115 Federal St. (Winthrop Square)

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Nimby's can kiss my hairy ass, when they are in the common at the crack of dawn, and think "GOD DAMN THAT TOWER- its is blocking all of my early morning sunlight!" and are able to identify the correct shadow I will gladly humor them by telling them to get a life. Please- because when i think Boston I think sun lovers :) I think the fish in bay have more right to bitch.
 
I did the math for a 1000 footer at 42 degrees latitude. The noon sun reaches 71 degrees above the horizon on June 21 and 25 degrees on December 21. The low sun angles in the winter will cause long shadows but the sun is deep in the southern sky in the winter, so the shadows will fall mainly north probably missing the commons althogether. In the summer the sun rises quickly and early and again the shadows will be mainly to the north. I don't have all the coordinates for the building or the distance to the commons but I would guess that there probably will be some shadows but they will be minimal, no more than the shadows cast by exisiting buildings closer to the park.

angle of sun above horizon (degrees) - length of shadow (ft)

5 - 11430
10 - 5671
20 - 2747
30 - 1732
40 - 1191
50 - 839
60 -577
70 - 363
80 - 176
 
goody said:
I think the fish in bay have more right to bitch.
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Careful, don't give anyone (Vivian Li, especially) any ideas!
 
When do we expect to actually see the proposals for this building? I know that they are due by the 13th, but should we expect the proposals to be released immediately to the public?
 
I was hoping that once the proposals are in, some of the firms would post their designs on their own websites. Firms often post stuff they've submitted for competitions, even when they didn't win. And they've presumable spent a lot of time and energy drawing up all the renderings that RFP specified as REQUIRED, so why not show them off?
 
That's true, but everyone seems so excited for this upcoming Monday but I'm a little skeptic that we're not going to be able to see them for a few more weeks at the least.
 
tmac9wr said:
That's true, but everyone seems so excited for this upcoming Monday but I'm a little skeptic that we're not going to be able to see them for a few more weeks at the least.
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yeah seriously.
 
Tommy?s Tower proposals on way: Belkin will be hard to beat for plum project
By Scott Van Voorhis
Boston Herald Business Reporter
Sunday, November 12, 2006


International superstar architect Renzo Piano could wind up designing the tallest tower ever built in Boston.

Developers will unveil proposals tomorrow for a 1,000-foot high, skyline-topping skyscraper.

And Piano is working for Steve Belkin, who is considered to have an inside track on a coveted deal to build a roughly 80-story tower where a crumbling city garage now stands.

Belkin, the Boston travel and credit card magnate who also owns two pro sports teams, has quietly tried for years to build a tower on the Winthrop Square site. Belkin already owns an adjacent Federal Street mid-rise, a key advantage he has over other bidders.

Still, several local development heavyweights have taken out packets on the 1,000-foot skyscraper proposal, dubbed Tommy?s Tower after Mayor Thomas M. Menino?s call for such a project.

Potential bidders include Beacon Capital, the powerful real estate empire run by the Boston-based Leventhal family, Pru Tower owner Boston Properties and Ritz-Carlton towers developer MDA.

Meanwhile, Belkin, by combining his office building site with the city-owned garage, may have a large builing pad to work with. That could enable Piano to create a retail and restaurant packed base not unlike New York?s Time Warner tower complex.

Piano is known for works like the Centre Pompidou, an acclaimed modern art museum in Paris. He is also designing the new London Bridge skyscraper, which, at just over 1,000 feet, will be that city?s tallest tower.

?He has the inside track on that one,? said Boston tower builder John Hynes, who opted not to compete. ?If he puts together a good plan, he will be hard to beat.?



Link
 
On the Renzo Piano website (http://www.rpbw.com/) in the "All Projects" section, there is an interactive world map showing locations. If you zoom onto the U.S. there are dots for each of the cities in which they've done a project. If you scroll over a city-dot, a little box comes up with the projects in that city. Weirdly, Boston has a dot, but when you scroll over it, the little box comes up, with the word "Boston," but with no project description...

Maybe by tomorrow, there will be a section for 115 Winthrop Square! It looks to me like they've set up code on the website for it, but just haven't activated it yet.
 
shiz02130 said:
On the Renzo Piano website (http://www.rpbw.com/) in the "All Projects" section, there is an interactive world map showing locations. If you zoom onto the U.S. there are dots for each of the cities in which they've done a project. If you scroll over a city-dot, is little list comes up with the project. Weirdly, Boston has a dot, but when you scroll over it, the little box comes up, with the word "Boston," but with no project description...

Maybe by tomorrow, there will be a section for 115 Winthrop Square! It looks to me like they've set up code on the website for it, but just haven't activated it yet.
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Interesting find, Shiz. That may also be his Gardner Museum and/or his Harvard project, though. If everything goes his way, we may have three Piano buildings here in the near future.

It looks like Belkin's proposal is virtually a sure thing.
 
briv said:
we may have three Piano buildings here in the near future.
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Piano's OK as an orthodox modernist, but sometimes he strikes out with his thin, brittle style. Jury's still somewhat out on the New York Times Tower, and IMO his Morgan Library re-do is a disaster. London Bridge Tower looks top notch, however.

I thought the Harvard museum project was dead. Not dead?
 
ablarc said:
briv said:
we may have three Piano buildings here in the near future.
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Piano's OK as an orthodox modernist, but sometimes he strikes out with his thin, brittle style. Jury's still somewhat out on the New York Times Tower, and IMO his Morgan Library re-do is a disaster. London Bridge Tower looks top notch, however.

I thought the Harvard museum project was dead. Not dead?
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Yeah, the original Charles River Museum is still dead as far as I know, but Piano was also given the job of bringing, I believe, all three art museums -- The Fogg, The Sackler and the The Busch-Riesinger -- up to snuff. Not a bad consolation prize, IMO.

I like Piano. I think he's probably one of my favorite starchitects, simply for the fact that his work is so much more subdued compared to most of the others.
 
I doubt we'll see any renderings floating around later today. I assume it's going to take at least a few days, probably weeks before we see anything.

What I'm as interested in as the designs are the number of proposals submitted. I think Boston is going to continue to be pretty busy regarding towers and it's going to be interesting to see exactly how many proposals came in as a gauge to where others see the city.
 
Monday, November 13, 2006
One bidder for 1000-foot tower site in Boston
Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino's invitation to developers to build an iconic, 1,000-foot-tall tower on the site of a decaying city-owned parking garage drew only a single bidder today.

Steven Belkin, chairman and founder of Trans National group and an owner of the Atlanta Hawks basketball and Atlanta Thrashers hockey teams, proposed a tower -- which after approvals may turn out to be Boston's tallest building -- with extensive retail space on the ground floor.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority issued a request for proposals for the Winthrop Square public parking garage site, at 115 Federal St., in May; bids were due on today. Belkin, a hugely successful businessman but not as of yet a real estate developer, was considered by many to be the one to beat because he owns a key adjacent property, 133 Federal St.

The odd-shaped parking garage, with a footprint of a little over an acre, is considered much more valuable if a building there could also include the space occupied by Belkin's building.

Belkin has hired Meredith & Grew/Oncor as development manager for his project, and he has been working with architects including the highly regarded Renzo Piano of Italy, who designed the commercial and cultural Centre Pompidou in Paris.

"Very clearly he's been working on this for quite a bit of time,'' said David I. Begelfer, chief executive of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties' Massachusetts chapter. "He has the land, he has the money, and without question he has the determination to build this."

Belkin pioneered the successful use of "affinity" credit cards, those tied to businesses or nonprofit institutions, and has started more than two dozen companies. He is extensively involved in charitable work in Massachusetts, including efforts on behalf of Harvard University, Combined Jewish Philanthropies, and the Museum of Fine Arts Boston.

Belkin also owns Belkin Family Lookout Farm, in Natick, Mass. He graduated with a degree in engineering from Cornell University in 1969 and received a masters in business from the Harvard Business School in 1971.

Menino surprised the development community in February by giving a speech in which he invited developers to think big, after many year during which tall towers were shunned in Boston. The 60-floor Hancock Tower in the Back Bay is the city's tallest office building.
(By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe staff)


Posted by Boston Globe Business Team at 01:46 PM
 
Only one bidder is suprising to me but for all the Piano fans out there it looks like Steve Belkin is going to give you youre wish.
 
I guess ablarc's pessamistic(realistic?) views of developing in Boston are shared by the rest of the development community. :?
 
Pardon my naivete, but do you think that the lack of proposals submitted will decrease the likelihood that it will actually happen [i.e. get built]?
 
Perhaps Belkin is just a little too cozy with City Hall? Maybe there were other proposals, we'll never hear about them.
 
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