171 Tremont Street | Downtown

DBM said:
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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Remember that it was only 12 condos because the height got chopped down over and over again by the NIMBYs. The developer was aiming for higher. What the heck do you mean by "morally obscene" in your earlier comment anyway? Price? Remember, at 12 units it was estimated to cost $55m to build (you can thank all the various things that make it difficult to build in Boston for part of that price tag). So of course the units would be expensive. Don't know what this has to do with so-called Eurotrash though. I'm sure the dveveloper would've accepted local buyers as well. Would've been a nice skinny tower.
 
jl326 said:
What the heck do you mean by "morally obscene" in your earlier comment anyway? Price?
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All residential tower in which, if all the units sit owned but vacant the vast majority of the time, and therefore the doorman/concierge serve little practical function other than to prevent the hundreds of inadequately housed homeless in the metropolis from breaking in to find sanctuary seems pretty obviously morally obscene to me. It's straight out of Vonnegut or early Stephen King (when he was writing under the Richard Bachman pseudonym)--really dystopian. Price has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's the "Manhattanization" effect that people actually should be indignant about--not anything silly about shadows.
 
So now tell, wise DBM, arbiter of morality and defender of social justice - what should the parcel become? If homes are so completely unacceptable, what is the higher use and is it economically viable? Recall the parcel is 50 feet wide and unlikely to exceed 12 stories. We have a ball park figure of $55 million to build something in that envelope (that price is today, it will be more in the future).

So if it were your land and your money, what would you do with it?
 
fattony said:
So now tell, wise DBM, arbiter of morality and defender of social justice - what should the parcel become? If homes are so completely unacceptable, what is the higher use and is it economically viable? Recall the parcel is 50 feet wide and unlikely to exceed 12 stories. We have a ball park figure of $55 million to build something in that envelope (that price is today, it will be more in the future).

So if it were your land and your money, what would you do with it?
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I think housing for the homeless (housing, not a shelter) would be a good start.
 
I think it is a reasonable bet that this is what will happen to the site. Emerson has just built a large dorm and is in the middle of a gut reno of the Little Building, which is also dorm. Once that one settles in a bit I think we will see a dorm proposal for this site, probably at the approved envelope. The exterior will change but it's a reasonable use for this location--and Emerson has a rented art gallery next door so maybe that becomes the ground floor use.

stick n move said:
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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estyle said:
I think it is a reasonable bet that this is what will happen to the site. Emerson has just built a large dorm and is in the middle of a gut reno of the Little Building, which is also dorm. Once that one settles in a bit I think we will see a dorm proposal for this site, probably at the approved envelope. The exterior will change but it's a reasonable use for this location--and Emerson has a rented art gallery next door so maybe that becomes the ground floor use.
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At ~$55m in construction costs, charging $5500/semester would bring in ~1.3m-2.6m+/year with 10 students/floor or 20 students, respectively. Looking at the floor plans, you might be able to get 16 comfortably and 20 tightly. That makes a break even on the construction costs in 20-40+ years. Add on year round international/grad students and the return could be a little faster. The quick end (20ish years,) matches that of Northeastern's new 800-bed dorm. Could be doable if you lay out the floors efficiently and put 20 beds on each floor.. it gets riskier the lower # of beds you go.
 
The balconies are nicely contextual;)
 
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stefalarchitect said:
At ~$55m in construction costs, charging $5500/semester would bring in ~1.3m-2.6m+/year with 10 students/floor or 20 students, respectively. Looking at the floor plans, you might be able to get 16 comfortably and 20 tightly. That makes a break even on the construction costs in 20-40+ years. Add on year round international/grad students and the return could be a little faster. The quick end (20ish years,) matches that of Northeastern's new 800-bed dorm. Could be doable if you lay out the floors efficiently and put 20 beds on each floor.. it gets riskier the lower # of beds you go.
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If it's just a dorm, they might be able to squeeze in 1-2 more floors without raising the height. Of course it might be a miserable, Warren Towers type experience, but still.
 
If they divide it up into dorms... 5 rooms per floor, 4 people per room- 2 bunk beds per room, 12 floors, $1000 per person right on the Boston Common = 240 people in the tower vs 12 and $240,000 coming in per month in rent forever. I think this is doable. Just throw up more walls to make about 5 rooms on each floor with a common area with a kitchenette, toilet/shower, couch/tv and you have a dorm.
 
DBM said:
All residential tower in which, if all the units sit owned but vacant the vast majority of the time, and therefore the doorman/concierge serve little practical function other than to prevent the hundreds of inadequately housed homeless in the metropolis from breaking in to find sanctuary seems pretty obviously morally obscene to me. It's straight out of Vonnegut or early Stephen King (when he was writing under the Richard Bachman pseudonym)--really dystopian. Price has absolutely nothing to do with it. It's the "Manhattanization" effect that people actually should be indignant about--not anything silly about shadows.
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The way I see it, this immediate area is already pretty mixed and I don't think this skinny tower - had moved forward with the plan for luxury condos - would have done much at all to change it or really add to the "Manhattanization" effect. Ok, so you have the Ritz residences, but its neighbors include elderly low income housing, students, St. Francis, and strip joints. As diverse as it comes, for better or for worse.

However, regardless of who would have purchased the units and how much time they may spend there, they would have to pay annual state property taxes on units that would likely be assessed for $5M+ on average. The state could sure use that to fund housing for homeless somewhere. Of course, I'm not naive enough to believe that's what the state would actually use the extra revenues for, but maybe that is really what is morally obscene here. Maybe the real beef isn't with what developers wanted to do on some semi-prime real estate over the Commons, but it's with what the state is doing (or not doing) with all extra tax revenues that must be pouring in with the boom in luxury units over the last few years.
 
jl326 said:
The way I see it, this immediate area is already pretty mixed and I don't think this skinny tower - had moved forward with the plan for luxury condos - would have done much at all to change it or really add to the "Manhattanization" effect. Ok, so you have the Ritz residences, but its neighbors include elderly low income housing, students, St. Francis, and strip joints. As diverse as it comes, for better or for worse.

However, regardless of who would have purchased the units and how much time they may spend there, they would have to pay annual state property taxes on units that would likely be assessed for $5M+ on average. The state could sure use that to fund housing for homeless somewhere. Of course, I'm not naive enough to believe that's what the state would actually use the extra revenues for, but maybe that is really what is morally obscene here. Maybe the real beef isn't with what developers wanted to do on some semi-prime real estate over the Commons, but it's with what the state is doing (or not doing) with all extra tax revenues that must be pouring in with the boom in luxury units over the last few years.
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Insightful comments; well said.

P.S. Just for the record--and allow me to persist in my sneering tone--this was the guy who was the proponent for the residential tower. As the saying goes, you literally can't make this stuff up... and sometimes reality exceeds the stereotypical cliche to such a degree as to become surreal.

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I was thinking yesterday 6-8 people per single floor suite. Seems 72~96 people would be very good use.
 
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