Search results

If this particular line is going to be continued to be used for freight, those industrial and warehousing land uses are incompatible with an expensive new rail transit service. If this line is going to be used for transit service, then almost all of those industrial parcels will need to be...

I mean, I brought this up more to illustrate how pie-in-the-sky this proposal is, but if it *were* ever to come to pass, it'll be cheaper and more effective to simply buy out the single remaining industrial customer and relocate them to a new spot on the CSX mainline (and free up that lot for...

Can anyone familiar with building codes explain why residential would require a new stairwell in addition to the two this building already has? I don't understand why they can't move the hallway so that instead of between units 315 and 316, it runs between 318 and the utility room to provide...

On the other hand, if Westbrook could build 12,000 new apartments in the square mile outlined in white here, then you could probably justify the costs of a new light rail line on the Mountain Division. Last I heard, Rock Row is planning 800 apartments on their site, so we'd just need 14 more of...

In 2019 the Amtrak Downeaster and Rock Row commissioned a study of a commuter rail service on the Mountain Division between downtown Westbrook and Portland: https://www.nnepra.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/Westbrook-to-Portland-Conceptual-Rail-Transit-Study.pdf The current track is limited to...

The abandoned SW Expressway interchange in Milton: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.2093422,-71.1396747,1416m/data=!3m1!1e3 And the bulldozed-but-unbuilt NE Expressway through the Rumney Marshes (including abandoned ramps to nowhere over the Route 1 rotary)...

If building housing were as easy as spouting worn-out Reaganite cliches, everyone would be doing it. We've seen construction costs more than double in two years, interest rates are up, and financing is limited. You talk about building a 1,000-unit complex and taking in $12 million a year...

Exactly. Our snobby aesthetic opinions shouldn't be leaving anyone homeless by adding even more red tape to projects like this one.

Not that I believe this is a particularly beautiful building, but I'm baffled about this particular criticism. It sounds as though you're arguing that housing next door to a bank means that the architecture is "without soul." This is a city – the proximity of housing to lots of different kinds...

Man, the Tandem building looks really slick from the side. Too bad they have to have concrete crash barriers to keep drivers from crashing through their windows (cars ruin everything)

My hunch is that they're facing a deadline to apply for this year's competitive tax credit financing from Maine Housing. Applications that have their site plan approvals in hand get extra points in the scoring process.

If you follow them on CoUrbanize, they just gave an update on demolition: https://courbanize.com/projects/rouxcampusportland/updates I suspect they're doing this work now to put all the demo under one contract – it sounds like they want to have a clean site before they begin planning/designing...

Just remember, there was once a dazzling architectural rendering of this building, too...

Also the firm that designed the T logo and the original 1965 "spider" map for the MBTA way back in 1965: https://transitmap.net/1965-boston-spider-map/

Bear in mind that was just after the great recession when construction costs were unusually low, and the Portland-Brunswick rail corridor was still in active use at the time, and a decade of inflation has happened since then. This study does go into some detail about their estimates on page...

Right, this is the Public Market Garage on Cumberland Avenue. The so-called "midtown" garage is absolutely dead. The city does have about $9 million in uncommitted "Section 108" loans from HUD that had previously been earmarked for a new parking garage on Somerset Street, but that money was...

Have you talked with Hannaford? A lot of other grocery chains are starting up smaller-format stores in downtown areas; it would also be a convenient pick-up site for downtown residents and office workers using their Hannaford-to-Go service. I'm pretty sure Hannaford is already the grocery...

And yet they're still proposing to build more affordable housing than has been built in the entire West End neighborhood in the past 30 years.

Soils may be one issue, but it looks to me as though they're basically maxing out what would be allowed under the city's current zoning (see post #55). The application summary data in the CSS portal still shows that they're planning a 394,000 SF of commercial/retail space, a 200,000 SF net...

Exactly this. For people who need to chauffeur themselves to a station, the drive to Wells (whose park-and-ride station is by a highway off-ramp on low-value land) is not a major inconvenience or detour on your way to Boston. NNEPRA is also looking at building a new park-and-ride station in West...