11-21 Bromfield Street | DTX | Downtown

[Blackbird]

“We” aren’t. They are with their money. It’s a business risk they think is worth it apparently.

“We” (the city) are, if this project gets approved. There’s still the issue of Washington being more retail/restaurant/residential than office.

Then again, maybe part of the reason this switched to office is that there’s too much residential in the immediate area.

 

[stefal]

Lets also not bring up risk, its an office building.

Can you expand on this?

 

[whighlander]

Still not clear why that location for Office?

What type of tenant is looking for office space with a relatively small floor plate and in that location -0- especially since lots of former office is going toward lab [wet or dry type] [e.g. 600 Congress] --- or you are Amazon or Google

I wish them luck -- but I just don't see the demand in the next five years

 

[DBM]

“We” (the city) are, if this project gets approved. There’s still the issue of Washington being more retail/restaurant/residential than office.

Then again, maybe part of the reason this switched to office is that there’s too much residential in the immediate area.

Washington St. is way way way more given over to office use than residential/retail/restaurant, on a square footage basis, let alone in terms of the sheer number of office buildings which happen to have restaurant/retail at the base. Here's at least 5 million sf of office either directly fronting on Washington between Chinatown and City Hall, or within 25 yards:

600 Washington
LCC
restored Filene's (the vast majority is office, even with Roche/Primark)
60 Temple
33 Arch
101 Arch
350 Washington
294 Washington
1 Milk
10 School
1 Devonshire (office component forms residential podium)
30 Winter
1 Boston Place

And that's not counting the goodly number of other smaller (i.e., 75,000 sf or less) office buildings either directly fronting on Washington St. or within 25 yards. You could easily put together another 2 million sf of office with them as well, if you started counting.

As for the reason it switched from residential to office... in the eyes of innumerable community stakeholders and most importantly the BPDA, the prior residential design exceptionally sucked. No reason to go fishing for explanations beyond that.

 

[whighlander]

Washington St. is way way way more given over to office use than residential/retail/restaurant, on a square footage basis, let alone in terms of the sheer number of office buildings which happen to have restaurant/retail at the base. Here's at least 5 million sf of office either directly fronting on Washington between Chinatown and City Hall, or within 25 yards:

......

As for the reason it switched from residential to office... in the eyes of innumerable community stakeholders and most importantly the BPDA, the prior residential design exceptionally sucked. No reason to go fishing for explanations beyond that.

DBM -- If you are a developer -- you don't "just switch" the basis of your building project without some more significant reason than:
in the eyes of community stakeholders -- who gives a proverbial
and more importantly the BPDA [the prior residential design exceptionally sucked] -- not unless someone told them that they wouldn't get approval with the prior

No there has to be something fundamental to completely transform what they are tying to accomplish

Still -- nothing obvious why with several million sq ft relatively nearby in the pipeline and with most of that not pre-arranged -- why now would you propose to build a medium scale office tower???

 

[chrisbrat]

the prior residential design exceptionally sucked. No reason to go fishing for explanations beyond that.

nope! great design. daring, curvy, non-rectilinear, bold, and tall -- hence not being built in boston.

 

[Blackbird]

Washington St. is way way way more given over to office use than residential/retail/restaurant

600 Washington
LCC
restored Filene's (the vast majority is office, even with Roche/Primark)
60 Temple
33 Arch
101 Arch
350 Washington
294 Washington
1 Milk
10 School
1 Devonshire (office component forms residential podium)
30 Winter
1 Boston Place.

A few of those aren’t on Washington Street, and 600 Washington is residential isn’t it? Beyond that the there’s the Kensington, Ritz Carlton (residences and hotel in separate towers), Godfrey Hotel, Millennium Place, Millennium Tower (biggest building downtown), Emerson Dorms, Suffolk Dorms.

If you insist on including the Arch Street buildings, then you’d need to consider 45 Province and AVA Theater District.

No way is there “way way way” more office along Washington than retail, restaurant, and hotel/residential.

 

[DBM]

nope! great design. daring, curvy, non-rectilinear, bold, and tall -- hence not being built in boston.

Note I said, "in the eyes of"--I didn't say I thought it sucked. (Well, the proposed valet roundabout DID in fact suck--it would've destroyed the wonderfully intimate texture/street-level fabric of Bromfield, as many pointed out.)

 

[DBM]

A few of those aren’t on Washington Street, and 600 Washington is residential isn’t it? Beyond that the there’s the Kensington, Ritz Carlton (residences and hotel in separate towers), Godfrey Hotel, Millennium Place, Millennium Tower (biggest building downtown), Emerson Dorms, Suffolk Dorms.

If you insist on including the Arch Street buildings, then you’d need to consider 45 Province and AVA Theater District.

No way is there “way way way” more office along Washington than retail, restaurant, and hotel/residential.

Note my criteria--millions of square feet. There are millions and millions more square feet of office on Washington St., from City Hall to Boylston, than either residential, retail, restaurant. More than all the others combined, in terms of those uses' aggregate square footage, I bet. Simple fact. Easy to prove.

(By stopping at Boylston, I'm excluding AVA, Kensington, 660 Washington)

(If you want me to prove it to you, I will do some cursory research and send it to you privately so as not to belabor it on this thread. But it's not even close, in terms of the dominance of office over the categories, when it comes to square feet.)

600 Washington St. is office, not residential. And most of those I quoted with non-Washington Street addresses in fact front on Washington (60 Temple Pl, 1 Devonshire, Filene's building, 10 School), etc.

Anyway, the larger point is, "mixed-use" is one of those trite, way overused cliches that people toss around--but it really does apply to Washington St.! It contains *mass quantities* of everything--residential, retail, office, hotel, restaurant, theater--other than lab.

So, propose whatever the heck you want along Washington St., in terms of use characteristic! Regardless of the use you propose, you'll be in a giant, diverse market for it.

*in the spirit of Beldar the Conehead

 

[StillInTheHood]

The ridiculous carport (I hate to dignify it with the term porte cochere) in the previous iteration was appallingly bad. Look straight ahead, not up. I don't think most city dwellers give a rip about what a building looks like in photos from Medford or the Blue Hills, and at the street level that proposal was a total dumpster fire. Other cities banished new carports from walking streets decades ago, but the BRA/BPDA has long had a weakness for allowing moronic, street-deadening driveways - the Four Seasons on Boylston is an '80s example, One Charles is an '00s example, AVA Theater District is a '10s example. It's a promising sign that was ixnayed. The current iteration is meh. I don't think it's bad architecture, and the buildings it is replacing aren't gems (the former City Sports building is awful) but once again we are sacrificing granular texture and variety for a hulk that swallows most of an entire block. Because the streets of downtown are narrow and closely spaced, we are evolving toward building=block, and that's also stifling at the ground level. For that reason, it would have come off better aesthetically if at least the former Payless building had been retained, even if the trade-off was a bit more height further back ... which might also have yielded renderings better suited to the height fetishists' ritual fellatio.

 

[Blackbird]

(By stopping at Boylston, I'm excluding AVA, Kensington, 660 Washington)

Why in the world would you do this? Does Washington stop at Boylston? I was tempted to include Quincy Tower and the Double Tree on my list but figured Stuart was an alright stopping point.

(If you want me to prove it to you, I will do some cursory research and send it to you privately so as not to belabor it on this thread. But it's not even close, in terms of the dominance of office over the categories, when it comes to square feet.)

Sure, I'd love to see the numbers

600 Washington St. is office, not residential.

Is this not 600 Washington? 1 Harrison Ave - Google Maps

 

[DBM]

Why in the world would you do this? Does Washington stop at Boylston? I was tempted to include Quincy Tower and the Double Tree on my list but figured Stuart was an alright stopping point.



Sure, I'd love to see the numbers



Is this not 600 Washington? 1 Harrison Ave - Google Maps

Sorry if stopping at Boylston strikes you as arbitrary--In my mind it's the boundary between DTX and Chinatown and both are distinct enough to have a delineation. If you go to Stuart then, including 660 Washington (which you confused with 600 Washington), Kensington, 45 Stuart, that might tip the balance in favor of residential over office. But, let's start at City Hall Plaza and stop at Boylston St. as I originally envisioned, for bleeps and giggles. I'll show my work/research, since I've been yakking about it.

Every single office building listed below fronts on Washington, even if the address doesn't say "Washington" in it

1 Washington Mall: .156 million sf office
28 State St.: .570 million sf office
1 State St.: .065 million sf office
1 Boston Pl.: .825 million sf office
250 Washington: I'll be conservative and say there's only .1 million sf office in that podium at the base of 1 Devonshire I've linked to
262 Washington (4 Water): .09 million sf office
278 Washington (1 Water): .046 million sf office
294 Washington: .232 million sf office.
450 Washington (1 Summer): .920 million sf office
1 Milk: .029 million sf office.
10 School: .135 million sf office
former Filene's: .125 million sf office
60 Temple Pl.: .052 million sf office
LCC: .615 million sf office
600 Washington: .251 million sf office

that's 4.2 million sf office

And if we expand to include office towers that are a mere 250 feet (exactly a one-minute walk) or less from Washington St.?

33 Arch: .603 million sf office
50 Milk: .350 million sf office
101 Arch: .425 million sf office
40 Water: .360 million sf office
30 Winter: .098 million sf office
31 Milk: .095 million sf office

that's another 1.9 million sf office.

If you expanded that walking radius from Washington St. to 500 feet, still just a two-minute walk, add many millions more square feet of office, of course.

Anyway: no matter how you slice it, 11 Bromfield's proposed .400 million sf is just another drop in the bucket for the Washington St. corridor, in terms of office use...

 

[HarvardP]

Thanks for the breakdown, the glut is much easier to wrap my head around now.

 

[estyle]

Wondering if this thread should be renamed? The project has refiled at 11-21 Bromfield and it's confusing to still see 1 Bromfield.

 

[BosDevelop]

Clearly the developers think there will be demand in a few years... I agree. Covid is not going to be the death knell to commercial real estate that it looked like in April 2020.... mostly because a year later I think we've all learned how much most people hate working from home due to the fact they don't have the space for it along with kids and they enjoy getting the fuck away from their spouse.

I agree but this will change the opposite way real fast when the Pike is down a lane for 5 years and it takes an hour or more to go just 10 miles getting into the city from the west. People will be begging to work from home so they don't have to waste 2 hours or more commuting to work.

 

[393b40]

I agree but this will change the opposite way real fast when the Pike is down a lane for 5 years and it takes an hour or more to go just 10 miles getting into the city from the west. People will be begging to work from home so they don't have to waste 2 hours or more commuting to work.

The Pike is always a shit show during normal times it will just be slightly more of a shit show - if your job involves commuting in from the west you either stop caring about the commute or you find new employment. I expect CR on the Worcester line will up tick during this time period as well.

Getting into Boston sucks in general.

 

[whighlander]

But of course Not for the past 12 months
Commuting on the Pike it really hasn't been anything to worry about
even the trek through Fresh Pond area and Mem Drive is nearly car-free -- and that is in part why T use % today is still below the % of occupancy of the downtown office space

 

[stefal]

Midwood may have considered switching back to residential at some point, but they have already spent millions on design fees here, and likely don't want to keep kicking the already relatively high sunk costs with this down the road. Construction gets more expensive by the day, so every day that passes where this isn't making progress toward construction, they are losing money. Not only are they losing money, but the lending bank may be uncertain of Midwood's certainty in the market if they bring this back to a large redesign again - they could stand to lose someone their funding source if they keep changing their minds.

Is it smart to build office? Not brilliant. Are their hands tied (enough)? I'd say so.

I expect CR on the Worcester line will up tick during this time period as well.

Getting into Boston sucks in general.

Worcester Line could go single track during a good portion of the work, and MassDOT has already warned about 'disruptions and delays,' depending on which alternative they go with, if they ever make any decision whatsoever. Really sucks, because I was originally hoping at least a few dozen SOV commuters would have permanently transitioned to Commuter Rail after seeing its benefits, but if its just going to be delayed, its appeal doesn't quite shine.

 

[HenryAlan]

I agree but this will change the opposite way real fast when the Pike is down a lane for 5 years and it takes an hour or more to go just 10 miles getting into the city from the west. People will be begging to work from home so they don't have to waste 2 hours or more commuting to work.

Wrong conception of how that will impact life. People are very willing to work from home some of the time. But very few want to do it five days a week. The response to a lengthy loss of commute capacity should be that downtown employers shift people to 40/60 schedules (or schedule more shift differentials for in office work). COVID has demonstrated that flexibility is viable and good. It will never have to be all or nothing, though.

 

[whighlander]

Wrong conception of how that will impact life. People are very willing to work from home some of the time. But very few want to do it five days a week. The response to a lengthy loss of commute capacity should be that downtown employers shift people to 40/60 schedules (or schedule more shift differentials for in office work). COVID has demonstrated that flexibility is viable and good. It will never have to be all or nothing, though.

Henry -- just like most things touched by technology -- there are and will be more options and less regimentation

I doubt that we will see a return to 9-5, 5 days a week, 50 weeks per year, main office and back office driven commuting patterns
there will be some who have to follow that traditional schedule and some who chose to follow it -- but there will be a whole lot more diversity of when people come to work and where and for how many hours
I think the main beneficiary are the people who commute by car --- they will have much more open roads --
the people who depend on public transit are still stuck with rigid timetables and crowded platforms and vehicles since the T will not generate spare capacity due to increased operational cost