171 Tremont Street | Downtown

Shade on the common June 21st. Oh the horror. This must never be built!
 
As the expression goes, "the knives are out!"

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/06/11/alone-changing-neighborhood/2YE3WUVPJAhWHfyIsiKqRI/story.html

Interesting choice of wording there in the caption... the tower would "loom" over the Boston Common. Well, yes, I suppose, in a sense. But 151 Tremont St. already does a fine job of "looming" there, as does much else besides. Contextually, how egregious is said alleged "looming" by proposed 171 Tremont St. compared to all the "looming" already indicated in that rendering?
 
Another project officially bludgeoned by dark nimby forces. The once majestic pencil tower has been reduced to nothing-to-see infill... 4th height reduction leaves 171 Tremont at an unfathomably shrimpy 155' to the top of the highest occupied floor. The developer appears to be choosing the path of least resistance straight to the exits – setting a terrible precident.

Galer is 2-0 this summer. Or it's 3-0. Hell, i can't remember.

12 stories 175' to the roof tip.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...encil-tower/09FDms0nVvNRygdfQ9AnYM/story.html
 
I can't even begin to explain how utterly stupid this is. When will people realize, that the only way to meet the demand in the city is to build UP. New York understood it. Why can't Boston? In a few months we will probably hear how they will not build an underground garage instead.

Welcome to Boston, where you can try to build a tower but you will probably be blocked.
 
Horray! There are no more shadows on the common anymore!!
/sarcasm

If I were the developer, I'd honestly give up by this point. I don't see how this is a feasible building now, with it costing $55 million for 12 stories. Wasn't the original design something like 1 unit/floor? There's no way, (that I can see), where you can turn a profit with this.
 
I dunno. Kind of expected this result, especially right on the Common. Whatever.
 
carpet said:
I can't even begin to explain how utterly stupid this is. When will people realize, that the only way to meet the demand in the city is to build UP. New York understood it. Why can't Boston? In a few months we will probably hear how they will not build an underground garage instead.

Welcome to Boston, where you can try to build a tower but you will probably be blocked.
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Well in fairness, Boston is Boston. This isn't NYC, Chicago or even Philly/SF. Boston has a lot of things going for it. It has a world class university system, a solid innovation economy, historical architecture, and a truly unique character. I used to wish Boston was bigger. But, it is what it is. I'm only setting myself up for disappointment. It isn't designed to be a "big city". It will always be a solidly urban mid-sized city. Really, nothing wrong with it.
 
Not that I'm a height fetishist (personally, I think there are plenty of cities denser than Boston that aren't filled with towers that are good goals for us), BUT...

This isn't NYC
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"Manhattan-ization" is a bunk argument. For Boston to turn into Manhattan, we'd have to build 10+ towers a year for 100+ years.

or even Philly/SF.
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Not by any metric that's meaningful in this discussion.

urban mid-sized city.
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Columbus, OH is a solidly urban mid-sized city.

Fact of the matter is that Boston is a major metropolitan area. Is it a mega-city like New York? Of course not, but by any meaningful statistical measure (no, square miles and population within the city limits are not meaningful for anything other than the history of political amalgamation) Boston is big.

This conversation is always popular in the Archboston Circle of Life. Can someone automate this response?
 
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stefalarchitect said:
Horray! There are no more shadows on the common anymore!!
/sarcasm

If I were the developer, I'd honestly give up by this point. I don't see how this is a feasible building now, with it costing $55 million for 12 stories. Wasn't the original design something like 1 unit/floor? There's no way, (that I can see), where you can turn a profit with this.
Click to expand...

Each floor is 4,000 square feet per residence, sell for an average of $2,000 a sq ft. That's an average of $8 million per residence x 12 = $96 million. Construction costs (presumably both hard & soft) are stated as $55 million. (This is probably a 65,000 gsf building.)
 
Developer proposed an elegant pencil that was eventually shaved down to just the eraser.
 
underground said:
Fact of the matter is that Boston is a major metropolitan area. Is it a mega-city like New York? Of course not, but by any meaningful statistical measure (no, square miles and population within the city limits are not meaningful for anything other than the history of political amalgamation) Boston is big.

This conversation is always popular in the Archboston Circle of Life. Can someone automate this response?
Click to expand...

Not to distract further. But, just wanted to respond as I didn't make my point too well. I wasn't trying to make the Manahattanization argument. I was just point out that Boston is an old established city with a relatively built out "mixed use core." This is a pretty steady as she goes type of city with reguard to development. I would like to see more development in Boston and wish this was taller. But, we can't be too suprised/dissapointed this happened.

I love Boston, although I wish it had a little more of a rip roaring "big city feel." Boston is a fantastic city even though it isn't a city that whole heartedly embrages growth as much as it could. In fact, maybe glass half full, I have come to appreciate that as part of its charm.
 
The vision of Boston becoming a bit like London has suffered as much of a smackdown during the past year, as it has been uplifted by a good many, solid, density projects (with height cut moderately to severely on nearly every one). Half full is an accurate way to describe it.
 
jpdivola said:
Well in fairness, Boston is Boston. This isn't NYC, Chicago or even Philly/SF. Boston has a lot of things going for it. It has a world class university system, a solid innovation economy, historical architecture, and a truly unique character. I used to wish Boston was bigger. But, it is what it is. I'm only setting myself up for disappointment. It isn't designed to be a "big city". It will always be a solidly urban mid-sized city. Really, nothing wrong with it.
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JpDivola -- you might have given up too soon -- the BRA approved over 1400 units of new residences in August

At the current pace [always dangerous to extrapolate on these kind of things] that would push out 15,000 plus units in the next 12 months -- at 2. residents per unit the population could grow by 30,000 per year -- it wont of course grow that much but the era of 750,000 Bostonians + 125,000 Cantabrigians and with Rt-128 enclosing 2.5M is not far away
City 2014 Pop est
Boston 655,884
Cambridge 109,694
Quincy 93,397
Lynn 92,137
Newton 88,287
Somerville 78,901
Waltham 63,014
Malden 60,859
Brookline 59,115
Medford 57,463
Revere 54,157
Peabody 52,573
Arlington 44,395
Everett 43,513
Salem 42,984
Beverly 40,925
Woburn 39,026
Chelsea 37,686
Braintree 37,335
Watertown 33,835
Lexington 32,489
Gloucester 29,317
Melrose 28,060
Danvers 27,719
Milton 27,575
Saugus 27,138
Wakefield 26,367
Belmont 25,800
Dedham 25,691
Reading 25,568
Burlington 24,793
Wilmington 23,305
Stoneham 22,413
Winchester 22,086
Marblehead 20,418
Winthrop 17,925
Swampscott 14,095
Lynnfield 12,304
Rockport 5,185
Nahant 3,405
"Rt-128 City" 2,226,833 based on 2014/2016 estimates as available
 
Weigh,

No sir. Do that over 36, 48, 60 months.

i bet the number is closer to 4,000-6,000 units per year. We're still losing ground to many peer cities.
 
odurandina said:
Weigh,

No sir. Do that over 36, 48, 60 months.

i bet the number is closer to 4,000-6,000 units per year. We're still losing ground to many peer cities.
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Odurandia -- based on what criteria?

You don't measure the success of a city by its size or growth rate -- by that measure we have no important cities in the US

Even NYC is a pipsqueak on the global Mega Cites scale where the entry fee is 20M -- some of the biggest and fastest growing Asian and African have add NYC population in the past decade or two

I would argue that Boston competes with any city in the world in terms of its contributions to the quality of life of all people on the planet [my personal heierachy of characteristics:

  • General Innovation
  • Science & Technology
  • Health Care
  • Education [k-PhD]
  • Finance
  • the Arts & Culture
  • Literature
  • Sports
  • General Historic Importance
  • Historic structures districts and architecture
  • Parks & Green Spaces
  • Special events
  • harbor, islands and shoreline
  • global transportation
  • cooking and eating
  • sophisticated shopping experience
  • crafty beer
I may have left off one or two and we can certainly argue about the pecking order of the ranking of those features

There are cities that rank with Boston in any of the above and in some cases several

However I don't believe that there is another city which can compete with Boston [metro region] top to bottom on the list
 
jpdivola said:
Not to distract further. But, just wanted to respond as I didn't make my point too well. I wasn't trying to make the Manahattanization argument. I was just point out that Boston is an old established city with a relatively built out "mixed use core." This is a pretty steady as she goes type of city with reguard to development. I would like to see more development in Boston and wish this was taller. But, we can't be too suprised/dissapointed this happened.

I love Boston, although I wish it had a little more of a rip roaring "big city feel." Boston is a fantastic city even though it isn't a city that whole heartedly embrages growth as much as it could. In fact, maybe glass half full, I have come to appreciate that as part of its charm.
Click to expand...

Agree with you 100%. Boston is what it is. Much of it charming (though most of its contemporary architecture is dime-a-dozen). That's okay--it's thoroughly walkable, has some inimitable academic and cultural institutions, coziness and, yes, even a handful of nice, tall buildings. But it will not be a 24-hour city in any of our lifetimes nor have a dynamic skyline. Most of us can live with that. Let's celebrate the few great buildings we have and stop with the idiotic tower-envy. We just don't compete on that turf.
 
Tombstoner said:
Agree with you 100%. Boston is what it is. Much of it charming (though most of its contemporary architecture is dime-a-dozen). That's okay--it's thoroughly walkable, has some inimitable academic and cultural institutions, coziness and, yes, even a handful of nice, tall buildings. But it will not be a 24-hour city in any of our lifetimes nor have a dynamic skyline. Most of us can live with that. Let's celebrate the few great buildings we have and stop with the idiotic tower-envy. We just don't compete on that turf.
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Tomb,

I live here for all those reasons. My wife and I had a choice to live here or fight the good fight in NYC. This place works for me and I think its size, scale and NON-25hour nature is right for me and my family. No knock on other places ... humans need diversity of choice and some fortunate people get to make a choice in their lives of where they choose to root themselves. 24 hour city is not a better city for all.

cca
 
odurandina said:
Weigh,

No sir. Do that over 36, 48, 60 months.

i bet the number is closer to 4,000-6,000 units per year. We're still losing ground to many peer cities.
Click to expand...

Apologies for detracting conversation from topic, but...

I'm studying the inventory of units coming online for the city, and by my count there are just over 33,000 units proposed, approved, or under construction in the city. Assuming ~90% happen on schedule, it's looking like 30,000 new units are coming in the next 5-7 years... a pace of roughly 4,500-6,000 units per year. So you are correct, Odurandina.



RE 171 Tremont Street:
At first I was upset to hear the news that they chopped the height even more, but then I saw the latest rendering. I don't actually mind the step back effect from Boston Common to the Ritz towers behind it. Especially if we can get anything really tall behind the Ritz... like if the Washington-Essex Building got a facadectomy and planted a 750-footer on top... (and if any sketchup savvy forum members want to create a future skyline with that kind of dream scenario, I'll be very happy!)
 
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