Alewife T Station, Garage, Bus, & Trails

Equilibria said:
I can't find them these days whenever I look, but this has been conceptually designed already. It's not an imagination-level thing. This is where the MBTA intends to put the station, full stop.
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Cool. I hope they make it work and make it cost efficient. I am one though that will always critique projects like this. We should always be willing to look critically at things for improvement. I am a firm believer that with these long range plans, we should always be willing to critique things in order to improve upon projects and ideas.

If we have learned anything from the Green Line extension and the Allston/I-90 project, even concept level designs can change.
 
www.yourarlington.com

Cambridge City Council gets update on Alewife station

Cambridge City Council hears an update on plans for the aging Alewife Station garage and surrounding acres.
www.yourarlington.com www.yourarlington.com
The MBTA announced last summer that it would seek a private partner to help redesign the Alewife station garage, the station itself, and the area around it.

The T is still in the process of identifying that partner, according to Cambridge Day, but the request for proposals should be issued soon, as the department had previously identified January as a release date.

Once that partner is identified, Cambridge officials said they plan to fold the development process of the Alewife garage into its rezoning efforts for that region, just as it did in the so-called “quadrangle” region, when the life-sciences developer Healthpeak Properties announced projects there.
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TheRatmeister said:
Hopefully they can do a better job of figuring out how mixed use works than they've done with the adjacent area.
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Multi-use development is the key; i.e., mixed residential, commercial, and small retail. As you say, the greater Alewife area was developed wrong over the past 70 years. It followed the post-WW II suburban template of large areas of single use; all commercial/business in one large area, isolated shopping/retail centers not close by, and residential developments far off in their own enclaves, all creating a non-walkable, auto-centric edge city of single-use islands. Hopefully the new Alewife development can buck that tide followed for many decades in this area.
 
TheRatmeister said:
How long until this garage kills or involuntarily amputates someone? I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.
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They've been doing construction on-and-off since 2017 (?) so I suppose it's unlikely to be any sooner than it had been back then.
 
as02143 said:
They've been doing construction on-and-off since 2017 (?) so I suppose it's unlikely to be any sooner than it had been back then.
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I'm not sure I would consider the garage to be in better shape than it was back in 2017.

Although the place I'd consider it most likely to happen would be the former 'express exit' which has been closed for quite some time now and is now a homeless encampment from what I've heard.
 
themissinglink said:
mass.streetsblog.org

MBTA Terminates Alewife Redevelopment Plan - Streetsblog Massachusetts

"Current market conditions are not favorable to maximizing the property's value for transportation priorities," an MBTA spokesperson told StreetsblogMASS on Monday.
mass.streetsblog.org mass.streetsblog.org
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“the T would issue a competitive "request for proposals" to work with a joint development partner and come up with a "realistic and viable" plan for the area before the end of 2024.”

This is the problem, they wanted one developer to come in and demolish the garage and then build a massive mixed use community in its place from start to finish. How many times are they going to try this and watch it fail? Alewife, Wellington station, Riverside station, Tremont crossing, Newton highlands… 2 of them MIGHT be building something soon, but nobody would say this has been a successful model. Its too much to ask to try to get 1 developer on the hook to build a 2 billion dollar community from start to finish.

Instead they should be going back to what has always worked since the beginning of time and thats laying down a street grid and selling all of the lots to different developers. Then the neighborhood slowly fills in over time and it can grow faster when the market is doing well and slow down when the market cools off. In the end you end up with a better neighborhood anyways that adjusts to the needs of the people as it evolves over time. Idk when it changed to the only way to build a new neighborhood is from a masterplan with a single developer where every building is designed to completion right from the start, but its not working very well. Why dont we just go back to what always worked…

-Demolish shit hole garage
-Lay down street grid
-Sell off lots individually
-Profit
 
KCasiglio said:
www.bostonglobe.com

Alewife Station is kind of dystopian, if you pause and look - The Boston Globe

It’s not just the gross drips of water from above, the boarded-up windows, and the scaffolding, and rust, and trash.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
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I remember the Boston Phoenix about 25 years ago once nominated in its Best of Boston issue this foreboding concrete wall outside the Russell Field-facing headhouse as the "best place in town to stage the executions after the next Revolution is decided". The whole place has a thorough "ruins of communism" vibe to it unlike any other. I'll have lived in Boston/Greater Boston for 30 years by the end of this year, and I never remember Alewife not looking like a decayed bombed-out hellhole. Even when it was only half the age it is now.
 
And the frustrating part is that it could be good! It has gorgeous tile floors, a (normally) airy atrium, and some of the best public art on the system. The station interior itself doesn't need much more than basic maintenance and better lighting. As for everything else, besides better development replacing the ugly garage, I would like to see:
  • Priority for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit getting to the station. Pedestrians shouldn't have to fight through traffic to reach the station. Cyclists coming from the Fitchburg Cutoff and Minuteman should have ramps directly to bike cages without having to cross the access roads.
  • Make the concourse hospitable - better lighting, another business or two, and some windbreaks and heating. It's one of my least favorite places on the T on a blustery winter day.
  • Make the busway not suck. Seating, acoustics, climate control, ventilation.
  • Activate the dead space around the station. There's so much space that could be something interesting. The plaza between the headhouses, Yates Pond, the world's saddest playscape. The area south of the west headhouse can be quite pleasant; it would be much better with a sound wall blocking noise, the water feature restored, and the area treated as a park rather than a parking site for station employees and dumpsters.
 
ritchiew said:
I can't remember if this has been posted here, but here's a news clip from the opening of Alewife Station in 1985. Not a representative sample, but some people thought it was beautiful at the time.

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If you look at the "bones" of Alewife - it's actually a fairly positive and good representation in the late 1970s and 80s of the ripples out from the modernist movements in earlier decades. I appreciate it - but - it was never going to last once Weld local and Reagan nationally came into power in the 1990s and forced every public service to follow policies of austerity and a budget policy of deferring maintenance.
 
Earnest question, why were Quincy Adams and Braintree able to get funded for major garage work (and Quincy Center rightfully getting demolished) while Alewife languishes?
 
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