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

I finally gave this proposal-- and the essentially vacant lot it will replace-- a thorough look today and must say: this project should be built. This property as it currently sits is totally anti-urban, just a vacant lot, a single-story shack, and a tiny surface parking lot. What this part-infill, part-tower brings to the streetscape alone is a great improvement. The scale and massing of the development are winners in my book too. I went back to see if this lot ever made ArchBoston's "Worst Empty Parcel" nominations back in the days when we had AB Awards, and found that it never did: it's too small and inconspicuous compared to the big empty parcels in the city. Nonetheless, projects like this one, which fill in the small missing pieces of the city, are extremely important to our urban fabric.
 
^ Yes, it's my recollection that this is a landmark district with strict controls over demolitions. The owner of the parcel let buildings on the parcel remain rundown and vacant until one day they either were knocked down by "accident" or burned to the ground - I can't remember.....
 
Downburst said:
I'm quite into the facade here. Howeler and Yoon have a great model shop and they created several dozen massing models/facade studies for this development.

If this does end up being limestone, it'll be one of the nicest facades that've gone up in the city in quite a while.
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Beton Brut said:
Winthrop Square deserves a building conceived with this much thoughtfulness.
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Limestone or not, the facade language needs to read from afar and up close. To me, it's only reading from up close. From afar, it looks like any other cheap facade that has gone up in Boston. I agree, it is a great facade with so much depth, materiality & detail, but it's not legible from anywhere but up close.
 
tobyjug said:
^^^
I know that I'm the Japanese soldier in the hills (http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-05-27-lost-soldiers_x.htm) but this "anti-urban hole in the fabric" was a systematic, cynical creation. I refuse to celebrate the ill-gotten gains with praise. This "parcel" never made the list because it wasn't always vacant.
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But as it is vacant today what would you have them do with it?

EDIT: I have now gone back and looked at what used to be there, as I was unaware of my history. But my question still stands.
 
datadyne007 said:
Limestone or not, the facade language needs to read from afar and up close. To me, it's only reading from up close. From afar, it looks like any other cheap facade that has gone up in Boston. I agree, it is a great facade with so much depth, materiality & detail, but it's not legible from anywhere but up close.
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That's a very valid point. My understanding is that the scalloping of the facade creates shadows meant to be visible from farther away.

Whether that actually happens, however, remains to be seen. In an ideal world we'd have a facade sampler now.
 
I have to be honest though if I had to choose between a facade reading well up close or it reading well from far away I would choose to have it read well up close especially for this building which will not be very visible in the skyline. It is more important that the facade read well for the people on the street than that it read well from further away. I also can't imagine that a stone facade with some real depth to it present in the scalloping would read poorly from further away there will always be shadows providing depth because of that.
 
timsox6 said:
But as it is vacant today what would you have them do with it?

EDIT: I have now gone back and looked at what used to be there, as I was unaware of my history. But my question still stands.
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I like you Tim, but not your lazy facts on this property!

Years ago I had the "opportunity" to represent the former property owner in his quest to clear the site. I declined the "honor".

As to your question, go back and look at what was promised for the preservation of parts of the former church/Hairenik building. Then you will understand my answer to your question: DO WHAT YOU PROMISED TO DO!
 
Equilibria said:
Presentation of revised PNF:

http://www.bostonplans.org/getattachment/b0ad0ed5-ae5d-4756-9121-1ab201147d06

Summary: building gets more beige than gray, and the first floor gets a lot more street activation, particularly on the Shawmut St. side.
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These look like improvements to me. Except the color change: I'm not having a strong reaction either way yet on that, not sure if I'll ever care. But the increased street activation looks like a very solid improvement.

These renders do a good job of depicting how those convex façade elements will create shadow lines, something that I liked about this design before and which didn't get lost in this iteration. The addition of some metalwork on the Shawmut side also works well.

I would guess that the Shawmut Street changes came in response top neighborhood feedback, and if so, the architects and developer should be given credit, this is a good response.
 
West said:
These look like improvements to me. Except the color change: I'm not having a strong reaction either way yet on that, not sure if I'll ever care. But the increased street activation looks like a very solid improvement.

These renders do a good job of depicting how those convex façade elements will create shadow lines, something that I liked about this design before and which didn't get lost in this iteration. The addition of some metalwork on the Shawmut side also works well.

I would guess that the Shawmut Street changes came in response top neighborhood feedback, and if so, the architects and developer should be given credit, this is a good response.
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I hope the neighbors complained - that side of the building looked pretty bad, especially given what was across the street. This is much better.
 
This looks 1000 times better. Great fixes. I like bricks instead of the pavers, too.
 
Oh wow thats a huge improvement! The neighborhood did a great job for once!
 
Hot damn. The ground floor residences are key to making this contextual.

I wasn't thrilled by the previous scheme, but now I'm 100% on board.

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+1 great changes. Ground floor residences make it for me to fit in the neighborhood context.
 
datadyne007 said:
Hot damn. The ground floor residences are key to making this contextual.

I wasn't thrilled by the previous scheme, but now I'm 100% on board.

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These are excellent changes to the ground floor. Is this "230" building across the street something that can be redeveloped in the future? How limited are the other sites in this immediate area due to the no shadows on the common/gardens stipulation?
 
DZH22 said:
These are excellent changes to the ground floor. Is this "230" building across the street something that can be redeveloped in the future? How limited are the other sites in this immediate area due to the no shadows on the common/gardens stipulation?
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South Cove Plaza (230 Stuart) is elderly/disabled subsidized housing, so it's not going anywhere any time soon.
 
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