Also worth noting that this is being done at the site of an old auto wrecking yard well off a main road and in a forest, next to high capacity transmission lines. This is an overlay showing the hundreds of old cars arrayed in the woods being replaced by a small new section with the battery...
Important reminder that the ISONE grid interconnect queue is 99% carbon-free, and that cumbersome permitting is preventing 14GW of new capacity from being added to the grid. Nearly half of that is battery storage, which will be a critical intermediary if more wind and solar come online (and as...
The geography and small size of Boston really doesn't make this a great proposal either. You'd really need at least Cambridge on board, and I'm sure the Brookline people would be furious if mode shift was to just run up the gut of Route 9 until you hit the Boston municipal border and then park...
The building is grim and dark and does not do justice to the Copley street front, hence it should be redeveloped into something bright and new (the prime point that was on topic). It's not historic and sits on a very prominent corner. The 7/11 also happens to be a trash pile, which is bad on its...
It’s not people sitting around in a city. It’s an enclave full of trash that sits there and is never cleaned up because 7/11 chooses to do nothing to improve the streetscape of their storefront. I love people sitting around, note my support for Copley. I hate when there are piles of trash on the...
Wow that's grim. The one to the left is pretty miserable too, and it has the 711 on Dartmouth that brings in a ton of people sitting around and throwing trash on the ground. Would love to replace that thing with something bright and new
Love that this got picked up. It's such a stupid own-goal; an idea that should have been shut down after the initial brainstorm. No, you absolutely may not use tax payer funds to erect Catholic statues on a municipal building.
The issue is that these public spaces are bounded by monster multi lane roads that make plaza-adjacent businesses feel a world away. For Copley, if any of the Boylston businesses or the Fairmont were just one small travel lane from the plaza it would feel like you could flow between the spaces...
Love that cheap real estate is being bought and put to good use but I kind of feel like these flex arts and public mixing spaces generally end up without enough programming and so are just dead most of the time. Power to the Embrace team for the deal but really hope it’s active and frequently in...
Copy and paste across every part of 1-story Boston metro from Allston to Eastie to Quincy. Vary the brick color, maybe change some windows, but that's a great looking little infill building.
I walked by the site yesterday and my favorite detail is the cab in the yellow crane, which is reclined at a 45 degree angle so the operator doesn't have to crane his neck. Like working from an extremely powerful lazyboy.
This could probably also go in the 121 Broadway/AstraZeneca HQ threads, but it's grid-focused. As discussed elsewhere, there's a massive and critical new Eversource substation going in underground in the middle of Kendall. It's the first of its kind anywhere and the Globe ran a nice story on it...
Not to be pedantic, but I think it's still true that funds are limited to education and transportation? The sole exception I'm aware of is the Quincy parking garage project, which was justified because it's almost, nearly, barely related to transportation. MBTA operations are I think a fair...
Yes, it's a super cool story from one of the truly original Boston neighborhoods. In case people don't know, the Boston city website has pages for each historic district with tons of information (lots about how to build, guidelines, maps, etc)...
I imagine it would help under high load conditions, but these interconnects are typically bidirectional depending on grid supply/demand, so there can be oddball periods where we're sending power up to Canada on NECEC if their marginal need is greater. Ultimately we need new generation capacity...
I'm very familiar with that area and walked through there on a nearly daily basis for years. The tale (or, tail) of that park is one where dog owners yet again ruined one of the few patches of grass in the neighborhood. There were plentiful NO DOGS signs on all sides, there's a new dog park 20...
I truly don't hate it. As much as a carbon-free grid is the ultimate goal, replacing oil-powered peaker output with gas is a win. The same way coal is now completely off the grid, it's clear that gas is the transitional fuel. This definitely means we need more batteries, offshore wind and...
Periodic reminder that we have a twice-yearly peaking grid with significant load increases both winter and summer. While still small (<1GW) the oil peaker plants are starting to come online to account for the AC requirements in this heat wave. This will be brief since it's cooling down...
This is also squarely in Bay Village proper, which is fully a Historic District. While there have been a few new infill projects (Piedmont townhomes, a few on Arlington, 212 Stuart) I can't think of anything in recent history that was fully torn down and rebuilt in Bay Village. A historic church...