Bay Village Apartment Tower | 212 Stuart St. | Bay Village

From 12/28...also some street level renovations on the Revere Hotel
5DA3801A-3A5F-4106-884F-BE02DC918505.jpeg
B4F9ECDC-684E-4EC2-AF11-9EC201311EC9.jpeg
0DC21B81-04A9-447B-8E09-8C834898A421.jpeg
6F09DFF4-6950-4082-A84F-A1AC6DF38C97.jpeg
 
DigitalSciGuy said:
Just amazing how fast a building can go vertical when we don't mandate massive excavation works for on-site parking... 😏

This is filling in that corner of the outdoor room of Statler Park quite nicely.

View attachment 10116
Click to expand...

The equivalent of 3 more floors to go (1 more floor plus the double height mech), based on my best estimation (which is about as good as most peoples' mediocre estimation, so please correct as needed).
 
I love that this is filling in a vacant lot. As long as open lots exist we need to refrain from demolishing old stock as much as possible like at the raffles site. Then after the lots, pike gash.. etc are filled in theres plenty of crappy buildings that can be demolished first before any of the good stuff needs to go, the revere and its massive garage next door a perfect example. When you really look theres plenty of places to infill first before we need to be demo-ing anything.
 
There were buildings there. Interesting ones.
 
Correct. There were two early c.19 townhouses on the Shawmut Ext. side of the parcel, the destruction of which remains one of the more shameful episodes of Boston development in the last 25 years. Long story, but basically the owner kept trying to get permission to tear them down, and via persistence, eventually succeeded in getting an emergency demo permit over a Thanksgiving weekend when the neighbors had no time to react. (The multiple applications for demolition were interspersed with arson, neglect, and political donations). The back half of the parcel (towards the hotel) was a curious building that originally was built as a Lutheran Church in 1840. It had been reworked several times over the years, finally as Jae's restaurant - it had Deco facade from 1939 on the Stuart Street side, and a good deal of the original brick church structure on the Shawmut side. Originally the latter facade was to be saved, but after a proposed 11-story project was undone by the 2008 crash, the BRA basically said, "oh, never mind."

None of this is the fault of the current developer or a reflection of the current project - they were literally dealing with the "blank slate" that the BRA had thoughtfully cleared. BTW, this will be 19 occupied floors, plus mechanicals.

But if you are wondering why anyone would be a NIMBY or take a hostile and suspicious view of development or city processes, this is a good example. At the time when all of this was happening, there were still long-time residents of Bay Village who had lived through the BRA misadventures of the '60s that resulted in the bunker-like 57 (Now Revere) Hotel and garage and the destruction of the neighborhood street grid; some even had been around in the late '50s when Boston Edison bulldozed the house where Edgar Allen Poe was born. The renamed BPDA now presents a somewhat more humane face than its predecessor, but the economic structure of that organization still depends on construction, not preservation. And construction is a lot easier and more economic on larger, empty lots.

I agree with stick n move that it is far preferable to build on empty lots, and there still are quite a few, even if the most egregious examples have now been filled. But unless a building has "national significance," an extremely high hurdle, it won't be protected by Landmarks, and it certainly won't be protected the BPDA. Hence the loss of interesting period buildings like Dainty Dot, the rounded building on the northeast corner at Kenmore, the former Shreve building at Arlington/Boylston (coming attraction!) and many others, including the ones that were here. Should all threatened buildings be saved? Certainly not. But there are times when it seems that the current path will yield us a city with a handful of architectural museum pieces (Fanueil Hall, State House, Trinity Church, even City Hall) scattered amongst a snowier Alucobond Atlanta.
 
tobyjug said:
There were buildings there. Interesting ones.
Click to expand...

I didnt say there was never any buildings there, I said it was filling a vacant lot. It is. Pretty much any open lots that exist in the peninsula section of Boston had something there in the past. The developers of the current building werent responsible for the demo of the previous buildings, so since there existed an open lot there Id rather see it developed first before anything else gets torn down like is going on next door with raffles.
 
Somewhere in one of threads are photos I took when I broke into the so called Jaes building- the 1840s church. The whole thing was a textbook case of purposeful neglect with the aim of creating a vacant lot, the replacement of which would be celebrated in the fullness of time.
 
In Poolio's photo, on the side of the Jae's building you can see the party wall shadow of where the townhouses were until '99/'00. I can't find a photo, but they were similar in appearance and of the same 1830s/1840s vintage as the ones across the street, akin to what you see on Beacon Hill.

Yes, the vast majority of the "empty lots" downtown had buildings at one point. And I'm willing to cut slack for plots that were vacant as of the '50s, '60s, and even '70s, when the value of Boston real estate was low, population was falling, parking lots sometimes were more economically viable than other uses, and sensitivity to historic architecture wasn't as well-developed.

But here we are talking about buildings that were occupied in recent memory, well into the period of revival and boom. The two townhouses were occupied into the '90s, and Jae's restaurant was bustling into the '00s. If the City or then-BRA had approached the infamous Billy who owned the parking lot and townhouses and told him, "look, cut the crap, we are NEVER going to give a zoning waiver in the historic district for a taller building where those two townhouses stand," they'd still be there. He was greedy, but I don't think he was stupid. Even as gut-rehabs, those buildings were worth many times what they cost, and a necessarily smaller development on the smaller "empty lot" on Stuart would have still yielded a very nice return on investment. Ditto for the former church ... if the BRA had said, "look, we think this building should stay," or even "the rear facade should stay," that also would have remained. Many other buildings in the immediate vicinity in worse shape have been repurposed profitably by developers over the last 30 years. Jae Chung sold this building for $2.4 million in 2004. I doubt he knew that connected parties would be able to greenlight demo and build at 4x the zoning limit in a historic district, or perhaps he just understood that an Asian restauranteur didn't have any clout at City Hall. But the BRA was waving the pom-poms for something big here before the ink was dry on his deed. It was flipped again within short order for multiples of what poor Jae got.

So sure, I can't blame the current developer, and it's better to have a building there than the sad pile of rubble. But I CAN blame the BRA/BPDA for willing the empty lot into existence. Had it been public knowledge that the BRA was going to waive ALL the rules in order to create a project large enough to support the agency's funding model, I'm sure every poster on this board who was alive in 2004 would have been crowdfunding purchase of that building. I mean, c'mon. This is the opposite of real estate genius. And this is still the way the game is played, endangering a huge number of our older/historic structures, with very little regard for architectural merit or context.
 
Unfortunately an even bigger and more important building next door was just demoed at raffles a couple months ago, we all knew well ahead of time, and nobody did anything. Same thing in Kenmore sq. You cant change the past, but maybe we can stop the next dainty dot from happening. Do something about the next one instead of talking about the last one.
 
Poolio said:
For anyone who doesn't remember, this is the Jae's building that StillInTheHood is talking about. Google street view, May 2014. By July 2014 it's gone.

View attachment 10148
Click to expand...

Just from that pic (admittedly just from that pic) it looks like the historic 1840's church died a death many years before that Jaes building was demo'd.

Looking at that pic, the murder occurred decades ago. I vote "not guilty" on the current developer......and hope the Statute of Limitations doesn't exhonerate the people who perpetrated the actual earlier crime.
 
I agree that we should look forward and not backward. But as someone who has spoken up at many meetings and written many letters about projects across the city, I understand how easily opposition is dismissed.

Perhaps we on ArchBoston can better coordinate on the next example of unwarranted destruction on which we mostly agree. Several posters on this site worked hard to voice their opposition to the destruction of the Shreve's block, where the wrecking ball hasn't yet swung but soon will. They were treated with contempt by city officials. Others have weighed in independently on 39 Stanhope, which is threatened. The old German Church at 85 West Newton (Villa Victoria Center for the Arts) was demolished in parallel with the Kenmore Square and Raffles site buildings, over the objections of the Boston Preservation Alliance and a dedicated core of opponents. Even when significant opposition has been rallied to attend one of these short-notice 6PM meetings, the outcome seems predetermined. The construction union reps will speak in favor, as will a handful of friends of the developer. The BPDA project manager will look at his watch and frown at the peons who dare to object. The ZBA is poised to rubber stamp, and Landmarks commissioners will wring their hands and say that while the loss of the building is "unfortunate," it's not as architecturally significant as Monticello or the Taj Mahal, so under the rules it can't be protected. If you've been through the cycle a few times, it's hard not to get cynical and difficult to rally for the next one, but I try.

I am not anti-development, and I wouldn't want the pendulum to swing too the other extreme, but ultimately, we need to change the rules. I expect that thoughtful people like those who participate on this forum may respectfully disagree on which buildings are worth saving. But I wish we could change the system to favor more difficult development sites that would yield greater community benefit, like air rights parcels, and focus on elimination of urban anachronisms that have no redeeming features, (the Midtown hotel is not the only one of these!), and make it a bit harder to simply blow up 100- or even 200-year-old buildings of some character and quality.
 
shmessy said:
Just from that pic (admittedly just from that pic) it looks like the historic 1840's church died a death many years before that Jaes building was demo'd.

Looking at that pic, the murder occurred decades ago. I vote "not guilty" on the current developer......and hope the Statute of Limitations doesn't exhonerate the people who perpetrated the actual earlier crime.
Click to expand...
Actually, the back side of the church was very much intact. Only the Stuart Street facade was "art decoed". It was actually a fascinating amalgam of a building, and some of it could have been preserved if anybody really cared.
 
^ Thanks for finding those again. I would have preferred the last of those renderings (the one with the dramatic cornice) over what's getting built now by a wide margin. Not just for the facade preservation and the cornice, but for its massing and quiet elegance. It's simple, "unoriginal" maybe, but would have fit in beautifully.

There are a lot of good pictures on page 2 of this thread, including the great B&E photos mentioned upthread by @tobyjug here. Looks like I didn't delve deep enough earlier.
 
StillInTheHood said:
In Poolio's photo, on the side of the Jae's building you can see the party wall shadow of where the townhouses were until '99/'00. I can't find a photo, but they were similar in appearance and of the same 1830s/1840s vintage as the ones across the street, akin to what you see on Beacon Hill.

Yes, the vast majority of the "empty lots" downtown had buildings at one point. And I'm willing to cut slack for plots that were vacant as of the '50s, '60s, and even '70s, when the value of Boston real estate was low, population was falling, parking lots sometimes were more economically viable than other uses, and sensitivity to historic architecture wasn't as well-developed.

But here we are talking about buildings that were occupied in recent memory, well into the period of revival and boom. The two townhouses were occupied into the '90s, and Jae's restaurant was bustling into the '00s. If the City or then-BRA had approached the infamous Billy who owned the parking lot and townhouses and told him, "look, cut the crap, we are NEVER going to give a zoning waiver in the historic district for a taller building where those two townhouses stand," they'd still be there. He was greedy, but I don't think he was stupid. Even as gut-rehabs, those buildings were worth many times what they cost, and a necessarily smaller development on the smaller "empty lot" on Stuart would have still yielded a very nice return on investment. Ditto for the former church ... if the BRA had said, "look, we think this building should stay," or even "the rear facade should stay," that also would have remained. Many other buildings in the immediate vicinity in worse shape have been repurposed profitably by developers over the last 30 years. Jae Chung sold this building for $2.4 million in 2004. I doubt he knew that connected parties would be able to greenlight demo and build at 4x the zoning limit in a historic district, or perhaps he just understood that an Asian restauranteur didn't have any clout at City Hall. But the BRA was waving the pom-poms for something big here before the ink was dry on his deed. It was flipped again within short order for multiples of what poor Jae got.

So sure, I can't blame the current developer, and it's better to have a building there than the sad pile of rubble. But I CAN blame the BRA/BPDA for willing the empty lot into existence. Had it been public knowledge that the BRA was going to waive ALL the rules in order to create a project large enough to support the agency's funding model, I'm sure every poster on this board who was alive in 2004 would have been crowdfunding purchase of that building. I mean, c'mon. This is the opposite of real estate genius. And this is still the way the game is played, endangering a huge number of our older/historic structures, with very little regard for architectural merit or context.
Click to expand...
Stillin... -- Interesting perspective on some aspects of things in Boston -- a place with a very complex relationship between the old and the new
You made one point in particular -- while not relevant to the discussion in one manner -- in the modern context it is very relevant

you said "
I'm sure every poster on this board who was alive in 2004 would have been crowdfunding purchase of that building. "
Click to expand...
There was of course no easy mechanism for this in 2004 -- crowdsourcing had yet to hit the scene

However -- this is how NiMBYs and anyone else with a purported interest in a proposed development should function in the future -- if you really don't like what the developer is proposing -- buy them out with an on-line appeal
if the appeal doesn't work -- well then you gave it your go -- and let the normal process proceed

This should become a city-wide policy -- after the LOI or so is filed with enough information to see the scale of the project -- there should then be a designated period for the locals, City-wide NiMBYs and anyone else who wanted to try to raise funds through crowdsourcing to try to buy the property in question from the proposed developer:
say 3 months for a small project​
maybe a year for a big one​
then the CLF lawsuits and such as what is happening at the Aquarium -- one would hope might disappear into history​
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top