorms to fill it out with the average joes.
 
Re: Filene's

Herald commenters are calling for Section 8 housing. Insane.
 
Re: Filene's

datadyne007 said:
Herald commenters are calling for Section 8 housing. Insane.
Click to expand...

Tell them to stop blocking or asking to scale down those 4-8 story apartments they are trying to construct in residential neighborhoods because they are "too tall" and then they will get more affordable housing.
 
Re: Filene's

KentXie said:
Unfortunately, this is the only type of residential tower you'll find within the downtown area as the plots are too valuable to support anything less than ritzy condos. That's understandable. The problem of course isn't that the wealthy would go straight to the parking lot and drive out of the city. The problem is finding enough wealthy people who is willing to spend the amount to live here. This problem is further exacerbated by wealthy people who are buying the condos as investment.

Some people even believe that anything less than expensive condos shouldn't be built within the city proper, and when this happens, it makes it that much harder to enliven certain areas.

The "cheap" and "easy" alternatives is the build dorms to fill it out with the average joes.
Click to expand...

Kent -- there's a complicating factor for the uber-rich condos

A lot of them are only partially occupied on an annual basis -- the classic example of course is the "snow-bird" who flees to their other place in Florida sometime around Thanksgiving and only returns for PoPs season

But nowadays, when you are talking multim M$ condos -- the residents probably have a couple of places outside the city:
a place in Welleseley where we raised the kids
our place on the Cape or the Vineyard
our place inherited from your mother on Lake Winne
our ski challet in VT or Colorado
our pied-a-terre in Paris, London, Singapore

these people might spend only 20 nights in their downtown condo

on the other hand -- you can not really build tall-enough in most places to afford to have [without subsidies] many lower-priced -- aka Middle Class affordable flats -- especially the ones large-enough to replace the house out in the burbs
 
Re: Filene's

TheRifleman said:
How much do they need the Filenes Condos to sell for on the average?
Click to expand...

Riff -- you can do the arithmetic

$600 M
500 units

looks like $1M per unit to 0th order -- that is ignoring the cost allolocated to Burnham bldg [commercial retail and office] and the underground parking garage

That would tend to imply that without any subsidies that there can be some few dozen small appartments costing in the $100,000 to $200,000 range and selling [although most likely they will be rentals] in the $300,000 range
 
Re: Filene's

whighlander said:
Kent -- there's a complicating factor for the uber-rich condos

A lot of them are only partially occupied on an annual basis -- the classic example of course is the "snow-bird" who flees to their other place in Florida sometime around Thanksgiving and only returns for PoPs season

But nowadays, when you are talking multim M$ condos -- the residents probably have a couple of places outside the city:
a place in Welleseley where we raised the kids
our place on the Cape or the Vineyard
our place inherited from your mother on Lake Winne
our ski challet in VT or Colorado
our pied-a-terre in Paris, London, Singapore

these people might spend only 20 nights in their downtown condo

on the other hand -- you can not really build tall-enough in most places to afford to have [without subsidies] many lower-priced -- aka Middle Class affordable flats -- especially the ones large-enough to replace the house out in the burbs
Click to expand...

I'm only guessing here, but I don't see these folks buying in DTX. These folks have their eyes on the Back Bay and Beacon Hill. DTX is, and should be a step down from these Uber rich as you call them. They will still be snooty enough compared to my circles, but the Kerry-Heinz' will still look down their noses at them.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top