Allston-Brighton Infill and Small Developments

This month's BAIA agenda:

•46 Hichborn St- proposal for 46 units, 50 parking spaces and a roof deck.
•70 Leo Brim. Pkwy- proposal for 82 unit condo project with 66 parking spaces.
•334 Cambridge St- proposal for 360 total units of which 253 will be condo units with 183 parking spaces.

That last one is the Jack Young building. The Hichborn Street development is interesting as it is the second project on the block. It is currently a quiet, semi-industrial street with some 2-3 family residences that backs up to the NB apartment complex. The other project, 26 Hichborn is currently under construction with 20 units.
 
^ Agreed. And the saddest part about this is that the project scope was not just a cheap cladding slap-on....they legit gutted this thing down to its cast concrete bones, completely removing the old facade and interior partition walls...this thing was a totally gutted shell. They could have done anything with it, but they did this. Ugggh, and look at the random patch of red brick to "tie it in" with the building next door.

Now that said, this project does a lot for affordable rental units along transit. At least it has a saving grace. But that saving grace is NOT on the design side of things.
 
1505 Commonwealth as it went to the BRA:

c5IJpdZh.jpg


Design they later got approval to change to:

0Hp6qNSh.jpg


While those designs aren't great, clearly something horrible happened with the color of the panels here. Someone ordered panels that said "Brick Red" without seeing if they actually matched the brick.
 
^ definitely.

Three observations:

1) in the first render, the windows are generously sized and more plentiful. Also, the brick appears to extend substantially up into the height of the structure.

2) in the second render, the windows shrink considerably, and there are far fewer of them. Also, the brick is replaced with cladding of some sort.

3) in the as-built, the cladding becomes a bizarre bright red color that totally clashes, and the windows are microscopically small.

I realize in some rehab jobs, window size is limited by existing structure or other constraints, but I can attest (from walking by this things many times during construction) that there is nothing physically limiting the window size....they gutted this down to the frame, and there's nothing but non-structural sheathing between these tiny windows.

This is an example of a design getting the snot VE'd out of it : (
 
That is a CRIMINAL amount of VE.

This literally looks like a jail.
 
The original render also has variation in the facade depth, which disappeared in the approved version. I'm really curious if the BPDA imposed the changes, or they were purely budgetary.
 
Every material looks so cheap and flat and bland.
 
RandomWalk said:
The original render also has variation in the facade depth, which disappeared in the approved version. I'm really curious if the BPDA imposed the changes, or they were purely budgetary.
Click to expand...

The first iteration was approved. The developer went back and cheapened the design.
 
Pretty sad. The current building is actually better than this.
 
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