Back Bay Garage Tower | Dartmouth and Stuart | Back Bay

[iamdjmichael]

My only complaint is that the residential towers should be taller to break the plateau a bit otherwise, this is going to be amazing, and it ties into the new Copley wonderfully.

 

[datadyne007]

The opposition to this is going to be epic. It will hopefully at least distract from 40 Trinity (& to a lesser extent, Copley Place) in the meantime while this gets fought. Expect many BRA meetings with shouting & protests.

 

[JSic]

Why would the NIMBYs allow this when they fought like hell to kill Columbus Center?

 

[JSic]

The opposition to this is going to be epic. It will hopefully at least distract from 40 Trinity (& to a lesser extent, Copley Place) in the meantime while this gets fought. Expect many BRA meetings with shouting & protests.

Beat me to it!

 

[HenryAlan]

BOOM:

https://twitter.com/SteveAdamsTweet/status/714906446610178049

Just in: Back Bay Station redevelopment plans filed: 575K office, 100K retail, 600 residential

I love this, build it yesterday!

 

[datadyne007]

The neighbors aren't going to believe the traffic studies, but this site, being a massive parking garage, has an advantage in the traffic studies in that the net trips won't be considerably higher due to people already coming and going from the parking garage. I'm speaking of this relative to an empty site where you typically add parking & habitable program where there is currently none.

 

[Semass]

I'm pretty jazzed about the station headhouse. Dig it.

 

[novacat]

Interesting approach to breaking up the massing of the office building which has quite a large footprint. The corner of Stuart and Dartmouth will be completely unrecognizable (in a good way) when this and Copley are finished.

Is the intent here to do phases like BP's Garden project? Selfishly, I wish they had put hotel space here for all the Amtrak folks who come up from DC, Philly and NYC and do business in the Back Bay. It would be pretty sweet to be able to walk off the train and be at check in in less than 5 minutes.

 

[The EGE]

I'm a little suspicious that they're taking some of the existing waiting room. Back Bay has a huge number of passengers who need more than just a few scattered benches. That said, if the platform air quality is vastly increased, it may be possible to actually wait a few minutes there for a train.

Otherwise, though? Build it this instant. I'll take the medium height in exchange for something that looks this good.

 

[Equilibria]

While I'm actually cool with the height and the office tower in general, did Pelli Clarke Pelli design these residential buildings in their sleep? I look at that render from the East, and all I see is the Avalon North Station facade. I expect way better from that kind of firm.

That's not a killer, though. What IS a killer, from my perspective, is that they don't clad the Eastern half of the garage. Just put screens on it, or something. I understand you don't want to tear it down, but a shiny new project with that sad concrete husk next to it is really going to jar, and this is a very visible angle for people coming into the city from Logan.

That's a fixable problem, and one could see these residential towers as essentially massing studies, particularly given the evolution of The Hub on Causeway.

Also, how many office towers are we going to have waiting on large scale anchor tenants in 2018? It's at least 4 - This one, SST, One Congress, and The Hub. That's not even accounting for 121 Seaport and Pier 4, and whatever is left in Fan Pier. And anything Cambridge approves in Kendall. How many large-scale tenants really exist in Boston?

 

[lapradetom]

I like it, vast improvement over the garage....especially at street level. It will come together even better when columbus center comes back from the dead as well. Overall I'm impressed.

^Ditto......the street level changes are great. Other than maybe a missed opportunity in the height dept. (as some of us may think), there's almost no way you can say this won't be a huge improvement over what we have there now. The new retail/restaurant component directly across from Copley is my favorite part. It creates an entirely new hub of activity there. That "stacked" office building is pretty cool also!

 

[odurandina]

i go out to the river to cut up all the dead wood and all hell breaks loose.

they put this big story in the Globe about a tall tower likey.

i told ja all on 16 December Skyscraper City "not going tall."

just sayin.

Btw, can someone post the thread with the Mass Pike tower that was to go to 420'. is that the one you guys are calling Columbus Center?

 

[KentXie]

I think the building on the left is great. However, I feel like these buildings should be taller because it literally sits at one of the bigger transit hubs in the city with connection to the Orange Line and Commuter Rail and just down the street from the Green Line at Copley.

 

[JumboBuc]

I love the office component and the retail component over the station, but I wish the two residential towers had more distinct designs.

All around this looks like a win. I was initially disappointed when it was leaked a few months ago that they wouldn't be going high here, but these designs have well exceeded my expectations.

 

[SouthEnder88]

While I'm actually cool with the height and the office tower in general, did Pelli Clarke Pelli design these residential buildings in their sleep? I look at that render from the East, and all I see is the Avalon North Station facade. I expect way better from that kind of firm.

I second this. I really hope the various review meetings this goes through mainly beefs up the design on these residential buildings rather than scale back the truly breathtaking stacked nature of the office component.

Driving down the Pike the other day made me realize just how impressive the new Hancock building was going to be for an addition, but throw these in along with Copley and 40 Trinity...Back Bay on fleek, y'all!

Also, I'm curious if this could be where the Bloomingdales rumored for 888 Boylston might wind up...we haven't heard much from them in a while.

 

[citylover94]

Has anyone else noticed that it seems like every time a developer wants a big name architect in Boston they pull in Pelli? This is the third development with the GCG and SST towers also being designed by him.

 

[lapradetom]

I second this. I really hope the various review meetings this goes through mainly beefs up the design on these residential buildings rather than scale back the truly breathtaking stacked nature of the office component.

Driving down the Pike the other day made me realize just how impressive the new Hancock building was going to be for an addition, but throw these in along with Copley and 40 Trinity...Back Bay on fleek, y'all!

Also, I'm curious if this could be where the Bloomingdales rumored for 888 Boylston might wind up...we haven't heard much from them in a while.

^I doubt the Bloomingdales will be here. PDF says 100k total retail/restaurant. Unless Bloomies footprint is much smaller than traditional stoeres. but I guess it could be a possibility. With the internet/loss of big box foot traffic, most are going small format now.

 

[Cortes]

I am interested in the difficult parts of this, one of which is somehow figuring out a way to cover over the circular ramp that facilitates the garage. Short of having some sort of null-space in that area, what do you do with it? Maybe some sort of electronic billboard? Between Berkeley and Clarendon, they got their work cut out for them in terms of the highway entrance and the entrance to the garage. More power to them.

 

[lapradetom]

While I'm actually cool with the height and the office tower in general, did Pelli Clarke Pelli design these residential buildings in their sleep? I look at that render from the East, and all I see is the Avalon North Station facade. I expect way better from that kind of firm.

That's not a killer, though. What IS a killer, from my perspective, is that they don't clad the Eastern half of the garage. Just put screens on it, or something. I understand you don't want to tear it down, but a shiny new project with that sad concrete husk next to it is really going to jar, and this is a very visible angle for people coming into the city from Logan.

That's a fixable problem, and one could see these residential towers as essentially massing studies, particularly given the evolution of The Hub on Causeway.

Also, how many office towers are we going to have waiting on large scale anchor tenants in 2018? It's at least 4 - This one, SST, One Congress, and The Hub. That's not even accounting for 121 Seaport and Pier 4, and whatever is left in Fan Pier. And anything Cambridge approves in Kendall. How many large-scale tenants really exist in Boston?

^I know one that's growing gangbusters: online retailer Wayfair (Copley Place offices) is growing like crazy.... One thing that caught my eye on the Boston Properties website: The 49 properties in their Boston portfolio have a 90.6% occupancy rate (that's well over 13 million s/f of space)

 

[Smartiro]

While residential is pretty blah, station looks really good and office building is pretty cool, although I'd be interested to see a view from Copley which I could not find in the docs. It's a postcard Boston view after all.
Overall - a huge win.