Allston-Brighton Infill and Small Developments

stick n move said:
The only thing I wish it didnt have was the colossal order windows. Its played out now, as it always was. This needs to die and never come back. 1 time was too much, but when it started getting popular that was a rough patch for the city. Luckily its not as popular anymore, but it still gets snuck in here n there especially in height averse areas- like here, where they really need to disguise the height. The first 3 clusters of floors in their colossal order grouping are double height, so the first 3 separate groupings of floors are 2 floors a piece. The next 2 clusters up the tower are triple height, and the final top cluster of floors is quadrouple height. They are reaaaallly trying to hide its height here and unfortunately it works. It doesnt look bad here though, but stop hiding height... embrace it.

This tower is too short for it to work exactly as designed, but the idea is that each cluster appears as 2 floors like at the bottom. As you get further up the tower because of perspective the floors look smaller anyways so they sneak more floors into each one. This tower essentially is trying to look like 6 groups of 2 floors each or 12 floors, but there are really 16 floors there. Its more noticeable on a shorter tower like this tho.
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This is an oversimplification. Colossal order can certainly make a building look shorter and is too often used to do so, but on this building I believe the groupings serve a higher purpose. It would be less interesting otherwise.

I really like this design, both the tower and the lowrises, but I always have a hard time accepting a complex of similar buildings.
 
Beton Brut said:
Good observations about the way the tower's facade reads. There are a couple of other things to consider...

I agree, colossal order is a tactic that's overly-used to downscale a tower to passersby. But here, the effect is different because there are lots of these bone-like columns and the areas of glass are narrow. If there were six or eight columns per facade "zone" with wide areas of glass, I'd be right there with you. But these curved, dimensional dinosaur-ribs lead the eye upward. The effect is modulated by the staggered off-set of each zone of the facade. The way that the zones are stretched as the building rises has the effect of acceleration and perhaps dematerialization.

What's most significant isn't that we see different things, but that we see something worth noting and discussing. To look at these renderings (without any expectation that this will ever see the light of day) this is design far beyond the middling crap from Elkus across the Pike, or the snooze-fest at North Station. There's real poetry here, and like all good poems, it's open to interpretation.
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+1 .... as usual.
 
1240 Soldiers Field Road (or, as the Registry calledit, Soliders Field) sells for $26,250,000.00

Seller: SKATING CLUB OF BOSTON
Buyer: TDC 1240 OWNER LLC

Also known as 351 Western Ave, obv.

Buyer is The Davis Companies, a real estate development firm. They already own 180 Telford, next door, which I believe are apartments.
 
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JohnAKeith said:
They already own 180 Telford, next door, which I believe are apartments.
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It's a condo building. Where the vast majority of units sold in February, so the developer doesn't own it any more. But I guess the important thing is that they understand the neighborhood.
 
JohnAKeith said:
1240 Soldiers Field Road (or, as the Registry calledit, Soliders Field) sells for $26,250,000.00

Seller: SKATING CLUB OF BOSTON
Buyer: TDC 1240 OWNER LLC

Also known as 351 Western Ave, obv.

Buyer is The Davis Companies, a real estate development firm. They already own 180 Telford, next door, which I believe are apartments.
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The Skating Club also owns 1234 Soldiers Field Road, which is a 53,000 sq ft lot. Harvard owns 1230 Soldiers Field Rd.
 
I'm slow on things right now, so sorry for the errors, etc.

I believe The Skating Club sold 1234 Soldiers Field Road on 2/16/2017 to TDC 1234 OWNER LLC (The Davis Companies) for $14.2 million.

Then, yesterday, The Skating Club sold 1240 Soldiers Field Road / 351 Western Ave to TDC 1240 OWNER LLC (The Davis Companies) for $26.25 million.

Harvard owns 1230 Soldiers Field Road and the City of Boston owns the land behind that, at 315 Western Ave.
 
JohnAKeith said:
I'm slow on things right now, so sorry for the errors, etc.

I believe The Skating Club sold 1234 Soldiers Field Road on 2/16/2017 to TDC 1234 OWNER LLC (The Davis Companies) for $14.2 million.

Then, yesterday, The Skating Club sold 1240 Soldiers Field Road / 351 Western Ave to TDC 1240 OWNER LLC (The Davis Companies) for $26.25 million.

Harvard owns 1230 Soldiers Field Road and the City of Boston owns the land behind that, at 315 Western Ave.
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Those last 2 parcels will be quite a hole in 10 years, since King Street Properties and National Development have big projects coming on the next block to the east.
 
1230 Soldiers Field Rd. is home to Harvard IT.

315 Western Ave is used by the city's DPW.
 
Equilibria said:
Those last 2 parcels will be quite a hole in 10 years, since King Street Properties and National Development have big projects coming on the next block to the east.
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I doubt 1234 Soldier's Field Road will be redeveloped soon since Davis just poured a bunch of money in to renovate it to be the "Studio Allston" hotel. If they wanted to knock it down in 2 years, I can't see a reason to have remodeled the whole place.
 
Bee, you mean Market St for the first one there.

Good size building for north beacon..
 
Downburst said:
This is literally 500 or fewer feet from a Green Line station. Does this project really need 323 parking spaces for 270 units, even with the supermarket?
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So, I live near here and frequent the current Whole Foods at this location...it absolutely astounds me how many people choose to drive to do their shopping here. The present surface lot is almost always full (or at least 2/3 full), and there are frequent traffic jams of people trying to get in/out of the lot...but, to boot, this is a pedestrian-heavy area, with lots of people doing their shopping on foot...and so the parking lot is just a train wreck of pedestrian-vs-car. I honestly don't know what to say about why this is what it is here...

Separate thought: this project is definitely big enough to deserve it's own thread.
 
Not everyone wants to walk to the super market. If it's raining or snowing or very cold for example. Also if people are doing a big shop, tough to get everything home even with a portable cart.
 
mass88 said:
Not everyone wants to walk to the super market. If it's raining or snowing or very cold for example. Also if people are doing a big shop, tough to get everything home even with a portable cart.
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Certainly: inclement weather, persons with disabilities, lots of bags to carry...totally agree these are very legit reasons. But I watch this parking lot a lot, and these are not the cases I am talking about. There are tons of people with one or two shopping bags on days with perfect whether using this lot w/ cars.

I get the "not everyone wants to" argument, but I just *wish* more people could see the dysfunctional system they are contributing to when they choose to drive to this particular location.
 
mass88 said:
Not everyone wants to walk to the super market. If it's raining or snowing or very cold for example. Also if people are doing a big shop, tough to get everything home even with a portable cart.
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When I lived in the Netherlands I went to the supermarket 3-4 times per week because I could just walk there in a few minutes. Always fresh food to cook (and also my refrigerator was TINY). The huge once weekly visit with 16 bags full is a very suburban concept based on the idea that you have to drive a good distance so you might as well stock up so you don't waste time going back and forth. While people probably do that here since we haven't reached peak walk ability in a lot of these neighborhoods, I don't think we should necessarily plan for it to the extent that this project has. What is the community gain for allowing people to do big shops?

And also, the reason they say that people who walk and bike to shops spend more money is because of the frequency of their visits. The more you're in the store, the more susceptible to ads and sales you are. Frequent shoppers also tend to buy more moderately priced prepared meals (hot bar) and fresh foods, as opposed to big shoppers who just stock up their freezer with cheap frozen french fries.

For anyone taking the "well this isn't the Netherlands" stance, even here I still walk the 5 minutes to the Somerville Market Basket several times per week.
 
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