Czervik.Construction
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Definitely, and I like how it is inch-perfectly positioned behind the Berklee building.
Lyra (née The Huntington) | 252/258/264 Huntington Avenue | Fenway
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Once this is topped off it will be the first time in my memory that Boston proper doesn't have a building out of the ground and growing that exceeds 200'. We're talking about a solid 15 year span. Assuming that Fenway one over the Pike is stalled, I don't even think we have one in the site prep phase (unless the new Northeastern reduced-height dorm started?). At least Cambridge should have us covered through the end of the year, but the highrise boom is clearly over.
stick n move
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Northeastern tower has a sampler on site, equipment, and it looks like site prep is under way.
ACC/NU Residence Hall | 840 Columbus Ave | Northeastern University
The three year gap was due to the city jerking them around over some neighborhood land title issues conflating with hyperlocal NIMBYism. Yeah it didn't get posted in here but the case involving this land made it all the way to the MA Supreme Court in February who ruled in favor of Northeastern...
archboston.com
So basically we're going to go a solid year between 200'+ towers out of the ground and growing in Boston proper, after having as many as 8 at once during the Marty Walsh tenure. If "Vega" tops off before that green office tower starts going vertical at the Volpe site then we're be at 0 in the Boston metro. It's like going back to 2005-2014 all over again, arguably worse, except at least we have this new iteration of the Boston skyline to appreciate for a while. It's still really disappointing when 95% of development is essentially 3-6 story wood structures.
It seems like a combination of Michelle Wu's terrible development policies, Kim Janey's terrible development policies, and the Trump tarrifs have ground progress in Boston to a screeching halt. It's pretty sad really. I sure am glad I added another (way more fun) hobby into the mix or this would be downright depressing.
Czervik.Construction
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I am going to get a lot of shade for saying this, but..... All of what you said could be true, AND we may have built a lot of buildings (maybe too much lab space), and we need to catch our breath and let things settle in a bit. We definitely need more housing and hotels, but that does not necessarily mean 500-700 ft tall towers downtown.
In Minneapolis during this current cycle, we have had three 35-story towers constructed (one is a really nice RMSA condo, one is the Four Seasons), approximately a dozen 10-to 20-story towers, and a river of 5-story buildings over 1. That is in a metro of 4.5M people. Boston has been an embarrassment of riches comparatively.
FormFollowsBudget
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+ Boston NIMBY-ism is a constant presence, and it has to be factored in early as you're going through zoning and design review. That adds a lot of upfront risk. We’ve seen large players like Scape step back entirely after essentially running full-speed into a wall. After announcing a $1BN investment in Boston housing, they pivoted to labs or paused after their residential projects were shredded by public comments, and eventually (recently) left the market altogether. At a recent Davis Square Neighborhood Council informational meeting, meant to inform the public of the general development process, one comment sums it up: “I don’t care if a developer has to make money.” Even for projects that are well-intentioned and community-oriented, this is a tough attitude for a developer to contend with.
All of this happens after developers have already bought property, hired designers, and advanced schematic design, often with legal and financial teams already engaged. Who's going to back something so risky with their own money?
As noted, then there’s the layering of new requirements - Passive House (Somerville), Net Zero (Boston), IDP, community benefits. While worthwhile goals, each adds cost by a few percent and complexity. Tariffs and unpredictable federal policies only compound the uncertainty, and contractors are starting to price that into bids.
Meanwhile, pressure is mounting on construction loans for the recent lab and luxury housing boom, and we're going to see more and more announcements of refinancing, mortgage takeovers, defaults, etc. Convincing lenders over the next few years will be a challenge.
When you put all of that against current interest rates* and sky-high construction costs that are not going to come down, projects just don’t pencil right now.
*Marty Walsh was very fortunate to be mayor while money was essentially free to borrow. If he was mayor today, I don't think we'd be far off from where we are today.
Disagree: 500-700 footers downtown can soak up housing demand while revitalizing downtown AND are especially good for hotels in what's one of if not the most expensive hotel market in the continental US.
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Very true, interest rates were near zero back then. Walsh didnt really even have to do anything but just stay out of the way. That being said earlier on in the cycle we were building a lot of labs and office for instance in the seaport, kendall, northpoint…etc, but not much housing was being built. Eventually housing production started ramping up a few years ago and for a while both lab/office and housing were cranking along at the same time. Now that the lab/office has cooled off were still building a lot more housing right now than we were earlier in the cycle when the high rise/office/lab boom was going on. Housing has really picked up a lot of steam within the last 5ish years and theres new construction on every corner in every neighborhood city wide. Its definitely not at the absolute peak like it was 1-2 years ago, but housing is still chugging along pretty well compared to…. any time in the last 30 years.
The combo of high interest rates, tariffs, deporting the labor pool, high construction costs…etc should have really ground housing production to a halt, but supply and demand is so out of whack here that it kept picking up steam. Now interest rates are coming down and the city has been doing all of the rezoning, squares and streets, mbta communities laws, MA comprehensive housing plan, ADU law, by right zoning changes, cambridge legalizing multi family housing city wide, article 80 reform, not to mention even downtown was recently rezoned to allow taller buildings. Theres so many changes I cant even think of them all. This is definitely going to help when market conditions allow.
These are the biggest changes to zoning and development the city has seen in generations. Housing production is already probably the highest in my lifetime but its poised to really take off even more once rates come down even more and a lot more of these approved projects get going. I definitely dont see the leadership scaring developers away , if anything theyre relaxing zoning all over the city as much as they can, its just boston overbuilt certain sectors plus the economy affecting the lab/office market right now. The housing pipeline appears to be as healthy as ever though and poised to get better as rates come down more. Housing is really the type of building we need the most of right now and we need as much as we can get.
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BosDevelop
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Staying out of the way is not something politicians are generally known for. Some credit should probably be due for letting things develop (sorry for the pun) organically without political influence.
I think this is a highly uncharitable reading of Walsh. Marty's first year on the job (2013), we hit permitting numbers higher than any time since 1980 and it went up from there. How did he do it? Not with fundamental reform, but rather by stacking the ZBA and BPDA with pro-development figures who would ignore NIMBY complaints and force local n'hood groups to the table. It wasn't pretty but it worked. Marty leaves in 2021 and the numbers crash immediately.
Permitting figures below, you can see the Walsh mayoralty from space, as it were.
Permitting figures below, you can see the Walsh mayoralty from space, as it were.
I’m not saying that Walsh wasn’t pro-development, but this is a graph of the inverse of the Fed effective rate.
Great photography, but this does make me sad that the architecture of this building doesn’t dialogue with the Christian Science complex at all. Didn’t realize that til now.
TomOfBoston
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citydweller
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It's difficult, for me, to be overly critical of that photo. Actually, to be even slightly critical.
kz1000ps
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On top of what Jeremi said which is probably the most salient point anyone could make on this matter, Marty didn't even become mayor until January 6, 2014, in which case he gets even less credit for pushing that bell curve up than you're trying to give him. He most definitely was a pro-development mayor that got a lot of projects over the finish line, but the more I stare at that graph the more I see macro economics at work than I do the actions of any one mayor.
That's a ridiculous statement b/c we've seen plenty of cities that do the *opposite* of Boston in the post Walsh period see building booms. Here's Austin, which liberalized zoning starting ~2020.
And here's Seattle, a close to peer city in terms of economic drivers with better, more pro growth policies
Somehow interest rates rising didn't kill production there. Pointless to blame interest rates in Boston, when we've seen large increases in costs of building (IZ to 20%, building code changes that are very hard to satisfy, and a less pro development mayor leaning on local boards, dragging out approval times).
One more, here's Everett across the harbor, which rezoned a ton of brownfield. Given census data coverage gaps, these are surely underestimates, but interest rates and general conditions show that you *can* still build in MA
Play around with housingdata.app if you're curious!
Play around with housingdata.app if you're curious!
Yes, but their visual impact is far less significant.