11-21 Bromfield Street | DTX | Downtown

The height arguments are worthless until this city fixes its mass transit problem.

Everyone is fixated on the wrong area.

Fix the T and then we can have a freaking Dubai. Until then, all those worrying about heights of buildings are treating the symptoms and ignoring the problem.
 
Classic Boston development shite show. Dog and pony presentations/bait and switch proposals, institutionalized bias in favor of conservative design mediocrity, chronic downscaling in the face of massive housing demand, self-absorbed nimbys more concerned with views and traffic/parking impacts than work and living opportunities for others, politics trumping everything. The BRA/developer/nimby intersection is a trifecta of baked-in dysfunction twisted far too often into the outright pathological. Progress happens but it's slow and inefficient. Can we get the adults involved please, the process needs to not happen at the kids table anymore.
 
I think if we can preserve the Payless building, make the car portal entrance smaller or go away and end up with a 500-600ft building that's a major win. The current proposal was tall but had tons of negatives too.
 
i don't think adding yet another 500' tower against a wall of 500' turds really qualifies as a major win. Rise tall over that big wall or go home. At least, the BRA will have a $50 chip to use at 2 Charlesgate West or Tremont Crossing, and get us a welcome low highrise, some density and stretch our still and for evermore so-so skyline westward.
 
odurandina said:
i don't think adding yet another 500' tower against a wall of 500' turds really qualifies as a major win. Rise tall over that big wall or go home. At least, the BRA will have a $50 chip to use at 2 Charlesgate West or Tremont Crossing, and get us a welcome low highrise, some density and stretch our still and for evermore so-so skyline westward.
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I don't care about the height. I doubt I'm ever going to get to live up there and I live close enough to this tower that I'm not going to see it on the skyline in a "Oh, that's pretty." kinda of way. I want a building that engages DTX in a pedestrian friendly way. If we get 700ft, great, but I'd take 200 or 300 feet with amazing ground level retail activation any day of the week.
 
timsox6 said:
Why? I understand the pecking order logic for Winthrop Square > One Bromfield, but I don't see it for One Franklin vs. One Bromfield. They're in very similar locations, proposed at very similar heights, and will be considered, in the future, as having been built at about the same time. I see no reason for Midwood to "have to accept" their fate of building an infill tower when their circumstances are so similar to Millennium Partners.
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Timsox -- its the difference between the "Pesky Pole" and the "Carlton Fisk Pole" -- between the Green Monster and the unnamed wall at the end of the Right Field Foul Line that curves out to the bullpens

MT is the neighbor and good friend [they are connected] to Filene's [the truly iconic Burnham chef d'oeuvre] -- One Bromfield is the neighbor to and connected with "Payless shoes" [Washington St. infill post the fire -- architect unknown]

MT has a legitimate claim to an address on Franklin St. -- one of Boston's iconic streets -- One Bromfield has an address on well Bromfield St. -- known locally for a pen shop and once a number of camera shops
 
Same old same old. Pretty much any other city would welcome this tower as proposed with open arms.
 
I think you guys need to see what happens in other cities more SF, Seattle, LA, and even Chicago can run into similar issues.

SF is probably the best comparison and if this were proposed there I can't even think of an unclaimed space where it could be proposed and have half a chance.
 
This is no surprise. The real surprise is just how tone deaf this developer seems to be. The street level foolishness should have been rectified earlier. Dumb.
 
:confused:
Equilibria said:
The point is that the process SHOULDN'T work that way, and the BRA is trying very hard to give developers the impression that the game had changed. Now, they need to prove that words like "iconic" aren't just buzzwords (which they are when they're used for every site), but a legitimate commitment to no longer take their pound of flesh from every project.

Height in Boston should be set by right in the zoning code, and that height should be 730' in DTX. All of it. A design review should assess tall buildings, but for design, not for height.

And yes, we're focusing on the height, because that was the only part that legitimately surprised me. The BRA and the developer had promoted their collaboration on choosing 705' for this tower, so I was naive and believed that the BRA had some integrity. Silly me.
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^Agreed......100%.....the city says ok to height for Harbor Garage project, the city says ok to height for Hub on Causeway project, the city leads us to believe height is ok with 1 Bromfield.....then what happens? They allow the inmates to run the asylum, or in other words: they cave to any Nimbys' picky little complaint. Why doesn't the city ask 45 Province residents why it was ok for 45 Province to BLOCK OTHER'S VIEWS when their place was built, but now it's unfair for their views to be blocked? Short answer: No backbone!..... Note to 45 Province residents: Boohoohoo, go ahead, cry and pout, that's life. Life is not always fair, get over it ya' bunch of whiners! ............Sorry, I don't mean to offend anyone...oh wait, yes , I DO.
 
lapradetom said:
:confused:

^Agreed......100%.....the city says ok to height for Harbor Garage project, the city says ok to height for Hub on Causeway project, the city leads us to believe height is ok with 1 Bromfield.....then what happens? They allow the inmates to run the asylum, or in other words: they cave to any Nimbys' picky little complaint. Why doesn't the city ask 45 Province residents why it was ok for 45 Province to BLOCK OTHER'S VIEWS when their place was built, but now it's unfair for their views to be blocked? Short answer: No backbone!..... Note to 45 Province residents: Boohoohoo, go ahead, cry and pout, that's life. Life is not always fair, get over it ya' bunch of whiners! ............Sorry, I don't mean to offend anyone...oh wait, yes , I DO.
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A 45 Province resident was quoted as pleading that the city needed to protect the historic character of the "Ladder District" -- pretty ironic given there is nothing historic about the blank black wall 45 Province tower.
 
Equilibria said:
That's not how I recall it. The City (and AB) was so grateful that Millennium was proposing something tall on the pit that they basically approved the first render without alteration. I don't believe a single thing changed from the first picture I saw of MT to what's standing today.
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It definitely changed, a few times, not so much in height but in design.

millennium-tower-boston21.jpg


Millennium-Tower-Boston-300.jpg


S100_NWCorner_Final.jpg
 
I recall these old renders, and recall wondering where they were going to put all the mechanicals (e.g., note the total lack of mech. penthouse in this render):
millennium-tower-boston21.jpg


It's not necessary to place them in a penthouse (the harbor towers, for example, house theirs in the harbor garage; other buildings have intermediate mechanical floors - usually with ugly louvers at the exterior), but I remember there being no obvious place to me in these old renders where the mech. guts would go.

And sure enough, they ended up on top. I wonder if it just became the most cost effective solution.

I also wonder, as DHZ points out, if this decision is what prompted the height change, as I always remember the "60 floor" target.

EDIT: I realize, after the fact, that this is the 1 Brom, not MT, thread...I suppose we can tie this back to: there can be variation in the end-state height based on increasingly technical design constraints being fleshed out (up to, of course, regulated height limits).
 
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DEIR comments, for those interested:

http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/2151c918-ebf4-4780-88d3-55cccc8177d5

Not much objection to the height beyond "it shouldn't be taller than the 150 feet the zoning allows." Mostly about servicing/site access and, of course, shadows. Lots and lots of of shadows. The director of Old South Meeting House claims, essentially, that shadows will destroy that building and cites Jackie Kennedy's quest to save Grand Central Station (well-known for having no tall buildings nearby).

Also, basically everyone just punts to the Master Plan request, on the tacit understanding that if the project is delayed until that's done, it's dead.
 
Equilibria said:
DEIR comments, for those interested:

http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/2151c918-ebf4-4780-88d3-55cccc8177d5

Not much objection to the height beyond "it shouldn't be taller than the 150 feet the zoning allows." Mostly about servicing/site access and, of course, shadows. Lots and lots of of shadows. The director of Old South Meeting House claims, essentially, that shadows will destroy that building and cites Jackie Kennedy's quest to save Grand Central Station (well-known for having no tall buildings nearby).

Also, basically everyone just punts to the Master Plan request, on the tacit understanding that if the project is delayed until that's done, it's dead.
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Interesting, the Pan Am building is right behind it and while it's not surrounded by 800 footers, it doesn't exactly standout due to lack buildings around it.
 
mass88 said:
Interesting, the Pan Am building is right behind it and while it's not surrounded by 800 footers, it doesn't exactly standout due to lack buildings around it.
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That was sarcasm :)
 
How dare someone proposes a tall building in Downtown!

The developer should have done a better job with the streetscape but the height shouldn't have been an issue.

ITS NOT A SHADOW IT'S SHADE
 
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