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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.

This is why we need min lot size reform; 3A was a good starting point, but it's not how you'd get to small lot houses. Townhouses combined with apt's do fit the bill for it.

zoning zoning zoning. it's all county level in VA and progrowth factions can stomp out the type of pastoralist nimbyism we see in Weston. Not necessarily enough to build things denser than single family homes outside of essentially urban arlington and alexandria though.

I still wonder about the financials on this one and even if it all does pencil, it certainly seems a highly ineffective use of subsidy.

I believe this is incorrect: the development was going to pay for phase 2 of this work, which would improve and extend the path on the other side. My source here is a housing advocate who lives very close.

The real laggard is Chelsea, which has punitive levels of IZ. There's next to no new private development there despite plenty of brownfield like Everett and an insanely bad housing crisis.

I believe there was substantial enhancement to this connection that this building was going to pay for. Unfortunately, NIMBYs killed it.

You can go down to 60% aff for many grants, iirc, which is why the no parking min's kicks in there in Boston. Point stands, though. The interesting question is could they make it pencil at 100-120% AMI mostly? Guessing not.

No there's no physical connection. The Boylston entrance to Hynes station is just at the far end of the platform. You can often walk right up there from the inside. The Mass Ave underpass is from the fare control lobby at the Newbury entrance. They're still doing construction on it.

This is 100% true. The BPDA behaved so egregiously, negotiating in bad faith that they were open to all sorts of lawsuits. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes for the City of Boston.

Given the City's total failure to expedite parcel 14, there's no way Hynes is done by 2030.

More equipment as of this evening.