"Pavement Plaza" locations
- Thread starter Shepard
- Start date
Ron Newman
Senior Member
- Joined
- May 30, 2006
- Messages
- 8,395
- Reaction score
- 9
Shepard
Senior Member
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2009
- Messages
- 3,518
- Reaction score
- 65
Franklin Street. It's happening (officially, being "tested" - in one of the least busy commuting weeks of the year - makes me think it's being boosted) not sure why this took so long!
Source UHUB
http://www.universalhub.com/2016/city-considers-making-another-downtown-crossing
Source UHUB
http://www.universalhub.com/2016/city-considers-making-another-downtown-crossing
Scipio
Active Member
- Joined
- Feb 22, 2012
- Messages
- 482
- Reaction score
- 1
I’ll be the grouch here- the city is being excessively cautious with their first tiny forays into tactical urbanism.
This is the city's goal:
Three hours of data collection and public outreach is shit, and there’s no way that the City of Boston did this for less than several thousand dollars. Considering the investment in materials and set up time the better approach would have been to install it until winter and then evaluate before reinstalling with permanent materials next spring. The city can always remove interventions before winter IF there is a catastrophic effect on the street in the first few hours or days, but setting it up and tearing down just a few hours later is just waste.
This is the city's goal:
Three hours of data collection and public outreach is shit, and there’s no way that the City of Boston did this for less than several thousand dollars. Considering the investment in materials and set up time the better approach would have been to install it until winter and then evaluate before reinstalling with permanent materials next spring. The city can always remove interventions before winter IF there is a catastrophic effect on the street in the first few hours or days, but setting it up and tearing down just a few hours later is just waste.
Fiscal year ending soon? 'Use it or lose it' budgeting?
I'll be optimistic and say that the real purpose is to demonstrate to abutting landowners that more sidewalk=more retail foot traffic. By what do I know. I think this should be a no brainier.
I'll be optimistic and say that the real purpose is to demonstrate to abutting landowners that more sidewalk=more retail foot traffic. By what do I know. I think this should be a no brainier.
A couple of years ago they did a Thursday DTX happy hour that was wildly successful. Had live music and cheap beer, it was really fun. Seems like they set it up in the same spot using the same fence and furniture so it's not like it's a new thing here.
Yeah, the Downtown Boston BID (not the City--how could they possibly justify the outlay/naked neighborhood favoritism during this era of perpetual municipal fiscal crisis?) did the Thursday happy hour/concerts on Summer St. Plaza--very close by but certainly not the "same spot." But then Roche Bros. and Primark opened there and Roche Bros. put all the tables & chairs out so Summer St. Plaza got filled up again...
Yes, I remember them too, great atmosphere, really great for DTX. But let's face it, there's a snowball's chance in hell they're coming back. Because:
1.) It seems pretty self-evident that, at the end of the day, those beer gardens on Summer St. Plaza, while vibrant and lively and great fun, were simply a stopgap/temporary expedient to help activate a space that was severely deactivated during the 7-year dormancy of the Filene's building; so
2.) Now that Roche Bros. and Primark have fully reactivated the space, perhaps beyond what even the biggest DTX boosters may have imagined (and there's no denying that Summer St. Plaza is swarming with life these days), it's an obvious use conflict & competitive distraction for them to tolerate. No way Roche Bros. & Primark would want the beer gardens to return, for the obvious reasons.
Of course, that doesn't mean they can't return to some other public space in DTX--but I doubt any other public space has exactly those desired characteristics that made it work so well on Summer St. Plaza. Not, that is, until the pedestrian zone suddenly gets magically enforced 24/7/365 throughout its entire width & breadth.