171 Tremont Street | Downtown

whighlander said:
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Looks like the current West End.
 
My point was that bringing up Saint Petersburg as an example of soviet style architecture is rather strange. And most cities are boring at best and usually just shit outside of their center. Boston included.

As far this proposal is concerned I still think it's a very nice infill, even in reduced state.
 
Smartiro said:
My point was that bringing up Saint Petersburg as an example of soviet style architecture is rather strange. And most cities are boring at best and usually just shit outside of their center. Boston included.

As far this proposal is concerned I still think it's a very nice infill, even in reduced state.
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IMO Boston triple deckers are much better than affordable housing developments in other cities. It's what makes us unique :). Unfortunately they aren't that affordable anymore :(.
 
So basically this proposal, in its final form which got approved, with just 12 units (I believe), got touted to the NIMBY opposition and presumably placated the BPDA Board for its marvelous ability to generate absolutely zero traffic/human interactivity. Which actually seems quite likely to me, assuming the 12 buyers of the $6 million-plus condos will be perpetually absentee global moguls. [Of course there will still be concierges and valets... kind of like mortuaries are staffed.] But, whatevs, the Tremont/Boylston area has so much vitality already, I think it's fine to have one permanently vacant structure there, seriously.

In ten years, when Winthrop Sq. Tower and this are both up [presumably], I'd love to see a juxtaposition of two traffic-watching cameras and corresponding graphs for both these developments, capturing and graphically displaying the amount of human interaction/pedestrian foot traffic associated with each structure. How many decades would it take for 171 Tremont to have the amount of human interaction that Winthrop Sq. Tower will have in one minute? he he he
 
^^that about covers it. we should vaporize this thread the same way they vaporized this once lovely tower proposal (RIP). .... then again, perhaps 171 Tremont is the sacrificial lamb to 1 Bromfield and 533 Washington.... and Galer, believing himself to be a hammer to the Gods, is, in fact, is the object of the joke about to be thrown into the dumpster fire to join Shirley Kressel and Kathleen Ryan after all.
 
Emerson College bought 171-172 Tremont Street today for $24 million.

Are they buying so they can build something there or so that someone else can't? Like, how many dorm rooms can you fit in that tower, or are they going to go back to the drawing board and try for higher height?
 
JohnAKeith said:
Emerson College bought 171-172 Tremont Street today for $24 million.

Are they buying so they can build something there or so that someone else can't? Like, how many dorm rooms can you fit in that tower, or are they going to go back to the drawing board and try for higher height?
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Drawing board. One condo per floor doesn't make a lot of sense for them. I'd expect something that looks a lot like the Boylston Place tower.
 
According to Globe, they will renovate it and keep it as is for "student services". This is why we can't have nice things.
 
Wait so theyre going to use this for student services?

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vs this?



So the tower is called off? What can they even do in that little building that would be worth paying for the land its on and not redeveloping? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to buy an extremely expensive property slated for development and then just sit on it in the middle of a huge development boom. Any sources confirming this? This was just approved last month, that wouldn't make sense at all we need to see something explaining whats really going on here. They have to be using this for student housing. Why would this go through years of fighting and opposition, changes, finally get approved, then be sold the next month and kept as is. Idk about all this.
 
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stick n move said:
Wait so theyre going to use this for student services?


So the tower is called off? What can they even do in that little building that would be worth paying for the land its on and not redeveloping? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense to buy an extremely expensive property slated for development and then just sit on it in the middle of a huge development boom. Any sources confirming this? This was just approved last month, that wouldn't make sense at all we need to see something explaining whats really going on here. They have to be using this for student housing. Why would this go through years of fighting and opposition, changes, finally get approved, then be sold the next month and kept as is. Idk about all this.
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It's pretty simple, the NIMBYs made the tower so short that the economics didn't work out any more.
 
Yea usually they figure that out and don't continue along through the approval process though thats what was confusing.
 
carpet said:
According to Globe, they will renovate it and keep it as is for "student services". This is why we can't have nice things.
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Nonsense. Downtown Crossing dodged a bullet here--a very soulless, Eurotrash-friendly, morally obscene bullet. On the proposed Eurotrash tower's MOST ACTIVE day, when, say, 1 family of Russian oligarchs and another family of Saudi oil potentates was visiting, you'd have 5 people inside it. OK, maybe 7, counting the doorman and concierge.

Seven people.

On an AVERAGE day, you would've had 2 people inside the building--said rather lonely and underemployed doorman and concierge--given the reasonable expectation that all of the condos would be purchased as investments by absentee Eurotrash owners and essentially never occupied.

Two people.

No restaurant/coffeeshop/retail was spec'd either, for this glass-and-steel funerary monument that would've been masquerading as a "residential tower."

And the reason people are gnashing their teeth and rendering their garments in howling indignation is... what, exactly?! If anything, there should be dancing in the streets and a presentation of the proverbial key to the City to Emerson.

[Well, that last bit might be a tad melodramatic. But still. Really.]
 
^ That is a nice red-meat story, but it's fictive. We have no idea who would have actually bought these apartments, but that version of events seems more improbable than not.

And if wealthy foreigners want to invest in Boston, frankly, that brings plenty of positives. Start with the real estate taxes (vs. the zero taxes Emerson will pay for what I'd otherwise refer to as a "taxpayer" building - only in this case it can't even aspire to that). Then consider the consumer spending - sure it may be on something you may sneer at (like expensive restaurant meals, alcohol, cars, or other durables) - but that spending creates more economic opportunity for Bostonians than the spending of many Boston residents does.

Or take the fact that having wealthy foreigners tied to Boston because they now have a home here means those people are going to be looking for investment opportunities. Local companies that otherwise might not get investment to survive now get it. The wealthy foreigners may decide their own businesses (or personal consumption) can benefit from buying products from, or creating a joint venture with, those local companies. Their kids may love living on the Common and open a local business, or become donors to the MFA. And so on. Wrinkle your nose at how the Chinese real estate investor got rich, but if he's going to spend his money somewhere, it may as well be on a pied-a-terre in Boston that would otherwise be a non-paying taxpayer.
 
The scenario I was hoping for was they kept the allotted height and general design of the building and instead of 1 unit per floor for 12 floors, it would be divided up as a dorm. Look at these pictures. It looks like you could fit about 4-5 rooms per floor with a kitchenette, couch/tv, and a shower/toilet. You could even make the top or middle floor public showers if you need even more space in each room. In each room in a dorm situation you could fit 1-4 people per room depending on bunks and what they decide to do. So say 5 rooms with 2 people per room over 12 floors is 120 people living in the tower. If you needed to maximize profit you could get up to about 240 people with 5 rooms per floor and 4 people per room (double bunk beds) over 12 floors. So you could go from 12 people to 240 by just creating different build-outs on the floors aka just building different walls than you would for the condo and now you have a 240 person dorm that would be rented out expensively and indefinitely. Anywhere in between these numbers is possible but there are many options. Some iteration of this is what I had figured was going to happen. 240 students paying $1,000 a month for a dorm directly on the Boston Common is $240,000 a month in rent coming in from this building forever. That seems sustainable.


I realize some of these are older versions. Just trying to show floor size and the general idea of the tower.
 
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itchy said:
^ That is a nice red-meat story, but it's fictive. We have no idea who would have actually bought these apartments, but that version of events seems more improbable than not.

And if wealthy foreigners want to invest in Boston, frankly, that brings plenty of positives. Start with the real estate taxes (vs. the zero taxes Emerson will pay for what I'd otherwise refer to as a "taxpayer" building - only in this case it can't even aspire to that). Then consider the consumer spending - sure it may be on something you may sneer at (like expensive restaurant meals, alcohol, cars, or other durables) - but that spending creates more economic opportunity for Bostonians than the spending of many Boston residents does.

Or take the fact that having wealthy foreigners tied to Boston because they now have a home here means those people are going to be looking for investment opportunities. Local companies that otherwise might not get investment to survive now get it. The wealthy foreigners may decide their own businesses (or personal consumption) can benefit from buying products from, or creating a joint venture with, those local companies. Their kids may love living on the Common and open a local business, or become donors to the MFA. And so on. Wrinkle your nose at how the Chinese real estate investor got rich, but if he's going to spend his money somewhere, it may as well be on a pied-a-terre in Boston that would otherwise be a non-paying taxpayer.
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Yes, these are all worthy considerations--but how much of this virtuous economic activity would've been taking place when. there. were. only. twelve. condos. to begin with?!?

I'll admit I was in a righteous lather sneering at the Eurotrash. But from the sheer economic perspective, shorn of the value judgments, this would've been, relative to two other realized towers in its class in terms of cultivating uberwealthy foreign clientele:

--just 2% of the number of units (and whatever aggregate associated economic activity) in comparison to 440-unit Millennium Tower
--just 7% of the number of units (and whatever aggregate associated economic opportunity) in comparison to 180-unit One Dalton under construction--which also has the 215-room Four Seasons hotel as part of its package

One could go on. The point is--this project would've been a pimple on the backside of those economic juggernauts. Except, unlike them, I strongly suspect the building would've been vacant most of the time. Because, again, just 12 units.

Consider me skeptical.
 
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