[ARCHIVED] Harbor Garage Redevelopment | 70 East India Row | Waterfront | Downtown

[stellarfun]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

equilibria,

A Federal building in Philadelphia that you don't want to stay in.

A bath in one of the suites (can't remember the name) at the Mandarin Oriental in San Francisco. This is an exception, most baths in most residential floorplans are on the inside, the window views are reserved for living rooms, bedrooms, sometimes a dining room.

You can look at the floorplans for a long and narrow building, Waterside Place, and see where the baths and kitchens are placed.

http://www.bozzuto.com/apartments/communities/300-waterside-place/floor_plans

And I'm sure the room height, and thus the window height, is not going to be anywhere near 15 feet.

They turned the 200 year old Salem jail into condos, so wonders can happen.

 

[tmac9wr]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Now I'm not saying they are perfect but everyone seems to vilify them in a way I can't really understand. The garage is bad and I welcome this new development but why the hate for the towers?

I'm sure I don't speak for everyone, but I actually don't have any problem with the Harbor Towers outside of their horrible ground-level presence. My main problem with the HT is the hypocrisy of its residents trying to prevent high rise development while living in the high rise next door.

 

[KentXie]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

125 High Street is easily one of the ugliest highrises in our city. Not a fan in the slightest, no matter what side of it I'm looking at. I can't be the only person who feels that way? This does not belong in the same sentence with the words "aesthetically pleasing".

Well I find 125 High Street okay as it's one of the few tall buildings in Boston that has setbacks and tapering top. Plus the color breaks away from the monotonous dull grayish white to clay red that we see so many of in Boston.

 

[Equilibria]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

equilibria,

A Federal building in Philadelphia that you don't want to stay in.

Uh... have you looked at the renders on the previous page? What in the world about that reminds you of this picture? The windows are taller than they are wide. That's it. For most of the circumference, the bands of terra cotta aren't even close enough together to impede on anything.

 

[Blackbird]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

I totally understand why the residents would be up in arms. These new towers are pretty dense, a density that would work on the other side of the Greenway but is rather dominating right on the waterfront.

This is the sentiment that I don't understand.

A skyscraper is a skyscraper; won't it be equally imposing on either side of the Greenway?

Furthermore, aren't there currently more high-rises on the eastern side of the Greenway in this part of the city? It isn't until you get to the Fort Point Channel that you start seeing high-rises on the other side of the park....

So wouldn't this tower make more sense on the eastern side rather than on the western side.....

 

[kz1000ps]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

125 High Street is easily one of the ugliest highrises in our city. Not a fan in the slightest, no matter what side of it I'm looking at. I can't be the only person who feels that way? This does not belong in the same sentence with the words "aesthetically pleasing".

Huh, I think it's one of the better efforts of its time. Yeah it's overly fussy but I think it pulls the look off fairly well and have always wished it was another 20 stories taller (I think that every damn time I look at it). Plus I love the randomness of there being a fire station decked out in PoMo granite. Not that the competition is very stiff, but it's easily my favorite building among that Atlantic Ave/High Street corridor.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

This is the sentiment that I don't understand.

A skyscraper is a skyscraper; won't it be equally imposing on either side of the Greenway?

Furthermore, aren't there currently more high-rises on the eastern side of the Greenway in this part of the city? It isn't until you get to the Fort Point Channel that you start seeing high-rises on the other side of the park....

So wouldn't this tower make more sense on the eastern side rather than on the western side.....

Nothing on the east side of the Greenway is this large. The HTs are the tallest towers until you hit the Federal Reserve. While not as large as International Place, the garage redevelopment proposal is larger than the HTs.

If they flipped the towers so that the shorter one was near HT and the larger one was on Milk St I think you'd have a better layout with less impact on HT. It would also make the development more dramatic.

 

[Padre Mike]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

A lot of gut reactions concerning the fat, bottom heavy tower. Looks like bloat for its own sake rather than for aesthetic purposes. Wondering what the two towers would look like from either end of the Greenway? How about some renderings from those perspectives...after all how many of us are going to see them from boat or a drone? Most of us will have to put up with them on land.

 

[stellarfun]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

A lot of gut reactions concerning the fat, bottom heavy tower. Looks like bloat for its own sake rather than for aesthetic purposes. Wondering what the two towers would look like from either end of the Greenway? How about some renderings from those perspectives...after all how many of us are going to see them from boat or a drone? Most of us will have to put up with them on land.

^^^^This is the south facade, looking up the Greenway from Rowe's Wharf. However, the image needs to be flipped, because by the site plan, the cutout at the base is on the harbor side of the building. The image positions the building as if Atlantic Ave is to the right of the building, rather than to its left. The building is squared off on the Atlantic Ave side. The image would be correct if the hotel/residences faced Milk St and you were looking at the building from the north (Columbus Park).

Nothing like being more than a bit sloppy in a presentation.

This is the east facade, illustrating the narrow vertical windows that will be rejected by those willing to pay for such a view.

 

[Shepard]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Forget the massing, you're all okay with the rust-colored terracotta??

 

[AmericanFolkLegend]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

The other thing about the HTs is because they have such a small footprint that the harbor really opens up when you are walking though. The plaza isn't perfect (it could be redesigned to be more engaging with the water) but it does have this wonderful pocket park feel to it giving you an intimate experience with the harbor.

The architecture is not my cup of tea, but that's totally subjective. My biggest problem is on the ground. The plaza is fine, but to get to it you need to walk past a guard booth. Why the fuck would you need a guard booth unless you wanted to keep people out (or at least make people feel like they should be kept out). And the fenced in pool is just an abomination in the city.

 

[Brad Plaid]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Forget the massing, you're all okay with the rust-colored terracotta??

Yes, very much.

 

[DZH22]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Forget the massing, you're all okay with the rust-colored terracotta??

It reminds me of the Red Apple in Rotterdam. That's a pretty nice looking building.

 

[Padre Mike]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

I won't mind the terracotta...It will blend in nicely with all the brick around town. Much better than black or dk. brown. If the glazing is not mirrored and permits a kind of transparency to both structures, I think the project could be a great foil to IP's castle-like density and prominence.

 

[davem]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Idunno, for some reason from this perspective, the pools not THAT bad ;-)

 

[Czervik.Construction]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

^^^^ What a dump.

 

[Savin Hill]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

A shift in the waterfront tower wars

Harbor Towers’ leadership now says it wants to take the debate over the future of Don Chiofaro’s hated Harbor Garage — an urban eyesore he proposes to replace with two towers that would rise between 550 and 600 feet — beyond a narrow fight over tall buildings. This, they say, should be about the best way to make that part of downtown work better for Boston as a whole.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/...roader-view/Y2EbCUWcApHZc7wAGIViVL/story.html

 

[TheRifleman]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

"Harbor Towers’ leadership now says it wants to take the debate over the future of Don Chiofaro’s hated Harbor Garage "

Sure they do. They have been so helpful in the past. It seems the trustees realize Chiofaro Harbor Garage Development will be getting city approval and they are doing anything to slow the process down with more controversy.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

"Harbor Towers’ leadership now says it wants to take the debate over the future of Don Chiofaro’s hated Harbor Garage "

Sure they do. They have been so helpful in the past. It seems the trustees realize Chiofaro Harbor Garage Development will be getting city approval and they are doing anything to slow the process down with more controversy.

"This, they say, should be about the best way to make that part of downtown work better for Boston as a whole. "

Next think you know it will be about finding a path to World Peace.

 

[type001]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Good luck HT Residents! You're going to need to it.

So last week my dreams came true. I had hoped to one day soon see these models in the private meeting room near the lobby of IP1. And here they are. I don't believe these ever existed for the Arch project.