🔹 What's Happening With Project X?

So what are the planners going to say?
This garage is better option for the overall public vs the developer proposal?

This is how corrupt the system has gotten.
#1 Give all our tax incentives to the corporations to walloff the waterfront in the Seaport to the corporations.
#2 Then create new taxes like the Greenway Tax and BID.

Then tell the stupid taxpayers that this garage is a better option for cost of the 19 billion dollar Greenway than what the developer is proposing concerning Harbor Garage for another 20 years.

ENOUGH is ENOUGH--- I want to see this built in my lifetime. The Greenway could be so much more for everybody not like the Seaport which seems restricted to certain groups.
 
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While you good people kick this can up and down the Greenway, I think the value and "buildablity" of the site are also affected by forces that we'll be seeing more of in the years ahead: climate change, the need for resilience, and the cost of insuring an underground garage at harbor's edge.

Consider, Aquarium and Courthouse Stations and much of the Seaport were awash in stormwater with alarming regularity this winter. The "100-Year Storm" is now a relatively routine occurrence. Even if Chiofaro and his investors have financing and all necessary approvals to build, how wise is it, and what will it cost to insure it?

I walk past this homely pile of concrete every day on the way to the office. I'd love to see it replaced with a world class building and a better connection to the waterfront. But in considering these other forces, how feasible and sensible is an underground garage on this site?
 
Beton Brut said:
While you good people kick this can up and down the Greenway, I think the value and "buildablity" of the site are also affected by forces that we'll be seeing more of in the years ahead: climate change, the need for resilience, and the cost of insuring an underground garage at harbor's edge.

Consider, Aquarium and Courthouse Stations and much of the Seaport were awash in stormwater with alarming regularity this winter. The "100-Year Storm" is now a relatively routine occurrence. Even if Chiofaro and his investors have financing and all necessary approvals to build, how wise is it, and what will it cost to insure it?

I walk past this homely pile of concrete every day on the way to the office. I'd love to see it replaced with a world class building and a better connection to the waterfront. But in considering these other forces, how feasible and sensible is an underground garage on this site?
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That's also on the developers RISK VS REWARD. If he has a plan to build it against the forces of mother nature let him.

When that becomes the case he can't ---I'm sure the developer will just keep the garage or build on top of it. It would be a disaster to keep this like it is.

That's my point why are the city/state officials fucking around on this for the last 10 years? The Greenway needs tax money to service it?

Our politicians logic would be to just give GE another 15 Million in tax incentives to create more jobs. As we are reaching an affordability housing crisis. But don't support knocking down Harbor Garage building more housing.
 
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wha_by_artfuldodger112-d4f5z9y.png
 
It’s pretty apparent that the developer isn’t politically connected so the most recongnizabe piece of archectiture on the Greenway is Harbor Garage.

And this is why this site turned political.

Thats WHA.
 
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i think i've found another Downtown skyscraper sitting under our noses.

675' .....design challenge/s permitting might be the easiest in the City to solve.

Checks the boxes.

God am i dumb.
 
Joan needs a course in remedial arithmetic.

Chiofaro is basically limited to a building footprint of about 28,000 sq ft. Allowing 13 feet per floor, 32 floors = 900,000 sq ft. 32 floors will be a little over 400 feet (without the penthouse for mechanicals, etc), or about the same height as Harbor Towers.

As the city of Boston planning official noted, if Chiofaro were to go to 600 feet, it will be a really skinny tower. So much of the volume in a truly skinny tower is consumed with non-habitable space (e.g., elevator, stairwells core) that the skinny part easily becomes uneconomical. Given the sunk costs of this particular site, one needs to maximize the net square feet of lease-able, sell-able space, and not leave tens of thousands of square feet on the design floor.
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And for those seeing Chiofaro as victim because he is not sufficiently 'connected' politically, I might tend to agree, EXCEPT I have yet to read of a report that at some point in the past ten years, a geotech drill rig was spotted doing test bores to determine what lies beneath. He has to excavate at least 80 feet, and perhaps 90-100 feet for the underground garage. And the calculations for hydrostatic pressure and buoyancy for a building sitting at the harbor's edge are bound to be complex. Just ask Millennium partners re: San Francisco.

The other clue that Chiofaro is getting serious is when we learn he is engaging in serious discussions with Harbor Towers about where to re-locate their utilities and mechanicals infrastructure.
 
Its very simple.
The developer's proposal or We look at the garage for another 100 years.

At this point its not okay for the city planners to say this garage should not be developed.
The garage is the biggest architectural statement on the Greenway. It represents how corrupt the overall development process was in Boston.

The Developer is not politically connected so we believe the Garage is the best option for the public.
 
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Surely you understand that the garage was constructed about 45 years ago, when the harbor was a chemical-infused cesspool, and the waterfront was walled-off from Downtown by the Central Artery. True, the harbor's much improved, and the highway's gone, and the "presumed value" of the site has increased by other nearby improvements. But the circumstances of building here are at once constrained by covenants on the property and risky as a result of climate change. If you throw out discussions of politics, financing, and insurance, there is still nothing simple about it...
 
Beton Brut said:
Surely you understand that the garage was constructed about 45 years ago, when the harbor was a chemical-infused cesspool, and the waterfront was walled-off from Downtown by the Central Artery. True, the harbor's much improved, and the highway's gone, and the "presumed value" of the site has increased by other nearby improvements. But the circumstances of building here are at once constrained by covenants on the property and risky as a result of climate change. If you throw out discussions of politics, financing, and insurance, there is still nothing simple about it...
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Let’s stop building because of climate change?
If the investors and the developers want to build their dream and can make it happen why should we allow the political process claim that we would rather a garage instead of something of value in this area?

The bankers and the insurance companies are funding the seaport which is more likely to be underwater than the greenway.

And what if climate change is wrong the earth actually hits a cooling period in its cycle for 100 years and slows down the rising sea levels.
Possibly we see another mini ice age before the artic shelf actually melts completely.

Don’t forget a super volcanoe is under Yellowstone which will likely erupt in the next 1000 years. Don’t build anything mentality actually stops humans from progressing.
 
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Beton Brut said:
But the circumstances of building here are at once constrained by covenants on the property and risky as a result of climate change. If you throw out discussions of politics, financing, and insurance, there is still nothing simple about it...
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This comment, as I'm interpreting---its a complicated development based on Climate change, politics, financing and insurance.

Tell me what development isn't complicated? That is called Risk vs reward for investors in my opinion.
Most of the Seaport infrastructure was built by the Taxpayers along with tax incentives for their own developments.
How is that not complicated?

That's my point.
The garage is not a better option for the public than what the developer is proposing. The city planners, politicians should be supporting this in full force.

If we thought about climate change, politics, financing, and insurance than why did we spend 20 billion to take down the Green Monster and build an underground highway only to be underwater in the future from Climate change.
 
odurandina said:
Radical Globe posters out in force protesting w/ their typical banter; "Marty's union friends.... blah, blah, blah.... only building luxury units blah, blah, blah...... no housing projects w/ affordable blah, blah, blah......"

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...development/nyqsYN758DBgoCPsnPG4HI/story.html
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Gotta understand the mindset of a NIMBY. Used to be they were deified, nowhere more than in the Boston Globe. Columnists like Joan Vennochi are talentless hacks thinking they can write an easy anti-development article and get tons of support. Problem is times have changed, most people are tired of nonsensical opposition to anything taller than a tree, and the pro-development people are now more vocal. A welcome turn of events IMHO.
 
Her posting/s (including the one 2 weeks ago) are annihilated point by point, easily.

One of the shoddiest anti-development hit pieces in the Globe's sordid history.
 
odurandina said:
Her posting/s (including the one 2 weeks ago) are annihilated point by point, easily.

One of the shoddiest anti-development hit pieces in the Globe's sordid history.
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NIMBY's have fought 3 major battles during this development cycle and lost two of them already, Winthrop Square and the Whiskey Priest development. This garage is their last stand.
 
I think there's a clear distinction to be made between folks who are ready to go to court over a shadow on their kitchen window that only happens while they're at work and residents asking hard questions about the absence of masterplanning, the capacity of transportation and public utility infrastructure, and cost to purchase or rent in their neighborhood.
 
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