Search results

The City totally whiffed here and made the scheme too baroque to succeed. By the time it was put out to bid again last cycle, it would easily have pencilled as market rate alone --- just run an auction for the site then and see who offers the best benefits! But instead, it had to be lab to...

Copley Place will be a mess until they turn it into a modern arcade like the Pru. The only stores that survive are super luxe because it's inimical to foot traffic. It requires major renovations and a focus on pedestrian flows to make it nice and walkable.

Idiotic proposals, held together by Rube Goldberg machine levels of subsidy combination are bound to fail. This is a no brainer at market rate that could help fix the city budget. But they're too ideological and hidebound to accept that.

The failure of the city to allow market rate in lower roxbury continues to leave us with far too many vacant lots.

110 more + a hotel going right behind it. It looks like for financing reasons they're doing their IDP units on the grocery first.

Unfortunately the triangle where the station was will be an uninteresting park surrounded by traffic fumes + noise. It will not invite people into Cambridge Crossing. Another CRA special: not letting people develop interesting lots and instead putting in parkland that will not get used.

I live around the corner and that's what our neighborhood association was told. It hasn't been that long either.

The reason the ground floor activation sucks is the geniuses at the CRA decided that retail should go in separate 1-2 story pavilions, not ground floors. Put the restos and shops in the ground floors, put a couple more towers where the pavilions are, and you'd have something much better...

re the lab market: I suspect when it comes back, a lot of the secondary and tertiary sites are not going to be part of it. We've seen a lab building boom at Assembly Sq, at random locations on suburban arterials, and in the Boston/Cambridge core. The last of those is *clearly* the most...

While I agree in principle, interestingly, this site is ~8 acres and adding nearly 400 homes. That's about 50du/ac or 32k per sqmi and fitting with the density of the South End and Lower Rox. Broken up 5 story South End brownstones get a little denser, but generic townhomes don't. It's just a...

Nan Xiang is not closed. They are renovating to be full service and serve alcohol.

Are there even funds appropriated to build this given how much subsidy it needs?

It's remarkable just how long it takes towns and cities to review....anything. The revised plans are over a year old! By the time changes are approved, the lab market may be back. No wonder we have a housing crisis.

Wonder if they'll turn both additional towers into housing instead of just one

I just don't understand that sentiment when the local context for most of Harvard St and its environs are 5-6 story brick apt buildings that go up to the lot line. Quibble with the style of this new building, but the size and envelope are what is normal for that area of Cambridge.

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!

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...

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...

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.

Preapproved designs would be great, but gotta get zoning updated to allow them, too.