AvalonBay Tower (Jacob Wirth's) | 45 Stuart Street | Downtown

Re: Jacob Wirth's

JohnAKeith said:
Surely you're aware of the Ray Bradbury classic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Summer_in_a_Day

Rains on Venus every day, scientists figure out how to stop it for a day. A little girl who was born on Earth is only one of her friends who remembers what the sun is. She keeps bragging about it, they lock her in the closet during the one day of sun.
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Tourist stops at a service station in West Texas looking for directions -- he spies the old timer in his rocking chair and to break the proverbial ice

The tourist says: back home -- clouds like those would mean rain

Old West Texan replies: Sure hope so -- not for me I've seen rain -- but for my grandson's sake -- he's just turned 8
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

whighlander said:
Tourist stops at a service station in West Texas looking for directions -- he spies the old timer in his rocking chair and to break the proverbial ice

The tourist says: back home -- clouds like those would mean rain

Old West Texan replies: Sure hope so -- not for me I've seen rain -- but for my grandson's sake -- he's just turned 8
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Flipside:

Tourist in the British Midlands: Can you see the mountains from here

Local: If can't see the mountains from town that means it is raining. If you can see the muntains, that means it is about to rain.
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

If sunlight is good and shadows are bad, why are the shadow haters the same people who love trees? Only shadows from man-made things are bad?
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

It's the perceived difference between 'shade' and 'shadows'.

Shade allows some filtered light and warmth through while shadows are just cold darkness.
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

statler said:
It's the perceived difference between 'shade' and 'shadows'.

Shade allows some filtered light and warmth through while shadows are just cold darkness.
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But unless you are immediately adjacent to a very large building or a whole row of buildings (lots of solid angle subtended) just to your south and cutting your access to sunlight completely -- the shaddows will come and go changing in length and azimuth during the day and during the year

In fact it would be nice to create a virtual sundial based on a great indicator shadow of some iconic building surrounded with much lower rise structures and parks (e.g. the Greenway) -- you could provide an Ap for people to download to enable them to obtain the time from a scan of a shaddow
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

But unless you are immediately adjacent to a very large building or a whole row of buildings (lots of solid angle subtended) just to your south and cutting your access to sunlight completely -- the shaddows will come and go changing in length and azimuth during the day and during the year
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Well, I know that and you know that, but there are many, many others....
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

statler said:
Well, I know that and you know that, but there are many, many others....
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I ws thinking that we could compute and locate the tip of the Hancock shaddow for various times of the day and times of the year -- you would enter the date and time or could hit Now and the shaddows tip would be located on a Map for you to navigate to using GPS

Or if you wanted to know when it was -- you could take a picture of the tip of the shadow and some additional imagery and the Ap would tell you the time and date brought to you by Hancock
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

Or you could just look at the time and date on your phone.
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

gooseberry said:
Or you could just look at the time and date on your phone.
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Really -- do they have an Ap that does that?

I've also got some sort of jewlry on my wrist that my wife gave me -- I note that occasionally it seems to change with the diurnal progression of the sun -- perhaps its a specialized electronic sun dial?
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

So, as mentioned, this project was approved.

I stood up in support of this (there were no objections - even the neighbors came to speak in support).

When the project was presented to the BRA board tonight, one of the speakers was Harry Collings, Jr. I recognized him before he spoke. Yes, the same Harry Collings, Jr. who was the Secretary to the BRA board until earlier this year or last year or until sometime recently.

No mention was made, of course, of his past job.

When I spoke, I first stated that I wanted to make clear for the TV audience that Mr. Collings wasn't just a part of the development team. I said, "He used to be on the BRA board, and now he works for the developer." They corrected me - the secretary, apparently, isn't on the board, he's the secretary, and he doesn't work for the architect (CBT) but is a "private consultant".

They said, "He wasn't on the board," and I responded, "Well, he sat on that side of the table!" Same diff.

I then said, "It's awful chummy up here. You know, this is why people hate the BRA."

Then I spoke in support.

The board didn't much care what I (or anyone) said. They had to sit there for five hours listening to wack-jobs (me included, I guess) blabber on about this or that without responding. I figure they tune everything out. Peter Meade was napping at one point, you'll see it on the TV recording.
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

To be fair, having been to a few community meetings, some comments are insufferable. I never make it to the end.

You get 1 crazy person, 2 blabbering idiots, a crazy paranoid guy, and then the one articulate person who screws up by not knowing when to stop and repeating himself.
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

jass said:
To be fair, having been to a few community meetings, some comments are insufferable. I never make it to the end.

You get 1 crazy person, 2 blabbering idiots, a crazy paranoid guy, and then the one articulate person who screws up by not knowing when to stop and repeating himself.
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I spent some time on an a board which advised the City of Austin on matters related to the City owned Electric Utility -- we had a monthly meeting and at the front of it for an hour had to suffer the slings and arrows of the public

Some had legitimate gripes about overcharges, promises to trim trees whose branches were impinging on wires.

But unfortunatey for all -- there were always a pack who were oposed to any substantive item on the agenda (e.g. new transmission line, new power plant, new agreement wih a near-by utility, new rate strucure fr a major customers, etc.) -- most of the opposition was specious, thoughtless and followed a script someone had written for the group. Occasionally the wrong person in the sequence got up to speak -- quoting something which had yet to be said -- Cluelesss.

i don't blame anyone on the BRA board who after a long day had to put up with the aforementioned "slings and arrows" of the organized opposition and chose to doze

PS: It looks like two better than fair to potentially great projects were just appoved

I think its time for the "Crane Song Singers" to warm up back stage
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

I think this project sucks. The fact there was no one to speak out against it really leads me to give up hope on new development in this city. The ground-floor is appalling. The building itself is banal. Its proportions are wide and stumpy--more wall-like than tower.

This, like the Millennium Towers, Archstone Boston Common, the future Kensington project and Hayward Place, is supposed to be part of the Combat Zone's revitalization. It's more like its sterilization. The new residential units are welcome, but the streets have been nuked.
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

So can anyone confirm if there will be a garage entrance on the Stuart St side?

If so, WTF?
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

blade_bltz said:
So can anyone confirm if there will be a garage entrance on the Stuart St side?

If so, WTF?
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There's a garage entrance on each side, and an exit on each side. So 2 entries and exits. I believe that's what they said at the public meeting.
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

briv said:
I think this project sucks. The fact there was no one to speak out against it really leads me to give up hope on new development in this city. The ground-floor is appalling.

The new residential units are welcome, but the streets have been nuked.
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Briv -- your comments on the buildings themselves are mostly about the isolated structues -- but this an attempt by the BRA to reconstruct a functional living neighborhood out of the Combat Zone.

The first step is to get people to live where hookers, strippers and drug dealers used to be the primary industry -- and where no self respecting family would set foot

If people live here -- Shops and local restaurants will follow -- productive street life

Ground floors can sooner or later metamorphose into something totally different -- think Newburry St. which began as single family town homes

In point of fact -- All of the above is far easier with modern structural frame and skin construction than with load bearing walls -- Today as you know -- any window can become a door, as can a wall with no structural penalty -- garages can become apparmens or offices (e.g. Gordon wing of the Museum of Science) even extra floors can be inserted if needed (again the Gordon Wing of the MOS 2 floors of offices created where there had been one high ceilinged garage ground floor)

The whole place can have its ground level redone -- Think -- the current MIT 2030 plan by MIT and co. to urbanify Kendall / Cambridge Center
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

BostonUrbEx said:
There's a garage entrance on each side, and an exit on each side. So 2 entries and exits. I believe that's what they said at the public meeting.
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To correct this statement -- there is a garage entrance (only) on Stuart Street. There is an entrance and exit on LaGrange Street, as well as a loading dock area (behind overhead doors).

A lot of work was put in by the IAG with the developer concerning the Stuart Street "portal" (pedestrian entrance and car entrance). The car entrance on Stuart is not ideal, but La Grange Street is not large enough to reconfigure to avoid that entrance (we tried).

It is completely acknowledged that the way this development and the Kensington (LaGrange and Washington) are configured, LaGrange is becoming effectively an access driveway (this was also discussed with the developer and the BRA). But today it is already a dead street (parking lots and two strip clubs). It is not clear that there is any rational way to bring it back.
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

JeffDowntown said:
It is completely acknowledged that the way this development and the Kensington (LaGrange and Washington) are configured, LaGrange is becoming effectively an access driveway (this was also discussed with the developer and the BRA). But today it is already a dead street (parking lots and two strip clubs). It is not clear that there is any rational way to bring it back.
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jeff - Build something on the parking lots that will energize the street -- eventually the strip clubs will leave and be repalced by something more neighborly and in about 10 years you might have another perspective entirely on LaGrange St.
 
Re: Jacob Wirth's

There will always be some streets that function more like alleys, just as there will always be strip clubs. Better for it to be a street like LaGrange, that at best serves as a one block bypass, than a street like Stuart that is a major arterial and gateway to the Theater District.
 
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