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

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Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

stellarfun said:
Hynes comes along, sees an opportunity, and with Gale and Morgan Stanley money, quickly buys the two adjacent privately-owned parcels to complete the building footprint. With these parcels in hand, Hynes (and Gale/Morgan Stanley) go to a Midwestern teachers fund and basically join forces. The teachers fund will finance 90 percent of the building. Before this happens, Chiofaro's joint venture agreement with Columbia Plaza expires.

Chiofaro is squeezed out, but largely of his own doing. Chiofaro sues, it goes to trial, Chiofaro loses at trial.

One Lincoln was built on pure spec, one of the last Boston buildings to be so built. There was no pre-lease agreement with State St.
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My hunch might be wrong but your dreaming if you think Lincoln was built on pure spec from HYNES and gang. Thats why State Street announced to rent the entire 1million sq ft building. I also remember that State Street put a bid in to buy the building.

Chiofaro might have burned bridges but you can't tell me that their was no backdoor dealing on this situation especially knowing that State Street was going to attempt to make an offer on the building. Bullshit.

So if Hynes and gang are so bullish on boston Real Estate then why do we have a hole at FILENES? Why don't they dump some equity in the project if they build purely on spec?
 
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Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

I've spoken to Hynes about this. He was pretty clear that the building was built on spec and he got lucky with State St.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

TheRifleman said:
My hunch might be wrong but your dreaming if you think Lincoln was built on pure spec from HYNES and gang. Thats why State Street announced to rent the entire 1million sq ft building. I also remember that State Street put a bid in to buy the building.

Chiofaro might have burned bridges but you can't tell me that their was no backdoor dealing on this situation especially knowing that State Street was going to attempt to make an offer on the building. Bullshit.

So if Hynes and gang are so bullish on boston Real Estate then why do we have a hole at FILENES? Why don't they dump some equity in the project if they build purely on spec?
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The commercial vacancy rate in downtown Boston was like 4 percent at the time.

Wiki has it built on spec.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Lincoln_Street

It was finished in 2002 for about $350 million, sold two years later for over $700 million. Most of the profit went to the teachers pension fund. Sold again in 2007 for $889 million.

A separate teachers pension fund held the mortgage on International Place, and had feuded periodically with Chiofaro since the early 1990s. Its quite possible, IMO, that this soured other investor interest in dealing with Chiofaro and he couldn't raise the $45 million in financing that it took to buy the Kingston St garage, the other city parcel, and the two private parcels to assemble the One Lincoln site. And if he couldn't raise $45 million, he sure couldn't raise the next $300 million it took to build it.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

AmericanFolkLegend said:
I've spoken to Hynes about this. He was pretty clear that the building was built on spec and he got lucky with State St.
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That is correct. Construction had started well before State Street signed there lease. They originally only signed up for around 2/3 of the building, but with the booming economy, low vacancy rates, and talk of commercial leases going over $100/SF they decided to take the whole building.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Actually One Lincoln offers a comparison to Chiofaro's assertion that his tower project will cost nearly a billion, and why he needs to build so high to make the project profitable.

One Lincoln
Gross floor area 1.42 million sq ft; gross 'living' area 1.07 million sq ft; 900 car garage. Land area 70,900 sq ft.

Costs per sq ft of Gross Building Area
Land acquisition costs: $42.19
Hard construction (including tenant buildout) cost: $207.54
Soft development (includes A&E, linkage) cost: $57.71

Total $307.44 per sq ft. ($325.97 per sq ft, for net rentable area.)
Total Development cost $330.5 million

About $175 million of the development cost was debt financed at an 8 percent annual interest rate.

Harbor Garage

1.5 million sq ft, 1,380 car garage
Land area 57,300 sq ft

(Existing garage is 419,000 sq ft. and 1,475 parking spaces.)

Total projected cost $900 - $1,000 million

The Harbor Garage's Facebook page shows the new design, so I guess that is what the concept is now.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Are you sure those numbers are accurate? He only paid $1.8M per acre for 1.6 acres of land in the financial district. Seems absurdly low.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

AmericanFolkLegend said:
Are you sure those numbers are accurate? He only paid $1.8M per acre for 1.6 acres of land in the financial district. Seems absurdly low.
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The land acquisition cost is calculated against gross building area.

He paid $45.4 million total: $15 million for the BRA land; $24.5 million for the private parcels; $5 million to Columbia Plaza; and $850K in legal costs
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

AmericanFolkLegend said:
I've spoken to Hynes about this. He was pretty clear that the building was built on spec and he got lucky with State St.
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You know what.... if Hynes said he built this building on spec then he must of built it on spec. I wish I was that lucky in my life to build a building for 350 Million then flip for 670 Million in a year. Talk about LUCK.

300 Million dollar luck
Yeah okay.

Just like he blew a hole in the heart of downtown now blames the building not being built because of economic conditions. Maybe if the development was better financed and planned we would not be having this problem. We'll why doesn't he pump more (cash) equity in the project to get it built if Boston is such a good long-term investment? Instead they are looking for city handouts. Morgan Stanly has already received TARP funds, So they can actually get the money from them. But instead they want more city breaks possibly tax breaks or free money. Wake the fuck up if you think these people are honest. They are playing with taxpayers money. Their is no risk anymore for these people. I hope they all go broke.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

stellarfun said:
The land acquisition cost is calculated against gross building area.

He paid $45.4 million total: $15 million for the BRA land; $24.5 million for the private parcels; $5 million to Columbia Plaza; and $850K in legal costs
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Gotcha. Thanks. That was stupid of me . . .
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

You know what.... if Hynes said he built this building on spec then he must of built it on spec.
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If Rifleman says he didn't build it on spec, then he must not of built it on spec.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

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Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

How you can fit a 600' tower on that site is amazing.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

JohnAKeith said:
How you can fit a 600' tower on that site is amazing.
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Each of the Harbor Towers buildings are 400'. In direct comparison it isn't too hard to picture another two buildings on that footprint roughly the same girth as Habor Towers only 200' taller.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

joebos, I'm not an architect so the structural engineering is amazing to me. Sort of like, "Wow, that building is so tall; how come it doesn't fall over?" The World Trade Towers are similar in that they are silver slivers in the sky.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

The structural engineering challenge is the replacement garage. Instead of being above ground, I guess the plan is to put 1400 spaces underground. IIRC, none of the renderings for any of the Chiofaro concepts show where the garage entrance/exit would be, nor the loading docks.

The CA/T is at its shallowest at State St. where the tunnel roof is at ground level. So he probably doesn't really have excavation data points that he might look to in digging out 150-160 feet of harbor muck, clay, and bedrock for the garage, all the while worried -- during and post construction -- about hydrostatic pressure. (Assuming the harbor's max tidal depth near the garage is 20 feet, thats a pressure of about 9 pounds per square inch; at the surface its about 0.45 pounds per square inch. I know of a building in a flood zone which is designed to flood the garage from the inside so hydrostatic pressure doesn't cave the garage walls in.)

The closest deep Big Dig excavation of the type he would have to undertake was for Vent Building 5 where the Intercontinental is now, which was a big shaft 100? feet down.

My guess is that the garage portion, from a revenue standpoint, will never pay the costs of constructing it.

This makes his latest idea of a floating garage a bit intriguing. If I were him, I'd think about that as a permanent fixture, rather than a temporary one.

It would be interesting to see a cost-benefit analysis for a garage of 600, 800, 1,000, 1,200, and 1,400 cars, assuming 200 cars parked per level. Walsh Construction's contract for Vent Building 5 was $31 million in 1999, but I'm pretty sure that only covered part of the cost. (The site was specially engineered to allow the Intercontinental to be built on top, and I don't think the Big Dig paid for those features.)
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

If you look at old pictures of the Public Garden when it first open nobodys in them,We all know what a treasure that park is today,just saying
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

Boston02124 said:
If you look at old pictures of the Public Garden when it first open nobodys in them,We all know what a treasure that park is today,just saying
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Keep in mind the design of the Public Garden was solid from the beginning. The Greenway is simply broken.
 
Re: The Boston Arch (Aquarium parking garage)

The first version of the Public Garden contained a Garden Under Glass (conservatory). Unfortunately it burned down and was never replaced.
 
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