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

[AmericanFolkLegend]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

They don't allow unleashed kittens in San Francisco.

Thanks God! It would be a blood bath with all those fisher cats overrunning our country.

 

[greenwayguy1982]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Interesting letter in today's Globe:


Ball in Chiofaro?s court, not the city?s
August 8, 2010

THERE ARE a number of key facts missing from columnist Brian McGrory?s piece (?A chance to be seized,?? Metro, July 30), which would lead many people to a dramatically different conclusion about the Chiofaro Co.?s proposed project.

There are already 32 million square feet (about 30 Prudential towers? worth) of projects already fully permitted and truly shovel ready in the city today. It is these projects that are going to create the jobs and economic activity when the economy turns around, not the Chiofaro Co.?s project, which still has many years of city, state, and federal permitting ahead of it.

The Harbor Garage is subject to numerous long-term legal obligations to third parties that the Chiofaro Co. has no authority to extinguish. One of these obligations runs until at least 2069. Until those obligations expire, the Chiofaro Co. cannot legally construct the proposed project. This has never been mentioned in the coverage of the matter, and yet it is, legally, the elephant in the room.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority has already reviewed the Chiofaro Co.?s project, and issued a series of questions in July 2009, more than a year ago, in a document called a scoping determination. To date, the Chiofaro Co. has not responded to the questions that the city asked in this document.

The ball is in the developer?s court, not the city?s.

John F. Palmieri
Director Boston Redevelopment Authority

? Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

 

[TheRifleman]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

^

The BRA already killed the project by issuing 200ft height max. How is the ball in Chiofaro's Court? What's the sense of moving forward when he needs height of 510Ft to make the project economicaly feasible?

By the way Palmeri does not have much creditablity on this board.

 

[KentXie]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Interesting letter in today's Globe:


Ball in Chiofaro?s court, not the city?s
August 8, 2010

THERE ARE a number of key facts missing from columnist Brian McGrory?s piece (?A chance to be seized,?? Metro, July 30), which would lead many people to a dramatically different conclusion about the Chiofaro Co.?s proposed project.

There are already 32 million square feet (about 30 Prudential towers? worth) of projects already fully permitted and truly shovel ready in the city today. It is these projects that are going to create the jobs and economic activity when the economy turns around, not the Chiofaro Co.?s project, which still has many years of city, state, and federal permitting ahead of it.

The Harbor Garage is subject to numerous long-term legal obligations to third parties that the Chiofaro Co. has no authority to extinguish. One of these obligations runs until at least 2069. Until those obligations expire, the Chiofaro Co. cannot legally construct the proposed project. This has never been mentioned in the coverage of the matter, and yet it is, legally, the elephant in the room.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority has already reviewed the Chiofaro Co.?s project, and issued a series of questions in July 2009, more than a year ago, in a document called a scoping determination. To date, the Chiofaro Co. has not responded to the questions that the city asked in this document.

The ball is in the developer?s court, not the city?s.

John F. Palmieri
Director Boston Redevelopment Authority

? Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.

Fully permitted and shovel ready. But have they started construction? No. Are they starting soon? No. Tell Palmieri that he forgot to put that on his article. I'm pretty sure the long-term obligation can be negotiated around (The T was obligated to complete many projects by a certain time to compensate for the Big Dig. They haven't). The mayor and the BRA? They can't be negotiated.

Also tell Palmieri that the development doesn't only serves to increase jobs, it serves to improve the Greenway. That area of the park around the Harbor Garage is dead and ugly.

 

[greenwayguy1982]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

^^
Rifleman, if there's no sense moving forward then why doesn't Chiofaro accept defeat and move on to a new site where he might have better luck?

And KentXie, are you suggesting that Chiofaro has the money to construct his project? As for the long-term obligation, if only it were so simple -- maybe you should call Chiofaro and offer to help if you think it's so easy. And the area of park around the Harbor Garage is neither dead nor ugly - ever seen the rings fountain on a hot summer afternoon? It's one of the liveliest places on the Greenway - garage and all. None of the kids seem to care.

 

[nm88]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

^^
Rifleman, if there's no sense moving forward then why doesn't Chiofaro accept defeat and move on to a new site where he might have better luck?

And KentXie, are you suggesting that Chiofaro has the money to construct his project? As for the long-term obligation, if only it were so simple -- maybe you should call Chiofaro and offer to help if you think it's so easy. And the area of park around the Harbor Garage is neither dead nor ugly - ever seen the rings fountain on a hot summer afternoon? It's one of the liveliest places on the Greenway - garage and all. None of the kids seem to care.

^^ I agree, GG...

I was reading something the other day about the history of peace negotitaions in the Middle East. A U.S. military figure with inside knowledge reduced his thinking about the subject to one thought: "Truthfully, there are a**holes on both sides..." This from someone who has worked tirelessly to make peace a reality.

Made me think of the Greenway. (Only a Bostonian would make that far-flung connection.) Everybody pointing fingers and casting blame.

The birth of The Esplanade was raised recently, here and in the GLOBE, and similarities to the Greenway were drawn. I remember my grandmother and my mother talking about what a travesty the Esplanade was thought to be when first completed. It was hated, according to their recollection. That's what we do in Boston, piss and moan. "I'm wicked pissed off!!" And here we are again.

The 70/30 open space/development ratio seemed arbitrary 10 years ago and still feels arbitrary. Maybe that will be adjusted? Hopefully.

Either way, The Esplanade, most would agree, is better than many would have expected. Will The Greenway eventually repeat this history? Without some (modest?) infill structures and additional activation at the edges that seems hard to imagine. But this is Boston; glacial and bickering is how we proceed. And there are plenty a**holes on both sides. (Some of them mumble.)

To my mind, it is better than what was there before. It is still un unfulfilled opportunity, no doubt. But who among us doesn't imagine how those opportunities might be realized? I never thought things like that when the artery was there.

 

[KentXie]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

^^
Rifleman, if there's no sense moving forward then why doesn't Chiofaro accept defeat and move on to a new site where he might have better luck?

And KentXie, are you suggesting that Chiofaro has the money to construct his project? As for the long-term obligation, if only it were so simple -- maybe you should call Chiofaro and offer to help if you think it's so easy. And the area of park around the Harbor Garage is neither dead nor ugly - ever seen the rings fountain on a hot summer afternoon? It's one of the liveliest places on the Greenway - garage and all. None of the kids seem to care.

The fountain are may not be but just two blocks down starting from the garage (a block over from teh fountain) it gets completely dead. And yes it's ugly thanks to the Harbor Tower and garage. Also for obligations, what happen to the obligations that the Greenway was going to build a YMCA, a museum, etc? What happened to knitting the city back together? Or are you going to side with Shen and say that a Greenway full of broken promises is better than a Greenway at full potential? And yes, I do believe that Chiofaro has better luck at actually starting the project than any approved development so far, aside from the high-rise going up near the Pru.

Oh and one more thing. I guess you're suggesting that the Greenway is only a 6 month park. How is the area going to be like during the cooler months? Yeah the fountains going to attrack people during the summer, but summer doesn't last 12 months here. What about the other half a year? What is there to bring people? While this one development may not be enough to solve the problem, it will surely be better than what exists now.

 

[czsz]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

The Harbor Garage is subject to numerous long-term legal obligations to third parties that the Chiofaro Co. has no authority to extinguish. One of these obligations runs until at least 2069. Until those obligations expire, the Chiofaro Co. cannot legally construct the proposed project. This has never been mentioned in the coverage of the matter, and yet it is, legally, the elephant in the room.

This is a ridiculous red herring. There's no way any legal obligation to keep the garage running can't be transferred or negotiated (or breached in a way that's still profitable, after restitution, for Chiofaro, if he's able to build).

And even if it were, somehow, true, how perverse! Landmark historic buildings get trashed in this city day after day. How perverse to invoke some minor contractual obligations in the service of this garage.

 

[greenwayguy1982]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

^^
czsz, a long-term lease for nearly half of the entire garage is a "minor contractual obligation"? If you owned an office building - no matter how ugly you thought it was, and a tenant of yours had a lease for half the space in the building, I think they would quibble with your characterization of their lease rights as a "red herring." Please know the facts before you post here.

Oh and KentXie, the YMCA, museum, etc were not obligations of the Greenway as you suggest. They were the visions of third parties, totally unrelated to the Greenway, and if you'll recall, none of these visions ever got much active buy-in from anyone at City Hall because they were so...well...far-fetched. Also, would you still think Chiofaro has a better chance of starting his development than any other in the city if you had been at the public meeting at which his partner said point-blank that they didn't have the money to build it?

 

[Ron Newman]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

I guess you're suggesting that the Greenway is only a 6 month park.

but how many "12 month parks" do we have? There's not much to attract people to the Esplanade, Copley Square, or Christopher Columbus Park in the winter either. The Common is an exception only because of the Frog Pond skating rink, which is a fairly recent (Menino administration) development.

 

[TheRifleman]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

^^
Rifleman, if there's no sense moving forward then why doesn't Chiofaro accept defeat and move on to a new site where he might have better luck?

All Chiofaro is doing is trying to negotiate on the height before he can actually move the project forward. He has already claimed that he would be willing to lower the buildings for a third time. 770Ft, 615Ft Massport okayed this height, now 590ft.

So what you?re saying is that the BRA would rather a garage in this area or a 200ft box that would continue to create a wall for the pedestrian view. The entire Greenway Study doesn't make sense. The BRA claims they want to create access space to the harbor but at 200ft all you can create is another wall to block the harbor. The BRA is only ensuring that the Harbor Towers is the focal point on that part of the greenway, an architechural disaster.

Palmeri and Shen are buffoons.

Get rid of the Garage, work with the developer at least show some type of compromise on the height. This entire charade is beginning to look like the BRA has a conflict of interest.

 

[greenwayguy1982]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

^^
Rifleman, last time I checked, the city zoning and state law capped the height on the Harbor Garage site to 155 feet (and they've been capped at 155' since before Menino was mayor so none of that "it's personal" BS please) ...the BRA has already compromised by going to 200 feet, just like Rowes Wharf is. Heck, Battery Wharf is only 55 feet and it has great public access to the waterfront so your argument about 200' creating a wall doesn't hold water. Why doesn't Chiofaro just give up on the Harbor Garage site, where he knows he's beaten, and assemble the Richardson block two blocks down, where the BRA would accept the 600' building that he wants to build?

 

[KentXie]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

but how many "12 month parks" do we have? There's not much to attract people to the Esplanade, Copley Square, or Christopher Columbus Park in the winter either. The Common is an exception only because of the Frog Pond skating rink, which is a fairly recent (Menino administration) development.

Wrong in all cases.

People use the Esplanade to jog, even during the cooler months.
Copley Square (seriously?) is a tourist destinations with hotels, a mall, and the Trinity Church nearby.
Christopher Columbus Park has restaurants nearby and is well used by the North End folks (since its the southern end of the town).

 

[Ron Newman]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

I've been in all of these places in mid-January. They don't get a lot of use in subfreezing temperatures. People want to be indoors.

If you want people to use Boston-area parks in the winter, you need either an ice rink or a really special event like First Night.

 

[ant8904]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

^^
Rifleman, last time I checked, the city zoning and state law capped the height on the Harbor Garage site to 155 feet (and they've been capped at 155' since before Menino was mayor so none of that "it's personal" BS please) ...the BRA has already compromised by going to 200 feet, just like Rowes Wharf is. Heck, Battery Wharf is only 55 feet and it has great public access to the waterfront so your argument about 200' creating a wall doesn't hold water. Why doesn't Chiofaro just give up on the Harbor Garage site, where he knows he's beaten, and assemble the Richardson block two blocks down, where the BRA would accept the 600' building that he wants to build?

Yeah... I know ppl have begun to ignore him now, but that 150' law thing is a legitimate point. Is there a legal way to go around that?

 

[czsz]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

czsz, a long-term lease for nearly half of the entire garage is a "minor contractual obligation"? If you owned an office building - no matter how ugly you thought it was, and a tenant of yours had a lease for half the space in the building, I think they would quibble with your characterization of their lease rights as a "red herring." Please know the facts before you post here.

The "facts" are irrelevant. As a matter of law, a contract can be modified through agreement of the parties or breached in a way that involves an acceptable payoff for the breaching party. Contracts are constantly being modified, assigned, or breached depending on the circumstances. If we all had to live by 70+ year term contracts without the ability to modify them by agreement of the parties or to breach and pay damages when the costs of compliance exceed the costs of other opportunities, society (and the economy) would stagnate. Palmieri is misrepresenting the contractual relationship here as ironclad, exploiting readers' general ignorance of contract law to make it look as if Chiofaro's project never had a chance. If this were actually the case, Chiofaro's lawyers would have let him know long ago, and this entire proposal would never have been made.

You can argue all you want that there were preexisting height limits, too, but the fact that Menino and the BRA are constantly allowing variances to these for their preferred developers means that no one is going to rely on them when proposing anything; to do so would to impose a prospective limitation that, in a city with such fierce opposition to height and density, could never be modified in the developer's favor, even with subsequent permission from His Grace in City Hall.

There's no clearly incontestable legal issue holding this project back, only discretionary permitting decisions that depend on the personal whims of Menino and his BRA sidekicks, which is the reason why this disagreement is being aired so openly.

Ron, the fact that no park is a truly 12 month space is precisely why we shouldn't be filling up the city with more parks, period. They're all dead zones in the winter, by comparison to surrounding streets or their peak uses in summer. A superfluity of parks kills streetlife year round, but it does more damage in the winter than the summer.

 

[Hutchison]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Contractually in certain circumstances a non-breaching party may demand specific performance of the contract...so it is actually incorrect to say that all contracts can be modified or breached.

 

[czsz]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Okay, fine, but do you really think this situation (specific parking spaces in the city) demands that? Monetary damages, or an order for specific performance in the form of buying another group of spaces, or an order to provide such spaces in the new development's parking while mitigating during construction with temporary spaces, could easily provide for parking elsewhere.

It would be hard to imagine a judge asserting that those specific spaces need to stay in operation, unless there was some form of improper influence or conflict of interest. It goes against a lot of presumptions and practice in contract law.

 

[GW2500]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Legal jargon aside it seems reasonably retarded that we have to keep a garage so some 40 year old that won't be born for another 19 years can have a parking spot.

 

[KentXie]

Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

I've been in all of these places in mid-January. They don't get a lot of use in subfreezing temperatures. People want to be indoors.

If you want people to use Boston-area parks in the winter, you need either an ice rink or a really special event like First Night.

I don't know about you but it does get used at a decent amount. Just like you, I've been to all three of these parks during the winter (all thanks to living nearby during the schoolyear). Copley is always busy (unless they fenced off the area which they occasionally do). I occasionally go to the esplanade to watch the sunset and I do see joggers and bikers up and about when the temperature is not too cold. The threat of being raped on the esplanade is more of the deterrent factor than the cold itself. Columbus park is actually one of my favorite parks to head to during the winter, especially around Christmas time when its lit up and no Ron, there are a lot of people there thanks to the restaurant down on the pier and Faneuil Hall.