The Hub on Causeway (née TD Garden Towers) | 80 Causeway Street | West End

From Tuesday:

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They need to paint a mural of a 19th century brick building facade onto the O'Neill.
 
You can tell they at least tried to design it with a retail arcade. You just can't do that with federal buildings anymore.
 
At least they got rid of those hideous, huge spherical bollards.
 
A re-clad would go a long way at minimal cost relative to a full replacement. Just to something more contemporary.
 
What's with those weird street lights? They look like leftovers from the late-1980s po-mo design of the original Prudential Center arcades.
 
Sadly the Feds will never relinquish the O’Neill. Contemporary security requirements basically dictate a suburban office park, but the employees and customers want easy access.
 
Given; it's a long shot. But, if a creative solution for some combination of the JFK and O'Neill sites + possibly a third site getting into the mix – and you can reduce the land area of the Fed's offices....
 
odurandina said:
Given; it's a long shot. But, if a creative solution for some combination of the JFK and O'Neill sites + possibly a third site getting into the mix – and you can reduce the land area of the Fed's offices....
Click to expand...

The FBI already left for Chelsea. More of this--moving back office government jobs (especially Federal jobs) from high-cost areas to lower-cost/lower-opportunity areas--would be a good thing.

This applies at all levels: inter-state (move Federal jobs from Greater-DC to, say, the Midwest), intra-state (from NYC to, say, Buffalo), and intra-metro (from Downtown Boston to, say, Chelsea).

With private sector opportunity increasingly concentrating in a relatively small number of high-cost locales, it makes sense for government employment to be balancing force moving in the other direction.
 
I'm for it as long as the moves make sense--minimal interfacing with other agencies, etc. Telecommunications seem to be making that much easier, one would think the FBI would want to be as close to other things downtown as possible but they don't seem to mind. Granted, this is Boston so Chelsea is just a stone's throw across the bridge, still urban core.
 
RandomWalk said:
Sadly the Feds will never relinquish the O’Neill. Contemporary security requirements basically dictate a suburban office park, but the employees and customers want easy access.
Click to expand...

O'Neill would not be built on its present footprint if it was being designed today. There is not enough setback on Causeway for one.

And forgot about a reclad in glass. Its Federally-owned.

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^^^This was the former HQ of the Department of Transportation in Washington. Called the Volpe building, BTW.

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DOT decamped, the building was gutted and re=skinned.^^^^

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...a2c323a991d6_blog.html?utm_term=.7a60131f05db

But the building was never owned by the government.

Many of the tenant agencies in the O'Neill are operating service centers for the general public (e.g., the Passport office), or a segment of the public (the Small Business Administration). Why should the taxpaying public be inconvenienced by having to go to Waltham to discuss a Disability Insurance claim with the Social Security Administration?

And for those who think moving / re-locating a Federally owned office building is easy, ROFLMAO. The first question asked by the member of Congress in whose district the office building is located is: Will this inconvenience my constituents?

The FBI can be wherever it pretty much wants, because few members of the public are visiting the FBI office in Chelsea voluntarily.
 
And leasing floors in random commercial buildings is avoided for the aforementioned security issues.
 
This has been discussed in other places on this forum, but the "aforementioned security issues" for Federal buildings are nonsensical. There was once a time when the primary terrorist modus operandi was to attack federal buildings (e.g., the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building) with bombs, but that all changed around September of 2001.

Terrorists in the 21st century have overwhelmingly set their targets on civilian public spaces (trains and busses, outdoor festivals and holiday celebrations, bars and restaurants and nightclubs, theaters, stadiums, streetscapes, etc.), not government ones. Modern terrorists are much more likely to drive a truck through a random crowd of people than pack a truck with explosives and park it next to a Federal Building. When attacks are carried out they're more likely to use guns and/or vehicles than bombs, and when any weapons are used (including bombs) they're more likely to be directed towards civilians.

Specifically designing our urban environment to protect against car bombs directly targeted at Federal buildings is a misdirected endeavor.
 
^ Your assessment is valid, but doesn't take into account "anti-government crazies" (i.e. Alex Jones's listening audience, etc).
 
Because the O'Neill is a federally owned building, there is no funding available to do the much-needed reclad. Hopefully it can be sold and the services therein relocated to a place handy to rail transit. Until then, at least the surrounding area is being redeveloped and filled in.
 
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