Berklee Expansion Plans | Back Bay

The ugly sidewalk brick wall is going to go away
 
The inside of that last building is the most twisting, turning, multileveled labyrinth I ever had to figure out.
 
GW2500 said:
The inside of that last building is the most twisting, turning, multileveled labyrinth I ever had to figure out.
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No shit. I'm not disoriented very easily, but after four semesters of semi-useless schooling there I never totally adjusted to that building (150 Mass Ave).
 
Berklee's expansion plans passed -- apparently, the proposal that demolishes the nice building on the corner and the one next to it is the one that was approved, even though Berklee did apparently have a slightly different proposal that would've saved them.

Naturally, the BRA wouldn't have pushed for the proposal that saved the facades of the older buildings, and don't expect any of the NIMBYs or politicians for whom "shadows" are the greatest faux pas in urban planning to take issue with it, either.

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news...klees_master_p.html?p1=HP_Well_YourTown_links

Boston Globe said:

BRA approves Berklee's master plan, including 3 Mass Ave buildings

The city redevelopment authority Thursday approved Berklee College of Music's master plan for the institution, with the college planning to start construction in the fall on the first of three new buildings, including a 24-story performance center, on Massachusetts Avenue.

The college's development plans, approved by the Boston Redevelopment Authority's board, would add 500,000 square feet of performance, student life, administrative and dorm space to the school's Back Bay campus, according to a press release from the school.

The plans include the addition of 800 new dorm rooms, which the school said is in response to Mayor Thomas M. Menino's call for colleges to build more on-campus housing.

The college said they plan to build a new, "state-of-the art" performance center on the site of its existing performance center at 130-136 Massachusetts Avenue.

The building, called the "Berklee Crossroads Project," was originally planned at 29 stories, but the college lowered the height in response to neighborhood concerns.

Construction will begin first on a $100 million, 16-story mixed use building at 168 Massachusetts Avenue, with the 155,000 square-foot building housing 370 dorm rooms, a two-story cafeteria, a performance center, recording studios, and street-level retail space.

The existing building will be razed, the college said, with construction expected to begin in the fall.
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Interesting. Given the news that Trinity is ready to get started on parcel 13, that intersection is going to be a busy place for a few years, and radically transformed. It will make a really nice entrance to the back bay, almost a Western gateway.
 
Looks like its going to be a busy fall in terms of construction ^.
 
does this demolish the existing Berklee Performance Center (former Fenway Theatre)?
 
The corner building is the best thing about berklee (architecturally). Theyd be insane to demolish it.
 
itchy, to be fair to them Berklee has said for 4 years they will investigate saving the bank building and Fenway theater facades and have even included those entrances into the conceptual planning BUT that they won't know if it's even possible until they start work on the crossroads building.
 
Ron Newman said:
does this demolish the existing Berklee Performance Center (former Fenway Theatre)?
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Yes except maybe the facade as noted in the full filing. There's nothing left of it except the lobby though.
 
jass said:
The corner building is the best thing about berklee (architecturally). Theyd be insane to demolish it.
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Rawn's generic ugly mess certainly isn't improving Berklee's style. I do think the one at Hemenway/Ipswich is a pretty nice building.
 
So is the tower from the Boston.com rendering a dorm? The tower portion is far from pretty, but I really like the base. I walk by this site pretty much on a daily basis, and this will be a welcome replacement for what is currently there.
 
Am I wrong, or is that not the current Berklee Performance Center and former bank building in the background? The building in the rendering appears to replace the building that is currently between Belvedere and St Germain Streets (McDonald's and the Korean place).
Here's the Google Street View from almost exactly the same spot
 
^^ Yep, the project the BRA just approved (168 Mass Ave.) is not the "Berklee Crossroads" project, for which there are two massing plans rendered on Page 9 of this thread.

For the Berklee Crossroads project, one proposal would demolish the existing corner building at Mass Ave and Boylston as well as the existing Berklee Performance Center for the new, mid-rise structure; the other would incorporate them into the mid-rise.

The proposal that was approved by the BRA the other day, 168 Mass Ave, appears to demolish only a series of one-story taxpayers that are architecturally bland enough to make it unclear whether they were constructed in 1953, 1969, or 1990.
 
itchy said:
^^ Yep, the project the BRA just approved (168 Mass Ave.) is not the "Berklee Crossroads" project, for which there are two massing plans rendered on Page 9 of this thread.

For the Berklee Crossroads project, one proposal would demolish the existing corner building at Mass Ave and Boylston as well as the existing Berklee Performance Center for the new, mid-rise structure; the other would incorporate them into the mid-rise.

The proposal that was approved by the BRA the other day, 168 Mass Ave, appears to demolish only a series of one-story taxpayers that are architecturally bland enough to make it unclear whether they were constructed in 1953, 1969, or 1990.
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Eh sort of. I thought the BRA reviewed both the IMP (the overall campus growth plan) and the specifics of Article 80 review for the McDonalds project? How could they move forward with the McDonalds project without an overall approved master plan? When the time comes for the crossroads then they'll have to do large project review.
 
Could you design a more boring highrise?

168_mass_ave_berklee.jpg


What happened to William Rawn?
 
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