Avalon Exeter | 77 Exeter Street | Back Bay

Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

I find that hard to believe. The road was closed for a long time while the Mandarin bridge was being done

Different project, down the hill, "a Boston block" away. In one of the local rags (Back Bay Sun, Courant, Beacon Hill Times) there was an article on the three projects that closed Ring Road - the Saks reno, the Newbury Arcade construction and the road repairs.

Of the three, the arcade construction actually closed Ring Road the least.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

Did the Mandarin actually get built? I thought that last I heard it had been stopped due to finances. Or maybe it was just something to do with a tenant or less luxury penthouses or something...

Its open and fully operating, although they did lower penthouse prices from 12m to 8m.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

have you walked down Boylston Street lately? It's pretty obvious that the Mandarin hotel has been built and is open.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

Kennedy has been rusticated to St. Louis. Once he hits college here he'll check it out. Unless he goes to RISDI or somewhere like that.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

Prudential towers may get more review
By Thomas Grillo
Thursday, February 19, 2009

The developer of a pair of controversial towers at the Prudential Center asked the secretary of Environmental Affairs to forgo any further reviews.

But the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act office will decide in March whether the proposed 17-story tower at 888 Boylston St. and a 27-story luxury apartment building on Exeter Street should undergo a complete environmental review.

In a letter to MEPA, the attorney for Boston Properties said the Boston Redevelopment Authority approved the project in December following a complete review. The letter also said that state approvals were granted for the site in the 1980s and additional reviews or comments are unnecessary.

But neighbors said that the project has changed dramatically and are insisting on an updated environmental impact study.

A spokeswoman for Alicia McDevitt, MEPA director, said that, while the agency could have ruled no more reviews were needed, it heard from a number of concerned residents and will decide next month about how to proceed.


Link
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

Prudential towers may get more review
By Thomas Grillo
Thursday, February 19, 2009

The developer of a pair of controversial towers at the Prudential Center asked the secretary of Environmental Affairs to forgo any further reviews.

But the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act office will decide in March whether the proposed 17-story tower at 888 Boylston St. and a 27-story luxury apartment building on Exeter Street should undergo a complete environmental review.

In a letter to MEPA, the attorney for Boston Properties said the Boston Redevelopment Authority approved the project in December following a complete review. The letter also said that state approvals were granted for the site in the 1980s and additional reviews or comments are unnecessary.

But neighbors said that the project has changed dramatically and are insisting on an updated environmental impact study.

A spokeswoman for Alicia McDevitt, MEPA director, said that, while the agency could have ruled no more reviews were needed, it heard from a number of concerned residents and will decide next month about how to proceed.


Link

I'm confused--what is there to review? Weren't the two sites in question designed with future buildings in mind? I'm admittedly ignorant of the environmental challenges, but both are above two levels of parking. Are there migrating fruit flies that will be made extinct by this or what?
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

I believe MEPA reviews things like traffic, etc. that are generated by development. In this case, "side-effects" could be greater given the greater density. Whether it is reviewed or not, I don't see the end result derailing this project.....it's a last ditch effort that should have neglible effect except to delay things.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

...it's a last ditch effort that should have neglible effect except to delay things.
In this economy, that's often enough to kill a project.

That, in turn, harms all of us by further reducing economic activity.

I wonder if NIMBYs realize their actions are unpatriotic.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

As long as they get their way, they could care less.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

I wonder if MEPA reads Glaeser?
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

Banker & Tradesman - March 16, 2009
What?s A Developer To Do?
Smog From Mass Pike May Be Residents? Only Angle Left To Fight New Pru Tower


By Paul McMorrow

Banker & Tradesman Staff Writer

Avalon Bay's proposed 311-foot luxury apartment tower.The floors of Boston City Hall are littered with proposals for towers that are going nowhere fast. One Franklin is a hole in the ground, Columbus Center is a punch line to a cruel joke, and towers slated for South Station and Winthrop Square look like pipe dreams.

Amid all this wreckage, there?s one developer who desperately wants to soldier on. AvalonBay is pushing ahead with plans to build a 311-foot luxury apartment tower, dubbed the Exeter Residences, on the southeastern edge of the Prudential Center. Avalon received Boston Redevelopment Authority approval for the project in December. The REIT believes in the market and has the cash to finance construction itself.

Naturally enough, the one developer looking to build in this market is now staring down what could easily become a bruising environmental review that might set the project back by months. Those Back Bay residents who failed to derail the Prudential expansion in December may be more successful this time around if they can prove that car exhaust vented from the Massachusetts Turnpike under the property ? which is not currently regulated ? needs to be so.

That would send shockwaves through an air rights development market that?s already fraught with political and economic hurdles.

Nothing To See Here, MEPA

AvalonBay and Boston Properties, owner of the Prudential Center site, filed a notice of project change with the Mass. Environmental Policy Act Office (MEPA) in late January, asking state environmental secretary Ian Bowles to approve the Exeter Residences and the 17-story, 422,000-square-foot office building slated for 888 Boylston St. with ?no further publication or comment.?

It was not a strange request: The developers of The Mandarin, which is around the corner, got the same request approved.

This time, however, MEPA responded by publishing the notice and seeking public comment ? a sign that project opponents see as presaging a full-blown, highly detailed environmental review.

?MEPA staff were ready to send a letter to the developers saying they were OK,? said Ned Flaherty, a Back Bay resident. Flaherty was also a vociferous opponent of Columbus Center. When he caught word of Boston Properties? January MEPA letter, he helped flood the agency with letters that urged Bowles not to waive review of the towers.

?They told us they looked at it, and it seemed OK, and they were going to send a letter saying so,? he said. ?They told us they were going to waive everything ? it was only when they got the community letters that they took another look.? It?s Flaherty?s contention that in telling MEPA the two towers wouldn?t have significant environmental consequences, ?the developer fudged the answers.?

Flaherty contends the new Prudential Center buildings will illegally eliminate open space and will negatively impact the historic Boston Public Library. City officials dismissed those concerns, and the state is likely to follow suit.

However, the state seems to be seriously considering the claim that the exhaust from the Mass Pike tunnel running beneath the complex constitutes a serious environmental and health concern. MEPA looks to be leaning toward making Boston Properties responsible for cleaning up the exhaust belching out of the Pike tunnel. That would mark a significant regulatory shift that would ripple up and down the Pike, and beyond.

Correspondence between state officials and John Rosenthal, developer of the 1.1 million-square-foot Fenway Center air rights development, provides clues to how the state will deal with the Prudential projects.

Early letters focused on the areas that environmental reviews usually focus on ? wind, shadow, traffic and carbon monoxide. Rosenthal addressed those issues in his draft environmental impact report (DEIR).

But after Rosenthal filed that report, Suzanne Condon, director of the state Department of Public Health?s Bureau of Environmental Health, wrote to Bowles complaining that the Fenway Center DEIR hadn?t addressed the effects of ?traffic-related pollutants.?

Avalon Bay's Exeter Residences may be held up by a state environment review involving Mass Pike fumes.Such pollutants are almost never covered in state environmental reviews. Even so, Condon asked Rosenthal to consider several means of mitigating the pollutants, including installing filters on his Turnpike tunnel exhaust vents. Bowles, in turn, ordered Rosenthal to address Condon?s concerns in his final environmental impact report, due to be filed this spring.

While acknowledging that ?there are no recognized national or state-level regulatory programs or standards to measure? ultrafine vehicle emissions, Bowles asked Rosenthal to ?outline mitigation measures to be implemented on-site to reduce the potential exposure to [such] pollutants.? Bowles? request, sent in mid-November, specifically asked Rosenthal to consider vent filtration systems.

The Longer View

Flaherty, the neighborhood activist, has high hopes that any state review of the two new towers at the Prudential would open the door to new regulations on the emissions from the thousands of cars that run under the Prudential Center every day. (Boston Properties owns a portion of the tunnel covering the Turnpike, and the exhaust vents that ventilate it.) If MEPA is worried about the pollution that Rosenthal?s 900-foot long tunnel would throw off, they?re likely to show similar concerns about the Prudential Center?s tunnel, which is much longer, and vents larger volumes of exhaust.

When the Prudential Center had its last environmental review, in 1989, mitigation for tunnel exhaust amounted to placing the vents flush with retail roof lines, so as not to spew noxious fumes in pedestrians? faces. But since that time, DPH?s Condon noted, ?a substantial body of evidence ? has found strong positive and statistically significant associations? between traffic pollutants and a number of illnesses.

Any effort to regulate or mitigate pollution produced underneath air rights developments would touch several projects in the development pipeline. Trinity Financial, John Fish and Adam Weiner, and Don Chiofaro are currently vying for development rights on three Pike parcels along Boylston Street and Massachusetts Avenue And it?s a sure bet that if exhaust vent filters start cropping up east of the Allston tolls, Columbus Center?s developers will find themselves under siege. Again.
 
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Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

Do the current buildings in the Prudential Center currently filter the vented exhaust? I can understand why the concentrated exhaust from the tunnel might be an environmental problem, but I don’t understand why a development like this one should be responsible for venting the exhaust from the tunnel. The development doesn’t even expand the tunnel, does it? Also, I personally don’t see why any development above the turnpike should be responsible for dealing with pollution that the traffic creates. To me it would make more sense that the owners of the vehicles creating the pollution pay for it, or at least share in the cost; maybe in the form of a toll for using the tunnel.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

All this tells me (along with the Columbus Center debacle) is that the state needs to go back to square one and rethink how it deals with air-rights. The city was all gun-ho about developing this giant trench but now we are seeing the downsides (prohibitively expensive, out of scale development, concentrated pollution, etc). Don't get me wrong, I am all from air-rights, but it seems to me the city and state tried to get something for nothing by having developers cover the big costs.

BTW, you're an ass-hat Ned for pulling this. The Pru was built 40 years ago and these new towers will have no affect on the traffic below. These towers are exactly the kind of urban infill we need. Should developers get a pass? No, I don't fault you there, but you represent a big problem with the community activism in this city; namely a total reactionary that will yell as loud as they can and end up hurting the long term development of the city with your short sightedness. I don't blame you for everything, though, that would be unfair; the entire system is broke.

What's funny is you strike me as a kind of person who 150 years ago would be protesting the infill of the Back Bay because it might drive down your property values on Beacon Hill.

Speaking from a purely urban design standpoint, these new towers would have virtually no effect on the posh townhouses of the Back Bay. Boylston/Newbury St acts as a nice buffer and once you get to Comm Ave you can only see the Pru, JHT, and the very tops of a handful other towers. Quite frankly it is this juxtaposition, I feel, that makes Boston so interesting. I can't think of a city that does it so beautifully.

[/rant]
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

Well said, but I would have been harder on Ned and his putrid activities.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

It is worth pointing out that Weld, Celucci or Romney's people would not have entertained the tin-foil-hat crowd or their concerns. Governor Together We Can was put into office by that crowd, and now they have a seat at the table.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

It's okay. This project is set to be approved no matter what as long as no public taxes are used. Let Ned fight. It will be nice to see him lose.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

VanS, you and ablarc were too easy on him.

To the "hero" of the story, you of torpid neural decay, I didn't realize you were now a Back Bay resident? I thought you were one of the arrogant entitleds from the South End. Had I known you now lived in my neighborhood, I would have moved.

Funny story. My cousins used to pound me in the small of the back with a sack of quarters when I acted like a churl. I don't generally promote physical violence (unless you deserve it!), but I do reflect that perhaps we'd all be better off if you had a few of my cousins.

You asshat, I'm within spitting distance of the Pru and I make no connection between the drivers on a damn road that's been built for as long as I've been alive, and a building not even built yet that has nothing to do with the damn road.

So please, sir, I beg of thee: mind your business, mewl like a pussy about strollers and yuppies in your neighborhood, and generally keep your damn nose the hell out of my neighborhood.

Asshattery, it's becoming the plague in this town.
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

Can someone put a stake through his heart?
 
Re: New Tower(s) Planned For Prudential Center

From Google earth and what I read it appears the vents for the pike are over retail, maybe at where the duck boats are now.

Air Filtration on pike exhaust is just stupid. Do you make owners of hancock garage and MBTA (back Bay station) filter the pike exhaust too? What about all the Big Dig Vents will the pike have to install filters? The people who develop over the pike lease the air rights/deck (sound like pru they own) so if pike wants to put filters in then go ahead its not the owner of the air rights responsibility.

Instead of several 10-30 story buildings a 50-80 story building should have been built and everyone would have been happy. Ofcourse due to stupid NIMBY's a 50-80 Story never would have been built so Boston Properties had to build sever 10-30 story buildings.
 

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