East Boston Infill and Small Developments

atlantaden said:
I don't understand why you'd say this, the renderings make it look very accessible along with having some sort of harborwalk here as well. Also looks like a restaurant is in the ground floor of the building closest to the harbor. Is none of that happening?
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Seems premature to tell. I can see a few design elements... making it unclear whether the public is welcome.

Generally if I am walking along the waterfront and the sidewalk goes along a building I am going to not be so sure it isn't private property versus a public walkway. I think there are plenty of examples of this sort of design along the public waterfront where the intent seems to be to dissuade public access while technically allowing it. The design could have easily just had a path that followed the waterfront more closely.
 
tangent said:
Seems premature to tell. I can see a few design elements... making it unclear whether the public is welcome.

Generally if I am walking along the waterfront and the sidewalk goes along a building I am going to not be so sure it isn't private property versus a public walkway. I think there are plenty of examples of this sort of design along the public waterfront where the intent seems to be to dissuade public access while technically allowing it. The design could have easily just had a path that followed the waterfront more closely.
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Doesn't city zoning mandate a public harborwalk installation along any waterfront property being developed?

Answered my own question, yes it is mandated:
http://www.bostonplans.org/planning/planning-initiatives/harborwalk
 
JeffDowntown said:
Doesn't city zoning mandate a public harborwalk installation along any waterfront property being developed?

Answered my own question, yes it is mandated:
http://www.bostonplans.org/planning/planning-initiatives/harborwalk
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Which is why people complain when developers make the legally mandated public right of way unwelcoming to the public.

For every paper law there are people, reality, design choices and lack of enforcement:

https://www.wgbh.org/news/2017/08/10/local-news/private-events-conflict-public-access-boston-waterfront

https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/letters/2017/06/26/barriers-public-harbor-access-takes-some-wind-out-sail-boston/AWMa3IvvrQD3I8dSDbcQxM/story.html

https://www.universalhub.com/2017/state-begins-crack-down-property-owners-who-think


And most of that is just the overt stuff... I've taken plenty of walks along the waterfront in Boston and there have been lots of areas with poor transitions between properties that make it seem like the public isn't welcome.

Putting it on the property owners to provide access to the waterfront is a double edged sword... it takes the burden off the city from having to pay for and design the harborwalk... but it puts control into the hands of the developers who are often interested in providing an exclusive space for their residents and customers.
 
Jouhou said:
...is it possible that 3d printing could make elaborate and beautiful facades an affordable option in the near future?
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cca said:
Sure ... its not at scale yet.

I will add that with any material or technique, its what the thought behind it that is the real value.
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I think the main benefit of this type of technology, if used intelligently as cca suggests, will be to make balcony railings and enclosures more visually interesting. Many of us have complained about the boring (and cheap-looking) balconies on residential projects large and small. Consider the possibilities of organic forms or fractals rendered in prefabricated easily assembled components. I imagine a 21st Century riff on the ornamental iron work you see in New Orleans.

atlantaden said:
I don't understand why you'd say this, the renderings make it look very accessible along with having some sort of harborwalk here as well.
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The real issue here is that all of the waterfront projects in East Boston turn their backs to the established neighborhoods of Maverick Square and Jefferies Point. Marginal Street now features an unwelcoming wall that should have been a retail corridor. If there's nothing to draw "the public" into a site that is overwhelmingly residential, it will be perceived as private property without a "keep out" sign.

atlantaden said:
Also looks like a restaurant is in the ground floor of the building closest to the harbor.
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Closest to the harbor, and furthest from the rest of the neighborhood.
 
Beton Brut said:
The real issue here is that all of the waterfront projects in East Boston turn their backs to the established neighborhoods of Maverick Square and Jefferies Point. Marginal Street now features an unwelcoming wall that should have been a retail corridor. If there's nothing to draw "the public" into a site that is overwhelmingly residential, it will be perceived as private property without a "keep out" sign.
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I can understand the rationale of going heavy on residential when considering that supply is low and that retail in general is having a harder time. Retail spaces can sit empty for years. I guess you could always have more bars, restaurants, and coffee shops, but aren't such establishments already pretty close to where these apts. are? Restaurants, etc. could also take a while to build out. Residential needs may have taken priority over public engagement here, but I think calling it unwelcoming may be overstated. It was much more unwelcoming and unattractive to the public when areas were fenced off from rot and blight.
 
jl326 said:
Retail spaces can sit empty for years.
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If you're looking to make the highest profit by signing a national chain to a 10-year lease, you may be onto something. But there are small neighborhood businesses that could have occupied a modest street-facing location. It's impossible to know, as the very concept of street-facing retail was discarded here.
jl326 said:
...aren't such establishments already pretty close to where these apts. are?
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Either you've missed my point, or I didn't make it well enough, or perhaps you don't see the value in creating a "place of interaction" between residents of the new development and residents of the established community. If there were a dry cleaner, a hardware store, a bottle shop, or a bodega, it generates interaction, helps new and old to merge. Do you not see this, and why it's valuable?
jl326 said:
...Residential needs may have taken priority over public engagement here, but I think calling it unwelcoming may be overstated.
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I can assure you profit was the main driver here. The folks paying $4200/month in the executive favella aren't likely to be interested in anything but the view and deeded parking.
jl326 said:
It was much more unwelcoming and unattractive to the public when areas were fenced off from rot and blight.
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Massport land-banked here for two generations, and what's be built on the property now is the final insult.
 
http://www.bldup.com/projects/clippership-wharf

The article in bldup states that Clippership wharf will have 30,000 sq. feet of retail, restaurant, and community space, and four acres of waterfront open space and a new Harborwalk extension plus a waterfront transportation dock. That's a hellava lot of space for the neighborhood and the general public. I get not having some retail space along the street but I also get the fact that restaurants, condos, and apartments with city and harbor views is what attracts people to buy/rent/and visit restaurants at this location.
 
Aggregating restaurant, retail, and community space is misleading. I don't have a copy of the full project brief at the office, but I recall the "restaurant and retail space" to be ~ 6500 SqFt; the bulk of the community space is outdoors.

Do you agree that this development turns its back to the established community?
 
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Sorry to blame it on architects its true that they have to work with what they can in the confines of the developer. I wish the developers here or city had set up a plan to make these parcels work together instead of being a bunch of individual plots. The prob here is there is retail but its in the middle of the development where they want to get you onto their property and keep you at their retail instead of everything working together and people pass through all the different parcels and they all help eachother.

East Boston is a really unique neighborhood where its so close to the city but still completely separated by the harbor. Its also a grid, gets hardly any pass through traffic because its surrounded by water, and its pretty much all residential. The lots are also abbutting eachother and theres more brick throughout the neighborhood and pretty much no yards so its very urban almost like a nyc borough with the street grid and urbaninity and how the skyline lines up with the street grid and looms over all the houses. They needed Marginal st to become a retail corridor but they refused to work together and really dropped the ball here. Theres really not any significant retail corridors here. You really just get different businesses spread around all over the neighborhood in the bottoms of houses and then maverick and the strip mall. They could have benefitted so much by creating a true retail corridor here with nice new buildings to occupy, on the water, and on one of the main roads that wraps around the waterfront and also passes maverick. It was the perfect spot. Its unfortunate that were watching another west end go up. Yea they slipped some retail in there but its still like a gated community and the worst part is its being built from scratch and it could have been anything and it could have really been great. Oh well... hopefully somehow in the future they realize this mistake and retrofit it in. There is space to do it if they were serious.
 
Beton Brut said:
Either you've missed my point, or I didn't make it well enough, or perhaps you don't see the value in creating a "place of interaction" between residents of the new development and residents of the established community. If there were a dry cleaner, a hardware store, a bottle shop, or a bodega, it generates interaction, helps new and old to merge. Do you not see this, and why it's valuable?
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Probably a combination of me missing the point and your original articulation of it. I’ll defer to you on the overall feel of this development and it’s dynamic and relationship with the established community. I don’t know much about the established community and obviously you do since you are there/closer to it.

Value is going to be subjective depending on what you individually... uh.. value. So I probably won’t see things from the same lens as you do. For example, I highly value a sense of privacy in a home, whether that’s in the suburbs or in the city. Whether right or wrong, interaction between new and old is not something I generally think about. Our differences aside, it’s still good discussion as it relates to development.
 
jl326 said:
Our differences aside, it’s still good discussion as it relates to development.
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Thank you for disagreeing without being disagreeable. I should take a page out of that book myself.

I live among old and new East Bostonians, owners, tenants, business owners, artists, and visitors. The air we breathe smells of jet kerosene and frustration. It's a frightening time when the once dispossessed see an opportunity for wealth -- scale that up to a neighborhood, where the playing field is far from level. Think about it as a realtor, a speculator, a lawyer. Or as an elderly female homeowner, or a young family, or a small business owner.

I encourage you to come look around here. Tell me when, I'll buy you a beer. You'll see projects of every scale and ambition, and nary a gesture in accord with intelligent urbanism, from Jane Jacobs to Léon Krier.

And I understand the need for privacy -- I like a degree of privacy as well. But privacy isn't the fuel that drives the public realm.

Cities don't guarantee you a view.
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Or for the most part, a sense of privacy.
 
cca said:
That wood is going to look like trash if it is not regularly stained (meaning every other year).
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I'm sure the condo association will sort that out. I mean, what could possible go wrong...?
 
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