Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)
Paul McMorrow column in the globe:
EVER SINCE Don Chiofaro rolled out his first plan for leveling the Harbor Garage, which sits along Boston Harbor between Long Wharf and Rowes Wharf, the tug-of-war over the garage’s future has centered on the height of the buildings Chiofaro wanted to build. But recently, the controversy has quietly fallen away. Chiofaro’s proposed project has become one that will be decided on the ground floor, by competing visions of what open space along the harbor’s edge should look like. This is an amazing turn of events, and, strangely, it’s happened without anyone actually coming out and saying so.
The Harbor Garage is one of Boston’s most hated buildings. The block-long monstrosity seals off the Rose Kennedy Greenway from the city’s waterfront. But Chiofaro has been spinning his wheels since he proposed replacing the garage with a huge two-tower complex in 2009. The buildings Chiofaro proposed were at least three times as tall as what Boston officials said they’d allow.
Chiofaro unveiled his latest proposal for the Harbor Garage site in June, and it sounded familiar: He pitched two mixed-use towers, with the taller of the two topping out at around 600 feet. But Chiofaro completely re-imagined how the buildings would meet the streets below. He carved a wide avenue between two towers. He pitched the new space as an outdoor living room, open to the air in good weather, but enclosed by a retractable glass roof in bad weather. One rendering Chiofaro released depicted an indoor skating rink sitting between the two towers, as snowflakes fell on the Greenway outside.
That rink, and not the towers that would surround it, has unexpectedly become the major flashpoint at the Harbor Garage site.
A few months ago, the trustees of Harbor Towers, the 400-foot-tall condominium complex next door to the Harbor Garage, hired George Thrush, a prominent local architect, to critique Chiofaro’s redevelopment proposal. Thrush argued that Chiofaro’s proposal would cut off the downtown from the harbor, and said Chiofaro wasn’t creating meaningful connections to the water. Thrush said it would make more sense to replace the garage with a single tower, shrink the building’s footprint, and open up public space along Milk Street and the harbor’s edge.
Then, weeks ago, a consultant for the Boston Redevelopment Authority released a document that also reimagined the ground floor of Chiofaro’s proposed tower. The BRA report found that Chiofaro’s two-tower proposal would cast shadows on neighboring Long Wharf, but those shadows could mostly be eliminated by shifting the dimensions of Chiofaro’s development.
There’s a lot of common ground between the Thrush mockups and the ones the BRA aired: They would both replace Chiofaro’s garage with one tower, set back from Long Wharf and the Aquarium, and creating lots of new public space next to the harbor, along Milk Street. They both place open space along the side of Chiofaro’s development, instead of down the middle of it. And they both entertain the possibility of the site’s single tower rising to at least 600 feet tall.
A possible skating rink space, and not the towers that would surround it, has unexpectedly become the major flashpoint at the site.
This should be a lightning clap in the battle over the Harbor Garage. City Hall and Harbor Towers have both essentially conceded the height battle to Chiofaro.
But they’ve also opened up an intriguing new front at the ground floor, one that centers around the question of what kind of public space Chiofaro’s project should create.
The BRA’s alternatives are all about protecting Long Wharf. They would keep more sun on the wharf by pushing one tall Chiofaro-built tower away from the wharf. But Chiofaro would open up the middle of the garage site, instead of one side, to create his year-round indoor-outdoor living room.
This is the last great question that will shape the Harbor Garage site. Saying that Long Wharf is paramount pushes the garage site design in one direction, and choosing a more flexible, year-round, programmed public space pushes it in another. Should this site, at the heart of the downtown waterfront, be open year-round, but remain more private in character? Or is it better for it to become a less formal, open-air, more truly public, but seasonal open space? This split has emerged organically, and quietly. But now that it’s here, it needs to be addressed head-on.
source:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/...mmon-ground/agudJYLrHoYtucZzfpbg3K/story.html
