Amazing shit other cities get that Boston doesn't

czsz said:
What the Seaport Could Have Been, Part XXXVII...

Canal_Village_Copenhagen.jpg


New waterfront housing, Copenhagen

Not amazing, but it would be if it could be built here...
Click to expand...

A canal would be so sexy down on the SBW.
 
I only know the Chelsea Piers from reputation (well, I know one of the piers intimately, but that's another story ...) but it sounds like a great project.

In this NY Times article, they discuss exporting the idea to Stamford, CT. They considered doing it in Boston. Don't know why they decided against it.

Where, in the city of Boston, do you think they should build one of these? It doesn't have to be on a pier, it just has to be in a big space, and presumably some sort of renovation.

Chelsea Piers Expands, Staying Close to Home
By Sana Siwolop, New York Times
Published: May 10, 2011

STAMFORD, Conn. ? When Chelsea Piers, the sports emporium on the Manhattan waterfront, began looking more than a decade ago for a location where it could expand, the hunt centered on major cities like Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Washington.

But in the end, Chelsea Piers settled on a site far closer to home: early last month the company started construction on a 400,000-square-foot facility in Stamford. It will sit inside what is currently one of the largest industrial re-use sites in the area, a 33-acre office and manufacturing complex that once belonged to the hair products company Clairol.

Chelsea Piers executives first saw ? and later bid ? on the property in 2009. David A. Tewksbury, a company co-founder, said they quickly realized it offered everything they had been unable to find elsewhere: a large, well-maintained property that was near a major highway exit (Exit 9 on Interstate 95), and also in an area where the demand for sports complexes far exceeded what was available.

?We were immediately taken with it,? said Mr. Tewksbury, who is now also the president of Chelsea Piers Connecticut. ?Fairfield County is very densely populated, and it?s wildly enthusiastic for sports.?

The company?s 1.2 million-square-foot site on the Hudson River, which it opened in 1995, already attracts about four million visitors a year. Chelsea Piers hopes to draw visitors from a 20-mile radius around Stamford, a city of 122,000 in Fairfield County, which has a population of nearly 900,000. Westchester County, with about one million people, is about 15 miles to the west.

Over all, the complex has 711,000 square feet, and consists mostly of a single-story building connected to a two-story building. It was Clairol?s world headquarters for more than 40 years, and after the company was acquired by Procter & Gamble in 2001, it also served as Clairol?s main manufacturing plant for its hair coloring products.

In 2008, Procter & Gamble announced plans to put its Stamford operations elsewhere. And last year, Clairol finally left, moving its manufacturing operations to various sites in the United States and Mexico, and its administrative offices to Procter & Gamble?s headquarters in Cincinnati.

Still, when the property finally changed hands, in March 2010, it went to another buyer, a partnership made up of affiliates of Spinnaker Real Estate Partners, in South Norwalk, Conn.; Steven Wise Associates, a Stamford-based real estate investment and development company; and the Connecticut Film Center, which is also based in Stamford. Together, the partners paid $17.5 million in cash for the property, after an earlier bid fell through for lack of financing, said Clayton H. Fowler, the founding partner and chief executive of Spinnaker, which has a history of remaking older industrial, as well as urban, properties in the area.

Chelsea Piers will be an anchor tenant at the old Clairol site, spending approximately $45 million on renovations. On the ground floor of the single-story building that once served as a warehouse for Clairol, the company is planning to build two National Hockey League-size ice skating rinks and its first squash center, as well as an Olympic-size pool, a recreational water park, a day care center, space for food vendors and a 20,000-square-foot gymnastics center. A 40,000-square-foot mezzanine floor will sit above, offering space for events and an area to watch activities below.

Plans call for adding a second floor to what is now the roof of the old warehouse building. On that floor, which will be about 160,000 square feet, Chelsea Piers plans to put up two new buildings that will together house the company?s first tennis courts (seven in all), basketball courts, volleyball courts and a 60,000-square-foot playing field that can be easily divided into four smaller fields for sports like football, soccer, lacrosse, baseball and field hockey.

Mr. Tewksbury said the new playing fields would be almost three times as large as the two ?mini-fields? the company now offers in Manhattan.

In Manhattan, Chelsea Piers now also has a 150,000-square-foot health club. But in Connecticut the company wants to emphasize competitive sports; Mr. Tewksbury said the area had a shortage of space for them to be played.

?Many of the local ice hockey programs in lower Fairfield County, for example, are now driving for 30 to 45 minutes to places like Shelton and beyond to get ice time, and school teams are practicing at 5:30 in the morning,? he said.

Some 450,000 square feet of space still needs to be filled at Clairol?s old site, especially within the large, two-story building adjacent to where Chelsea Piers is building its new quarters.

Trip Hoffman, a senior director at Cushman & Wakefield of Connecticut, said much of the industrial market in the Stamford area was made up of buildings no more than 30,000 square feet in size, so the site might appeal to tenants like data centers. But another goal is to possibly attract tenants like sports medicine physicians, physical therapists and a membership health club, to create an indoor sports mall that would essentially offer sports enthusiasts one-stop shopping.

?Because of its size, and the ability to have multiple entries, this site can have multiple personalities, or users who are complementary to one another, or even a combination of both,? said Stephen M. Wise, who heads the real estate company whose affiliate is an investor in the project.

The Connecticut Film Center is already planning to take on space at the site.

Kevin Segalla, the center?s founder and president, said that since Connecticut began offering a sizable tax credit in 2006 for movies and television shows produced in the state, his center has spent the last five years either acquiring or leasing 340,000 square feet of production and office space in both Stamford and South Norwalk. Plans now call for offering an additional 81,000 square feet of production space, with at least a few more soundstages, on the second floor of the building next to Chelsea Piers.

?Frankly there is a shortage of space like this in the Stamford area, a shortage of warehouse space that can be easily converted to production facilities,? he said. ?Right now, we could easily add three new soundstages.?
Click to expand...

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/...ttan-sports-center-expands-close-to-home.html
 
seems to me a natural for either the East Boston or South Boston waterfront.
 
Anyone talking about this elsewhere?

largest.jpg


Mass Transit Improvement of the Day: 24 New Tram Stations in Paris
By Henry Grabar, Atlantic Cities
Dec 17, 2012

Can you imagine an American city completing capital improvements to three different mass transit lines in one month? That's what's just happened in Paris, after a breakneck month of opening extensions on the T1, T2 and T3 tramway lines.

The latest is the new segment of Paris' orbital T3 tram line, which opened on Saturday, adding 24 stations along 14.5 kilometers of track to the existing line that runs on the city's southern edge. The latest addition has direct connections with the city's Metro system in four locations.

The new stretch, which encircles the eastern half of the city and ends at Porte de la Chapelle, will be able to handle 165,000 passengers a day. Rapid transport between outlying Parisian districts will no longer require a trip into the center.

The T3 extension was completed right on time, opening six years to the day after the first section of the line.
Click to expand...

Source: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/co...rovement-day-24-new-tram-stations-paris/4169/

Paris extends orbital tramway - Railway-Technology.com
17 December 2012

FRANCE: The 14·3 km extension of orbital tram route T3 following the Boulevards des Maréchaux ring road around the eastern side of Paris was opened for revenue service on December 15. This trebles the length of T3, which has been running for 7·9 km across the south of Paris from Pont du Garigliano to Porte d’Ivry since 2006, and adds 24 stops.

Heading northeast from Porte d’Ivry, the extension crosses the Seine to an interchange with metro Line 1 at Porte de Vincennes. Continuing northwards through the Lilas district, where it connects with metro lines 3bis, 11 and 7bis, the route then curves westwards to terminate at Porte de la Chapelle, where it connects with Line 12.

Cost of the civil works is put at €651·9m, of which €433·6m has been funded by the city and €218·3m by Ile-de-France. The city has contributed a further €149m for urban enhancements, whilst RATP has funded the 25 additional Citadis 402 low-floor trams ordered in September 2010 at a cost of €77m.

Opening of the extension has seen T3 split into two separate services, in order to minimise the propagation of any disruption due to traffic conditions. The existing route becomes T3a, linking Pont du Garigliano with Porte de Vincennes, whilst T3b covers the eastern and northeastern section of the ring. At Porte de Vincennes, two pairs of tracks diverge from the ring line to reach stub termini located on each side of the metro station.

T3 has been handling around 110 000 passengers/day, but this is expected to jump significantly, with T3a projected to carry 137 000 and T3b a further 165 000.

Last week the city council voted to push ahead with a further 4·7 km extension of T3 from Porte de la Chapelle to Porte d’Asnières. Included in STIF’s 2014-20 master plan with a provisional cost of €205m, this is expected to open in 2017.

The T3 extension is the third tram route to be opened in Paris in exactly a month. Route T1 was extended westwards from Saint Denis to Asnières-Gennevilliers–Les Courtilles on November 15, and a northwestern extension of T2 from La Défense to Pont de Bezons followed four days later.
Click to expand...

Source: www.railwaygazette.com/news/single-view/view/paris-extends-orbital-tramway/archiv/2012/dezember.html
 
Yeah I posted it to the GLX thread for the depressing comparison.
 
1) Those Alstom Citadis cars are sexy beasts. And look...no stairs or @#$% godawful longitudinal seating: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Interieur-rame-Tramway-Pari.jpg. We could have such nice things running on the Green Line if they would only fix the couple dinky little clearance constraints keeping us from running off-shelf equipment.

2) I love that sod "insta-greenway" ROW treatment: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paris_Tram_T3.JPG. It's too bad that doesn't work in cold-weather cities like Boston that have snowplow trains (plow blades would totally rip that shit up). But it is so the way to go in any temperate climate...does a lot to diminish the heat island effect in addition to just being plain attractive and cheap/easy to maintain (need track work...re-sod!).
 
Lately I hear we can't have separate cycle tracks because we get snow.

Nobody told that to Montreal...
 
Paris is the capital of France, so they get the shiny baubles. France also built Soviet-style high rise apartment ghettos outside of Paris to keep the dark-skinned riff-raff out of their beautiful city. Yeah - let's copy them.


Just sayin.' Before you go off on the wonderful things they do in Europe, get a little context.
 
JonFrum said:
Paris is the capital of France, so they get the shiny baubles. France also built Soviet-style high rise apartment ghettos outside of Paris to keep the dark-skinned riff-raff out of their beautiful city. Yeah - let's copy them.


Just sayin.' Before you go off on the wonderful things they do in Europe, get a little context.
Click to expand...

Cherry picking really nice things doesn't sound like being a complete carbon copy to me, but you know, I've been wrong about things before, so....
 
France also built Soviet-style high rise apartment ghettos outside of Paris to keep the dark-skinned riff-raff out of their beautiful city.
Click to expand...

They were copying us when they did that.
 
Thread hijack, but there was nowhere else to put this and it is pretty amazing.

This company builds a huge artifice (?) on top of an existing building, then deconstructs the existing building floor by floor, from the inside.

The video is neat - it's real, not an animation.

(PS. Why is it so difficult to get videos to show up on here; what am I doing wrong??)

http://youtu.be/WbzVfLWQNkA

Knocking Down Huge Buildings Quietly, Floor by Floor
John Metcalfe, Atlantic Cities

Leave it to Japan to turn one of the dirtiest and noisiest processes of the urban lifecycle – the demolition of highrises – into a neat, quiet and almost cute affair.

As much fun as it sounds, demolition companies don't tackle most jobs with a heavy swinging ball. Taking down a largish building requires extensive crane work, temporary scaffolding and a fleet of heavy machines grinding around on the rooftop. But Japanese construction company Taisei, which is behind the world's tallest concept skyscraper, is pioneering a type of building butchery that seals all these messy elements into an adorable "big hat."

"It's kind of like having a disassembly factory on top of the building and putting a big hat there, and then the building shrinks," says one Taisei engineer, according to this report in the Japan Times. Basically, construction workers build a hermetic structure covering the top floors of a tower that is supported by powerful jacks. Inside the structure are the heavy machines and demolition crews, who take apart the walls and cut the floors into concrete slabs that they lower to the ground via interior cranes. When they finish removing one floor, the jacks move the "big hat" to the next one down, creating the impression for outside observers that a huge, disembodied mouth is consuming the tower from the top down.

Aside from looking cool, the so-called "Taisei Ecological Reproduction" system has several unique advantages. It's never raining inside the "big hat," so crews can work through the worst weather. The emission of dust into surrounding neighborhood is cut by 90 percent, according to Taisei, and noise pollution is greatly muffled. Also, in a process much like regenerative braking, the cranes use the weight of their loads to create electricity, which in turn powers lights and machinery on the construction site.
Click to expand...
 
Seems their web server is suffering from the "archBoston effect."
 
This video shows how they plan on building the platforms on which Manhattan West towers will rise.

Basically, they make each section using intersecting blocks and lay it over the existing rails.

http://youtu.be/1BGyXql5PoE

How the F do I post a video here???
 
Hopefully, Boston will never see this.

A Berlin Neighborhood Clamps Down on Fancy Apartments

No second bathrooms, no fireplaces or under-floor heating, no new balconies and no reserved parking places.

The Berlin district of Pankow is doing everything it can to make sure its housing stock doesn’t get any fancier. This month, Green Party-led authorities in this small, attractive section of East Berlin banned any real estate improvements that might push up rents, outlawing any new holiday homes at the same time. The measures don’t come from a yen to keep the neighborhood shabby per se, as Pankow is a pretty well-scrubbed place already. They’re aimed at halting a galloping wave of luxury upgrades and conversions that are making flats too scarce and expensive for local people.

This is a problem across Berlin, but nowhere more so than in Pankow’s neighboring district of Prenzlauer Berg, where once rundown tenements have become some of Berlin’s most expensive property, pricing out long-term residents and causing tension in some weird, unexpected ways. A hive of alternative culture during communist times, the area is now the sort of place where you can get expensive organic coffee on every corner, but struggle to find a hardware shop. Pankow, where many Prenzlauer Berg exiles went seeking cheaper rent, seems determined to stop this lightning transformation at its southern boundary.

While Pankow’s measures might sound drastic, they aren’t especially harsh. The district still allows second bathrooms conversions in properties with three bedrooms or more, and two bed, two bath apartment are rare luxuries even in Berlin’s wealthiest areas. German apartments are also routinely warm, with double-glazing standard, so no one’s going to get chilly without under-floor heating or fireplaces, a particular rarity in a country that traditionally used enclosed stoves for heating. And while some owner-occupiers might get frustrated at planning limits being placed on their property, the vast majority of Berliners are rental tenants.

The general murmurings from the local media about Pankow’s move are generally positive. In a city where residents look in horror at the high rents and inequality of London and New York, there’s a growing consensus that something must be done if Berlin isn’t going to go the same way. The citywide government, for example, is following Pankow and looks set to ban new holiday homes later this month.

Whether the measures will actually work is another question. Pankow certainly has some odds in its favor. Unlike formerly working class Prenzlauer Berg, it has always been a middle class district, and was know as the home of the East German elite before 1989. While they’re far from being the wealthiest of Berliners nowadays, Pankow’s long-term residents are still less likely to be priced out of local shops and services by richer incomers. The measures do seem a little desperate and tokenistic, however. If the powerful surge in speculation on Berlin property is going to be halted by anything, it’s probably not going to be a ban on extra bathtubs.
Click to expand...
 
Well of course not John since you directly profit from higher and higher rents. They're crushing Boston though. Soon all that will be T accessible is collegiate slum rows and high-end condo conversions.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top