What's their proposal and for which area?
🔹 What's Happening With Project X?
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GeneseeJunction
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Any idea what project all these fancy sealed/welded pipes at the substation/power building located at Chauncy & Bedford St downtown?
I wonder if that's for some kind of high voltage interconnect, like something supercooled / super conducting? Appears to be AZZ high voltage buses. Makes you wonder if they're expanding service at Downtown Crossing.
I wonder if that's for some kind of high voltage interconnect, like something supercooled / super conducting? Appears to be AZZ high voltage buses. Makes you wonder if they're expanding service at Downtown Crossing.
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Why is it silly?
Gunner02
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how about the Kenmore Hotel that was supposed to redirect traffic or something, and look like upside down gold logs that get wider as it gets higher?Worst description ever but the only name I can find is Kenmore Hotel.
Equilibria
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It's frozen, because it's a hotel.
Gunner02
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by 'frozen' you mean repurposing as a lab science building
Exchange South End is mired between the BPDA, the IAG and MassDOT. The community benefits agreement which was incorporated into BPDA approval stated that the project would construct two access roads to I-93 Frontage road (itself an access road), to allow people to access the development via both I-93 S and I-93 North. MassDOT, who owns the I-93 Frontage road, told the developers it would only allow 1 connected from Southbound Frontage road. My guess is that the BPDA and the IAG are holding up approving this modification to the agreement unless the project and resulting traffic is cut in size. The main community concern throughout the approval process was traffic the development would cause on Albany and other side streets, so the two connections to Frontage Road was a key piece of the approval.
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What's happening with the Washington Essex Building...a full block right in the center of everything (not sure what its street address is)
From Essex at Hayward, seems like (yet another) case where a land tax (high) instead of property tax (low on derelict buildings) would incentize full development of this site. (other streetviews aren't much better)
Bounded by Washington, Harrison, Hayward, Essex.
From Essex at Hayward, seems like (yet another) case where a land tax (high) instead of property tax (low on derelict buildings) would incentize full development of this site. (other streetviews aren't much better)
dhawkins
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The upper floors are the Department of Children and Families, 600 Washington Street. A government agency that has been there for at least 30 years and many more to come I believe. The property is part of an investment group in Newton so it's strange that they don't rent out the first floor retail spaces. There was a Walgreens there in 2018. The first floor also has the old abandon RKO theater still in there in some form. Seriously, I've read that back stage is haunted.What's happening with the Washington Essex Building...a full block right in the center of everything (not sure what its street address is)
From Essex at Hayward, seems like (yet another) case where a land tax (high) instead of property tax (low on derelict buildings) would incentize full development of this site. (other streetviews aren't much better)
Bounded by Washington, Harrison, Hayward, Essex.
RKO theater
youtube video
reddit photos
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Suffolk 83
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That youtube video.... was the camera hanging from the guy's belt? Some of the most puke inducing footage I've ever seen wow.
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Not sure what thread I'd better post this in (clue in the clueless mod if you think of something ;-), but it would seem to me that post-Covid, the Commonwealth of Mass could do a lot of win-win-win real estate deals similar to the good we can all picture for 600 Washington and DCF, since the State is going to be an employer committed to centrally-located office space.
Like
- State wins be negotiating new leases in better spaces at better prices
- Boston wins by keeping office tenants in the core, supporting new/recent space
- The public wins with services that might even be better from better spaces (improvement is more likely than regression)
- Landlords urged in the nicest way possible to re-invest in the core; Let 600 Washington know it is moving out and free up the parcel for full redevelopment into something. Maybe even set aside state $ for a convert-to-housing fund.
Curious when you were last Downtown? LCC hasn't been named "Lafayette Place" since at least the 1990s--already in 2002 it had been rebranded as LCC.
It's now filled with giant tech firms--Carbonite, Sonos, VMware, etc. I cut through its lobby frequently on the way to DTX and there's good activity in it a lot. Plus, the hallway to Macy's frequently has a rotating gallery of photos hanging in it. And, there's a trendy museum opening there soon that will fill its remaining retail vacancy.
It's as if you deliberately chose a site that does more than almost anyplace else to contribute to Washington Street's vibrancy (certainly, once the museum opens), and then inverted reality and asserted it contributes the most to the street's problems.
(Also: I'd love to know how 600 Washington St. also somehow contributes to Washington Street's problems, given that I: never see homeless sheltering there; as noted above, it's filled with government agencies and thus not remotely deactivated; it's merely old, but not blighted/dilapidated, etc., etc.)
EDIT: again, since your usage of "Lafayette Place" implies you haven't been Downtown since the Clinton administration--I must ask in sincerity: are you aware that this exact stretch of Washington St., between 600 Washington and LCC, now hosts three revitalized theaters, two hotels, and several upscale restaurants obviously sited there to exploit the theater patronage?
One of those theaters hosts Broadway blockbusters, such as Hamilton, and is also the home of the Boston Ballet, and thus hosts the mega-revenue driver that is the Nutcracker. How much money do you think the Nutcracker pumps into the surrounding neighborhood each year, even if you exclude the ticket sales themselves? How much foot traffic do you think a show like that generates?
If this is a "pit," it is a pit that every. single. theater. district. in the country outside of, say, Times Square, is drooling to emulate.
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So you're saying that Lafayette Place is not a public blight because the INTERIOR is nice?
(Also: I'd love to know how 600 Washington St. also somehow contributes to Washington Street's problems, given that I: never see homeless sheltering there; as noted above, it's filled with government agencies and thus not remotely deactivated; it's merely old, but not blighted/dilapidated, etc., etc.)
600 Washington Street has had a completely vacant ground floor for years, and the building is in such a state of extreme disrepair that much of the exterior ornamentation is covered in netting.
Yes, Lafayette City Center--again, it hasn't been named "Lafayette Place" for at least 25 years--is obviously not blighted. It hosts giant tech firms paying up to $70 or so PSF for tens of thousands of square feet. What giant, prestigious, well-established tech firm (as opposed to a scruffy start-up) could suffer the loss of credibility/reputation, by occupying a "blighted" structure?
Name one objective example of blight involving its exterior or interior, I dare you.
(And please don't try to claim the giant retail space that is currently under renovation to become the museum somehow constitutes "blight".)
As for 600 Washington, yes, it's obviously a B (or B-) office property. It also exclusively hosts government agencies, so it's operating under a completely different mentality than an office property that hosts for-profit enterprises. State-level government agencies, to be blunt, really don't have to care about the quality of the space they're in. Who are they trying to impress, to land as clients? No one. So I absolutely give 600 Washington a "pass," until it no longer has government agencies, and is back operating within the dictates of the for-profit office tenant ecosystem.
(And that's all I have to say about this, sorry for derailing...)
I used to work in that building. Retail has been all but dead on the Washington Street side of it for the past 15 years or so. I remember a Quizno's in there before they all retreated south and west. Outside of the Macy's attachment, LCC provides absolutely nothing positive to the streetscape of DTX. It does provide active uses above it to get people on the streets during work hours, but itself has always felt like the end of DTX and the beginning of something else (now Theater District again).
This is a huge stretch of a singular wall-like building, and if you click down the street none of those doors contain active retail.
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I used to work in that building. Retail has been all but dead on the Washington Street side of it for the past 15 years or so. I remember a Quizno's in there before they all retreated south and west. Outside of the Macy's attachment, LCC provides absolutely nothing positive to the streetscape of DTX. It does provide active uses above it to get people on the streets during work hours, but itself has always felt like the end of DTX and the beginning of something else (now Theater District again).
This is a huge stretch of a singular wall-like building, and if you click down the street none of those doors contain active retail.
Google Maps
Find local businesses, view maps and get driving directions in Google Maps.
For sure... but [obviously] let's see how this new upcoming museum does. This story says it will occupy 17,000 sf, which is a lot of vacancy to be absorbing there (if not all).
I think if I recall correctly from walking past it the other day, the COMING SOON signage is filling every single window you linked to there on Google.
Finally, on a whim, I just checked, and the sf is amusingly reminiscent of ... wait for it... the 18,000 sf dumpster fire that was the wax museum.
The wax museum was open for 33 months. I put the over-under for when this upcoming museum exceeds that abomination's total visitation at... 2 months. (But I wouldn't be surprised if it only took 1 month, as I never saw a single patron enter the wax museum.)