BCEC expansion | Seaport

[TheRifleman]

^^^ Stadium reference... drink!!

At the rate of your posts today rifleman, i may not even make it to happy hour.

Drinks at REMY's at the SEAPORT after work or lets drive to Foxboro and get SHITFACED at Patriots place. Then Drink and drive back to BOSTON.

 

[whighlander]

This is little off topic but my point comes down to the end for the Seaport Development.

I believe it all comes down to ECONOMICS and TIMING.

Do we move forward and blow into the robotic, space and energy revolution that will continue to keep the economy growing into a new world ERA. Or has our society had an enough of the consumption and are finally moving towards more personal freedom away from the banks, Govt and their giant ponzi scheme..... I don’t think the value in the end will be SEAPORT. I think it will move back to the heart of the city.


Whigherland, I have also agreed that your theories could come true. A domino affect with Vertex and the area completely catches on like Kendal?
I just think the economics might come into play in this area in the end.

Just my opinion Hopefully I’m wrong.

Just a small domino -- Joe Tecce to close in North End for a year or so to build condos -- manwhile anoher restaurant slated to open in 12,000 sq ft at One Marina Park Drive.

Whether it is being orchestrated by Menino's office or just serendipity -- there has been a steady stream of announcements of all sorts of entities from Babson to the Herald moving or expanding into the SPID (my nomenclature -- SeaPort for you hopelessly romoantic neo-Victorians) and Innovation District for the KE (that would be Knowledge Economy or Knowledge Era) cognescenti

Even a relatively minor consequence construction accident deep-under the Virtex project!

 

[TheRifleman]

Boston Herald

Hub braces for monster marketing convention

By Brendan Lynch
Friday, September 30, 2011 - Added 5 days ago


South Boston will be invaded by 10,000 marketers this week, as the Direct Marketing Association kicks off its DMA2011 Conference & Exhibition at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center tomorrow, with a focus on “real-time” marketing.

“It’s a nice mix of big brands and small brands giving practical advice,” said Josh Mendelsohn, senior product marketing manager at Waltham online marketing company Constant Contact. “It’s cutting across the latest and greatest, like real-time marketing and social media, but it doesn’t ignore traditional areas like mail, or the more traditional Web.”

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone will speak at the conference Monday morning.

“Some of the keynotes are from execs from Facebook and Foursquare and Coke,” Mendelsohn said. “For me, it’s nice to see what the big boys are up to, and filter it for our customers, apply it to small businesses.”

Direct Marketing Association CEO Lawrence Kimmel said it’s the first time the 93-year-old organization has held the yearly event on the East Coast in 10 years. The group chose the Hub for its cluster of marketing technology companies, and the easy access it provides for East Coast and international attendees.

“The world of marketing has never been more exciting or more challenging,” Kimmel said. “There’s reams and reams of data available to marketers now from the social grid and smart phones — who customers are, what they’re doing, who their friends are, and where they are.”

While that sounds impressive, the event could be viewed as a large gathering of people who benefit from online data mining. But exhibitor Mike Merriman, director of strategic services at Waltham social media technology company Mzinga, said his company holds itself up to a high standard regarding consumer privacy.

“The industry is very good at policing itself,” Merriman said. “Otherwise, you put yourself out of business.”

http://www.bostonherald.com/busines...0hub_braces_for_monster_marketing_convention/

 

[JohnAKeith]

Weird. I didn't hear anything about this, last week.

:: irony ::

 

[Shepard]

Not that I want to see more of the Seaport lie fallow, but why is the vision here for a bunch of hotels adjacdent or nearto the BCEC? The existing structure is, to my visual reckoning, 4 or 5 Back Bay blocks long... is there any major structural impediment to building multiple hotels on top of the existing convention center? Wouldn't that be better land use than what essentially amounts to a million square foot tent?

 

[whighlander]

Not that I want to see more of the Seaport lie fallow, but why is the vision here for a bunch of hotels adjacdent or nearto the BCEC? The existing structure is, to my visual reckoning, 4 or 5 Back Bay blocks long... is there any major structural impediment to building multiple hotels on top of the existing convention center? Wouldn't that be better land use than what essentially amounts to a million square foot tent?

Shep -- exiting structure is not designed to accomodate anything built on top of the main "tent"

If you go inside you will see that the exhibition floor is very open with very few columns to support the "tent"

On the other hand -- the plans for expansion build on the perimeter utility sections (side streets and the back) and so smaller hotels could probably be built on and extending from either side or the back

However, in addition to a shortage of hotel rooms to support the expansion of the floor and ballroom -- there is a need for additional parking -- building garages with hotels on top is the solution recommended by the commission which recommended the BCEC expansion

 

[Boston02124]

last nite

 

[itchy]

Thought this article was interesting in light of the proposed expansion of the BCEC. Happy New Year!

Have We Got a Convention Center to Sell You!
From Boston to Austin, politicians spend money on fancy white elephants.


December 31, 2011
By STEVEN MALANGA

For two decades, America's convention center business has been declining, resulting in a nationwide surplus of empty meeting facilities, struggling convention halls and vacant hotel rooms. How have governments responded to this glut? By building more convention centers, of course, financed by debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers.

Back in 2007, before the recession began, a report from Destination Marketing Association International described America's convention industry as a "buyer's market" suffering excess capacity. It's only gotten worse, attracting just 86 million attendees in 2010, compared to 126 million in 2000. Meanwhile, the amount of convention space angling for business has increased to 70 million square feet, up from 53 million in 2000 and 40 million two decades ago.

That's largely because governments refuse to stop making convention centers bigger and hotels even more dazzling, arguing that whatever business remains will flow to the places with the fanciest amenities. To finance these risky projects—which the private sector won't build by itself—cities float debt backed by new taxes and fees on already struggling taxpayers. As Charles Chieppo, a former board member of Massachusetts Convention Center Authority, lamented last year, "Logic rarely has a place in the convention business."

Take Illinois, an industry leader,where officials have invested heavily to keep Chicago's McCormick Place, long one of the three most-used centers in the nation, on top. They spent $1 billion in the early 1990s to build a 840,000-square foot expansion financed by fees on auto rentals, a hotel tax and a surcharge on restaurant meals in downtown Chicago. In 2007 they opened a new building, McCormick West, at a cost of an additional $900 million. The result? According to the Chicago Tribune, the center operates at 55% capacity.

Then there's Boston, perhaps the quintessential example of a city that interprets failure in the convention business as a license to spend more on it. Massachusetts officials shelled out $230 million to renovate Hynes Convention Center in the late 1980s. When the makeover produced virtually no economic bounce, officials decided that the city needed a new, $800 million center financed by a hotel occupancy excise tax, a rental-car surcharge, and the sale of taxi medallions. Opened in 2004, that new Boston Convention and Exhibition Center was projected (by consultants hired by the state) to have Boston renting some 670,000 additional hotel rooms annually within five years. Instead, Beantown saw just 310,000 additional hotel room rentals in 2009.

Now Massachusetts officials want to spend $2 billion to double the size of the Boston Convention Center and add a hotel. Of course, they predict that the expanded facilities would bring an additional $222 million into the local economy each year, including 140,000 hotel room rentals. Even with these bullish projections, officials claim that the hotel would need $200 million in public subsidies.

"The whole thing is a racket," Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby recently observed. "Once again the politicos will expand their empire. Once again crony capitalism will enrich a handful of wired business operators. And once again Joe and Jane Taxpayer will pay through the nose. How many times must we see this movie before we finally shut it off?"

Many times, if officials in Baltimore have their way. Several years ago they built a $300 million city-owned hotel, (the Hilton Baltimore Convention Center Hotel) to boost the fortunes of the city's struggling convention center. Having opened in 2008, the hotel lost $11 million last year. Now the city is considering a public-private expansion plan that would add a downtown arena, an additional convention hotel, and 400,000 feet of new convention space at the cost of $400 million in public money.

The list goes on—everywhere from Columbus, Ohio, to Dallas, Austin, Phoenix and places in between. One problem is that optimistic projections about new facilities fail to account for how other cities are expanding, too. Why did Minneapolis struggle to hit projected targets after it enlarged its convention center in 2002? "Other cities expanded right along with us,'' Minneapolis's convention center director, Jeff Johnson, said this year.

The surest sign that taxpayers should be leery of such public investments is that officials have changed their sales pitch. Convention and meeting centers shouldn't be judged, they now say, by how many hotel rooms, restaurants, and local attractions they help fill. That's "narrow-minded thinking," said James Rooney of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority this year. Instead, as Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has said, expanding a convention center can "demonstrate to the world that we have unlimited confidence in our city and what it can do, not only as a convention destination but as the center of the most important trends in hospitality, science, health and education."

This new metric—a city's amorphous brand value—is little more than a convenient way to ignore the failure of publicly sponsored facilities to live up to exaggerated projections. But as far as city officials are concerned, that failure is nothing that hundreds of millions more in taxpayer dollars can't fix.

Mr. Malanga is a senior editor at City Journal. A longer version of this article appears in City Journal's Winter 2012 issue.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204720204577126603702369654.html

 

[mass88]

Well having tourists pay extra tax for new buildings is hardly anything new. Before this year, if you went to Seattle you were hit with a Safeco Field tax. Down in Miami they are doing this with their new taxpayer funded ballpark.

 

[bbfen]

Well having tourists pay extra tax for new buildings is hardly anything new. Before this year, if you went to Seattle you were hit with a Safeco Field tax. Down in Miami they are doing this with their new taxpayer funded ballpark.

If only there was a way to make it only for tourists. I live in the Back Bay and every time I eat out, I'm charged for the new convention center I didn't want. Every time I rent a car in my neighborhood, I'm charged for the new convention center I didn't want.

It's not just tourists.

 

[Ron Newman]

For the car rental, do you escape the tax if you cross the city line into Brookline or Cambridge to rent it?

 

[itchy]

Interesting what the strategic response from Boston *should* be to this, should it come to pass. It's clear what the BRA/Convention Center Authority/whoever else *will* be ("we need to build more to compete!"), but it's unclear whether that actually makes sense.

Perhaps they should leave the BCEC as it is and try to win the smaller and medium-sized shows that have a reason to be in Boston (e.g., biotech conferences, hospitals conferences, other life sciences, some niches within high-tech and financial services, higher education)?

A Convention Center at Aqueduct Is Urged

Arquitectonica
An illustration of the proposed $4 billion exhibition hall, hotel and expanded casino at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens.

By CHARLES V. BAGLI
Published: January 4, 2012

One of Manhattan’s most desirable real-estate assets was at the center of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s proposal Wednesday to build the country’s largest convention center at a racetrack-casino in Queens.

A new 3.8-million-square-foot exhibition hall and hotel at the Aqueduct racetrack in Jamaica, Queens, would free up 18 windswept acres owned by the state overlooking the Hudson River in Midtown Manhattan, a site occupied since the 1980s by the much- maligned Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

The land could fetch billions of dollars from developers, say state officials, urban planners and real estate executives. That could plug budget gaps and pay for expensive projects, like expanding Pennsylvania Station.

“The Javits site is worth $4 billion,” said Robert Yaro, president of the Regional Plan Association. “You can release that value and use it for the long-term advantage of city and state. All by itself, the convention center in Queens becomes the biggest urban development project in the country.”

Still, the question is whether the Queens project makes sense, experts said. The convention business is highly competitive, and attendance is falling around the country. Most convention centers are run by public authorities at a deficit.

Mr. Cuomo said the Javits center, which is in the middle of a $500 million renovation, no longer belongs in Manhattan, where it is too small to compete for the large trade shows now going to convention centers in Chicago, Orlando and Las Vegas.

Under Mr. Cuomo’s proposal, the state would forge a joint venture with the Genting Group, the Malaysian company that has invested $800 million in opening a gambling hall at Aqueduct. Genting, not the state, would finance a $4 billion convention center, with a hotel and expanded gambling space, while the government would contribute the land in Queens.

“This will bring to New York the largest events, driving demand for hotel rooms and restaurant meals and creating tax revenues and jobs, jobs, jobs,” Mr. Cuomo said in his State of the State speech. “In addition to the new convention space, up to 3,000 hotel rooms will be developed. We will make New York the No. 1 convention site in the nation.”

After the Javits center is demolished, the state would develop a master plan for housing, hotels and museums on the site, between 34th and 40th Streets and west of 11th Avenue, and sell or lease the land to developers.

The Javits center has always been busy, but mainly with trade shows that attract patrons from the New York region, rather than conventioneers who book hotel rooms and spend a lot of money in Manhattan.

Over the past two decades, many cities have built exhibition halls or expanded existing convention centers in the hope of attracting professional associations and similar groups, whose attendees typically spend four or five days in a city. But competition, the recession and videoconferencing have taken a toll.

Heywood Sanders, professor of public administration at the University of Texas and an expert on convention center economics, said he doubted that the Queens plan would succeed.

“The convention business is a disaster everywhere,” Professor Sanders said. “Simply building more space gets you nothing more than a big empty building. And to put it in a place where there aren’t any hotels, restaurants or amenities next door is to doom it to serving only a local or metropolitan market.”

But New York City officials said they could lure more conventions with a larger hall. “It’s absolutely appropriate for the Queens economy — trying to maximize the benefits of being home to two international airports,” said Kathryn S. Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City. “It would have terrific benefits for the borough and the city economy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/05/n...ention-center-at-aqueduct-in-queens.html?_r=1

 

[whighlander]

Interesting what the strategic response from Boston *should* be to this, should it come to pass. It's clear what the BRA/Convention Center Authority/whoever else *will* be ("we need to build more to compete!"), but it's unclear whether that actually makes sense.

Perhaps they should leave the BCEC as it is and try to win the smaller and medium-sized shows that have a reason to be in Boston (e.g., biotech conferences, hospitals conferences, other life sciences, some niches within high-tech and financial services, higher education)?

NYC has a nearly insurmountable problem $$$$$

Big big shows tend to be mostly cheap (with few exceptions such as CES) they don't want to spend the $$$$ needed just to have a plug installed for you at the Javits and the new one will be no different as the mafia owns the work agreements

Boston also has a cost disadvantage -- but it is less dramatic than NYC
Boston also has the inherent advantage of having several of the local industry categories with the $ for a big convention e.g. Bio/Pharama and Medical

 

[stellarfun]

A rendering in today's Globe:

May be from last Fall's pdf document.

 

[TheRifleman]

^^^^
Looks like VEGAS

 

[SeamusMcFly]

Being that Vegas is the measuring stick as far as conventions and convention hotels... that would make sense.

I've made the comparison of the new waterfront as resembling Vegas a few times.
Equally spaced, identical height, similar design buildings, all in a row along a wide "boulevard". Very similar.

 

[Pierce]

Being that Vegas is the measuring stick as far as conventions and convention hotels... that would make sense.

I've made the comparison of the new waterfront as resembling Vegas a few times.
Equally spaced, identical height, similar design buildings, all in a row along a wide "boulevard". Very similar.

you can't beat the standard by aiming for "similar"... Boston shouldn't be trying to out-Vegas Vegas itself. The BCEC should be about being next to the ocean, moreover about what distinguishes Boston from other convention cities. The urban condition evolving in the Seaport district is its biggest liability right now in my view--it should compliment the "old world" urbanity of old Boston that tourists (and I, for one) love. It should be our own little Rotterdam, Malmo or Berlin: light rail, density, smart architecture, innovative building materials.

We should be focusing on bringing conventioneers from Anycity, USA to Boston, but we are more effectively doing vice versa.

 

[whighlander]

you can't beat the standard by aiming for "similar"... Boston shouldn't be trying to out-Vegas Vegas itself. The BCEC should be about being next to the ocean, moreover about what distinguishes Boston from other convention cities. The urban condition evolving in the Seaport district is its biggest liability right now in my view--it should compliment the "old world" urbanity of old Boston that tourists (and I, for one) love. It should be our own little Rotterdam, Malmo or Berlin: light rail, density, smart architecture, innovative building materials.

We should be focusing on bringing conventioneers from Anycity, USA to Boston, but we are more effectively doing vice versa.

Pierce, Seam -- the SPID can not be a recreation of the North End or Beacon Hill -- if you want to try to replicate something of the "Real Boston" in the SPID - the model has to be the Back Bay

You allow some tallish buildings along a Boylston St., (Office, Hotels), another couple of major mostly residential streets with social facilities such as Comm Ave. and Beacon St., a major retail oriented street such as Newbury St and then the rest of the streets are smaller scale residential e.g. Clarendon, Fairfield St., Marlborough St,. etc.

 

[Pierce]

the SPID can not be a recreation of the North End or Beacon Hill -- if you want to try to replicate something of the "Real Boston" in the SPID - the model has to be the Back Bay

That's not what I was suggesting, but I could see how you would be led to think that. Damn words.

What I was saying was that just as tourists seek the Bostonian iteration of old European urbanity, we could emulate the strategies many European cities have taken in redeveloping their own docklands.

A great example is the Zeeburg area in Amsterdam, which is all new build in the last decade or two. The god's eye view alone will show you that a broad range of land uses and building footprints are addressed, which alone is an improvement to the Seaport.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Zeeburg,+The+Netherlands&hl=en&ll=52.37049,4.945757&spn=0.015132,0.03886&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=77.487128,159.169922&oq=zeebur&hnear=Zeeburg,+Government+of+Amsterdam,+North+Holland,+The+Netherlands&t=h&z=16

Start poking around on streetview and check out the scale of the roadways, how the adjacencies between different pieces are treated, and the quality of the spaces, and notice the difference. In terms of urban space and building massing I feel a resonance between this and the Charlestown Navy Yard, Long Wharf/Aquarium Area, the North End wharfs-- the Seaport is definitely the odd duck in the group.

Zeeburg is probably twice the size of the seaport area, but still an apt comparison. A smaller one would be the area to the west of Calatrava's turning torso tower in Malmo, Sweden, which is a pretty deft combing of building density and energetic open space.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=4+lilla+varvsgatan,+malmo,+sweden&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=55.611226,12.989874&spn=0.027414,0.07772&sll=55.612981,12.973995&sspn=0.003427,0.009715&hnear=Lilla+Varvsgatan+4,+211+17+Malm%C3%B6,+Sweden&t=h&z=15

 

[whighlander]

That's not what I was suggesting, but I could see how you would be led to think that. Damn words.

What I was saying was that just as tourists seek the Bostonian iteration of old European urbanity, we could emulate the strategies many European cities have taken in redeveloping their own docklands.

A great example is the Zeeburg area in Amsterdam, which is all new build in the last decade or two. The god's eye view alone will show you that a broad range of land uses and building footprints are addressed, which alone is an improvement to the Seaport.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=Zeeburg,+The+Netherlands&hl=en&ll=52.37049,4.945757&spn=0.015132,0.03886&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=77.487128,159.169922&oq=zeebur&hnear=Zeeburg,+Government+of+Amsterdam,+North+Holland,+The+Netherlands&t=h&z=16

Start poking around on streetview and check out the scale of the roadways, how the adjacencies between different pieces are treated, and the quality of the spaces, and notice the difference. In terms of urban space and building massing I feel a resonance between this and the Charlestown Navy Yard, Long Wharf/Aquarium Area, the North End wharfs-- the Seaport is definitely the odd duck in the group.

Zeeburg is probably twice the size of the seaport area, but still an apt comparison. A smaller one would be the area to the west of Calatrava's turning torso tower in Malmo, Sweden, which is a pretty deft combing of building density and energetic open space.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=4+lilla+varvsgatan,+malmo,+sweden&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=55.611226,12.989874&spn=0.027414,0.07772&sll=55.612981,12.973995&sspn=0.003427,0.009715&hnear=Lilla+Varvsgatan+4,+211+17+Malm%C3%B6,+Sweden&t=h&z=15

Pierce -- It's very difficult to draw many useful comparisons on the scale of the whole SPID -- no other location will have the same combination of existing structures (e.g. Commonwealth Pier, Army Base Buildings, Boston Wharf Buildings, Gillette, etc.) existing streets serving as major thoroughfares (e,g, Summer St., Northern Ave. / New Northern Ave., D St.) other existing usages (Fish Pier, Cruise Terminal, Container Terminal, Children's Museum, Marine Industrial Park etc.), and the highway buried underneath and in a few places dominating the surface. Most of the other waterfront conversions / redos such Canary Wharf and the Dockyards in London -- had a nearly clean sheet from which to begin work. In addition, the presence of Logan runways and the complex of ramps imposes a lot of external constraints.

I think the best which can be expected and it can be very good is to intelligently integrate using the road network and some air-rights buildings the various elements:
1) the very modern, high visibility mega-scale buildings and blocks associated with the immediate water front and the the various piers
2) the more traditional Boston of the Fort Point / Boston Wharf Area
3) the Mega-scale of the BCEC area along Summer St near D St.
4) the industrial area of the Marine Industrial Park, Cruise and Container Terminals and the Gillette area

The key to the ultimate success of the SPID is to link these sub-areas with their own characters together through the use of the road network, the Harborwalk and other footpaths (perhaps including Gerbil Tubes) and the infill structures such as Seaport Square