1400 Boylston Street | Star Market & Gulf | Fenway

Equilibria said:
I'd take the street level of this over the street level of the Pierce, and that's what really matters.
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Usually I agree with this position, and we should definitely demand good street level on what is built. But this location does have good sight lines for a marquis type building. Pierce fulfills that concept, nothing we are seeing in these renders does. It's a background building in a location that calls for more.
 
HenryAlan said:
Usually I agree with this position, and we should definitely demand good street level on what is built. But this location does have good sight lines for a marquis type building. Pierce fulfills that concept, nothing we are seeing in these renders does. It's a background building in a location that calls for more.
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I'm just not sure I believe a marquee building is happening here or what it would look like. The pierce was supposed to be that and disappointed. Samuels is building attractive stuff at 401 Park but I wouldn't call it "marquee".

I'd call WS Development's work at Fenway Corners (and Seaport Square) "marquee", but that's not too far off, architecturally, from what Samuels is proposing.
 
HenryAlan said:
Usually I agree with this position, and we should definitely demand good street level on what is built. But this location does have good sight lines for a marquis type building. Pierce fulfills that concept, nothing we are seeing in these renders does. It's a background building in a location that calls for more.
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I actually think that the Pierce is the focal point and the buildings around it should be supportive. It's a shame that the Pierce is a bit of a dud, but it holds that space.
 
Suffolk 83 said:
The Pierce does have 3? storefronts. Its not that terrible
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CB2 as the corner tenant is a miss imo. A large storefront that sits largely devoid of activity. Would've been cool to have one of the restaurants there.
I don't mind the "landscraper." Let Pierce be the gateway/flatiron piece. If a library branch or something similar does end up going inside that lower piece, I think it'd make a nice civic corollary to outdoor yard at the Landmark Center - which I'd argue is the more redundant function as the adjacent fens riverbank is a very different kind of outdoor space (more informal, natural, less maintained, etc.)
 
Fenway Residents Demand Even More Input

An approved development on 2.4 acres in the Fenway will feature a science lab building and may include a new Boston Public Library Branch, but will not add housing space, prompting residents to pushing for more say in what is being built in their community.

Samuel & Associates Developments LLC. is the organization behind the redevelopment of 1380 to 1420 Boylston St., an area located few blocks from Fenway Park. The 553,000 square foot project, approved by a Boston Planning Development Agency (BDPA) board on Feb. 16, will not include housing but rather science labs and a civic building, as well as what could be the Fenway’s first Boston Public Library Branch.

The site was initially subject to a requirement of 60% residential use, but a recent amendment to the project’s zoning map will allow the developers to build commercial spaces there instead, a move which upset some Fenway residents.
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Theyre not wrong that they need more housing here, all these labs being built need people to work in them. This project footprint is absolutely massive, combining 3 separate lots together. It would have been a lot less imposing and more appropriately scaled if they had broken it up into 3-5 lots anyways. One of them could have been housing and then everybody wins.
 
stick n move said:
Theyre not wrong that they need more housing here, all these labs being built need people to work in them. This project footprint is absolutely massive, combining 3 separate lots together. It would have been a lot less imposing and more appropriately scaled if they had broken it up into 3-5 lots anyways. One of them could have been housing and then everybody wins.
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lab space looking over the park is not what we need. This ought to be a landmark building of the caliber of the Dakota in NYC. It’s a prime spot for housing in an area that needs it. Ugh.
 
shmessy said:
I’m 100% with those neighborhood voters. With the housing crisis the city has it is inconceivable why THIS development 2.4 acre spot got a 60% residential requirement wiped away. Simply wrongheaded. This thinking, repeated over and over, is economic suicide for Boston.
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Neighborhood voters are almost exclusively batshit crazy and should largely be ignored. Abutters should be the only people with rights and they do have them thanks to that 1970s law.

Who are the 'neighborhood voters' in this instance? Its not college kids or young professionals that make up 95% of the neighborhood, they dont bother with any of this. If the senior citizens who complain so much actually were concerned with the overall good of the neighborhood and not their own selfish aspirations I would feel differently
 
shmessy said:
I’m 100% with those neighborhood voters. With the housing crisis the city has it is inconceivable why THIS development 2.4 acre spot got a 60% residential requirement wiped away. Simply wrongheaded. This thinking, repeated over and over, is economic suicide for Boston.
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The city is almost entirely reactive. We know there is no financing for residential so no one is proposing it. For the city, it would be better to wait until financing is available. But a developer isn't going to sit on that much area until then. Samules has developed the majority of this area with lots of housing so they know how to do it. Would be great if we actually had planning led development
 
DwnTwnr said:
The city is almost entirely reactive. We know there is no financing for residential so no one is proposing it. For the city, it would be better to wait until financing is available. But a developer isn't going to sit on that much area until then. Samules has developed the majority of this area with lots of housing so they know how to do it. Would be great if we actually had planning led development
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Exactly, that’s the problem. There’s no “financing”, which means if you’re a developer and you want to get rich off a development, you can only “finance” it if you can claim it’s gonna make the most profit possible. That’s capitalism and that’s the fuckin problem here. The idea that the invisible hand guides the economy and development in the direction the common good needs most is bullshit. What the actual people need is housing; but what the market wants, more than housing, is lab space for profitable companies and higher end earners. All of this of course is sold under the auspices of providing more jobs, but the reality is that aside from cleaners, this building is only a boon for people with college and graduate degrees and is not some egalitarian jobs creation gift to the city. So, we get more of concentration of wealth and Boston gets more over educated and richer and unobtainable and unaffordable to a wider and wider slice of the population.
 
DwnTwnr said:
The city is almost entirely reactive. We know there is no financing for residential so no one is proposing it. For the city, it would be better to wait until financing is available. But a developer isn't going to sit on that much area until then. Samules has developed the majority of this area with lots of housing so they know how to do it. Would be great if we actually had planning led development
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Re that very declarative second sentence - there are many proposals for financing (just look through this forum). There are scores of 50+ unit residential projects currently under construction and getting financing everyday throughout Brookline, Allston/Brighton, Revere, Everett, Somerville, etc. In fact, there is a massive 350+ unit building currently going up around the corner from this (60 Kilmarnock) and I have no doubt it will be 95%+ leased once available. Hey, the tallest tower in Cambridge is currently rising now and it is residential. Meanwhile the LAB vacancy rate has now risen to 19% in Boston and climbing. I’m not in construction finance, but if I were, I wouldn’t touch lab construction with a ten foot pole in Boston right now.

And, yes, interest rates will be coming down by the end of 2024. The current market for financing is indeed slow, but the next 5 years of residential financing in Boston look far more promising compared to the oversaturated Boston lab market…….now if you were comparing residential to CASINOS, I would say differently.
 
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shmessy said:
Re that very declarative second sentence - there are many proposals for financing (just look through this forum). There are scores of 50+ unit residential projects currently under construction and getting financing everyday throughout Brookline, Allston/Brighton, Revere, Everett, Somerville, etc. In fact, there is a massive 350+ unit building currently going up around the corner from this (60 Kilmarnock) and I have no doubt it will be 95%+ leased once available. Hey, the tallest tower in Cambridge is currently rising now and it is residential. Meanwhile the LAB vacancy rate has now risen to 19% in Boston and climbing. I’m not in construction finance, but if I were, I wouldn’t touch lab construction with a ten foot pole in Boston right now.

And, yes, interest rates will be coming down by the end of 2024. The current market for financing is indeed slow, but the next 5 years of residential financing in Boston look far more promising compared to the oversaturated Boston lab market…….now if you were comparing residential to CASINOS, I would say differently.
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I haven't seen many newly financed projects go into development since rates got jacked starting in Jan 2022. Most of the projects that have gone in seemed to have some sort of financing locked in before then. The 60 Kilmarnock seemed to have money flowing in late 2020 and early 2021. The tower in Cambridge was in Feb 2021.

Do we have any complex/large scale towers that have gone into construction since 2022? Most every thing large-scale for residential is in some kind of holding pattern since then. What remains are non-profit and smaller developments of under a hundred units for the most part.
 
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