Berklee Expansion Plans | Back Bay

The Midtown Hotel would be on my shortlist of underachieving parcels.
 
As much as I would love to see the Midtown go, the people living on St. Botolph will put up one hell of a fight over whatever is proposed there. I was talking to a guy who had mulled the idea of redeveloping it and he said while the permitting to go as high as the Green House would not have been overly difficult to secure the neighborhood opposition, primarily from those on St. Botolph and Albemarle would have been too much of a PR nightmare.
 
Didn't the Midtown replace townhouses that were about the same height as those on St. Botolph?
 
Yeah, but there would be little financial incentive to reproduce mere townhouses on a site like that. It's a Catch-22: what the developers would only ever want to build is too big for the neighbors, what the neighbors would ever permit is too small for the developers.
 
The hotel shown in the Banker & Tradesman photo is the Howard Johnson's on Boylston Street, west of the Fens and (yes) behind Fenway Park. Does seem a bit far from Berklee.

I'd rather see it demolished and replaced instead of reused. When BU turned the other Howard Johnson's into a dorm, they did no favors to Commonwealth Ave.
 
It is far from Berklee. I don't get the point of expanding in that direction.

Boylston St. Hotel Strikes Chord With Berklee
By Thomas Grillo
Banker & Tradesman

Berklee College of Music is hoping to turn the Howard Johnson Hotel behind Fenway Park into dormitories.

A hotel near Fenway Park could be the key to Berklee College of Music?s expansion.

William Whitney, Berklee?s vice president for real estate, acknowledged Monday that the school is negotiating with Robert Sage, owner of the 94-room Howard Johnson Hotel at 1271 Boylston St., to purchase the property.

?We have been talking to a number of people, including the Sages, about possible projects,? Whitney said. ?We have an ongoing institutional master plan process for the neighborhood and have indicated that we are seeking to build 1,200 dorms within walking distance of the campus.?

Whitney declined to provide details. A source close to the negotiations said if the school were to purchase the property, it would replace the 50-year-old facility with an undetermined number of dorms.

The hotel is two blocks from public transportation and a short walk to the Berklee campus. It is owned by Fenmore Realty Corp. Sage, one of Fenmore?s trustees, did not return repeated calls seeking comment.

Boston City Councilor Michael Ross, whose district includes the Fenway, said that section of the city would be an ideal place for student residences. ?That area has been identified by abutters and the community as a good location for a dormitory,? he said.

In 2006, Berklee proposed a high-rise that would have replaced a pair of buildings the school owns at Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street. Under the plan, the Berklee Performance Center and a two-story academic building would have been demolished and replaced with Berklee Crossroads, a 450,000-square-foot facility with 600 dormitory beds, two new theaters and a student center.

But the plan was withdrawn in December following opposition from the Berklee Task Force. The 16-member panel, comprised of representatives from neighborhood groups, was appointed by Mayor Thomas M. Menino to advise City Hall and the Boston Redevelopment Authority on the project. While the task force supported more student housing, many feared the $120 million high-rise would have been out of scale for the neighborhood.
Click to expand...
 
Oh good: "it would replace the 50-year-old facility with an undetermined number of dorms." Sounds like a win for both the streetscape and Berklee.
 
Its the only motel Ive ever seen charging 300+ a night (some parts of the year)
 
So I take it the Sox are no longer pursuing the HoJo..

As for the distance from campus, it's a seven minute walk to Mass Ave, and lots of Berklee students live over in Fenway West already.

I'd prefer they focus on the air rights stuff, but it will probably take a loooong time to get anything out of the ground (or is it air?) there, and so they must go scouting around elsewhere.
 
Did anyone else attend Berklee's taskforce meeting tonight? I'm gone for a few days, but will try to remember to post my observations later this week.
 
The pace that Berklee moves, it'll fall down before they do anything with it. They were scheduled to submit their IMP a year ago. They're hoping to be ready sometime this summer to have the taskforce review the draft.

All the large schools and many of the mid-size schools will have started and completed major construction projects in the same time-span.
 
From the 10/25 edition of the Courant:

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img1497st4.jpg
 
KZ, thanks for scanning this article.

1. Why cant Mass ave and Boylston be a major intersection?
2. If there's already 2 other buildings proposed why fight it? can you win them all Ms. Waltz
3. 475 beds for a student dormitory is not an excessive number when you look across the country at urban colleges.
 
I very much enjoy Meg Cohen for her fairly lucid and thoughtful comments (on development in general, not just in this context). Here, she came just short of calling Berklee's plan a part of the High Spine development, a phrase that Ms. Walz vigorously objects to for several minutes at a time.
 
"It's conceivable that yours is one of three towers right here," she said to Berklee representatives.
Click to expand...
... and that's enough to consign you definitively to the fires of hell.
 
Suffolk 83 said:
KZ, thanks for scanning this article.

1. Why cant Mass ave and Boylston be a major intersection?
2. If there's already 2 other buildings proposed why fight it? can you win them all Ms. Waltz
3. 475 beds for a student dormitory is not an excessive number when you look across the country at urban colleges.
Click to expand...

Berklee is the only one to propose a building at the intersection. Aside from the Cambria easement/parcel 14 issue, something like 95% of Berklee's proposal is on terra firma owned by Berklee.

Ms. Walz's argument against a Berklee building on that corner is because of potential future development within the immediate area. She includes potential turnpike air rights development, 888 Boylston and Christian Science reopening a master plan as her argument.

Ms. Walz spins it as if 3 looming structures of 112 floors each have been proposed (ZOMG TEH SHADOEZZZ!!11!!!). Not true.


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Imagine the LaLa Group (fictional company). Imagine an elected official friendly with the fictional company. Imagine if, in a few years, it was revealed that the elected official was "in the know" and sabotaged neighborhood development in order to set the stage for the LaLa Group to build something very large next to the Hynes. Would that be amusing or what?
 
Berklee recently bought 4 building on Mass Ave and on Boylston St. They are almost guaranteed to be part of any new developments in the area so I would guess it was and easy choice to compromised on height. who know this new height may have been their goal all along.
 
Berklee, and every other college in this city, should be encouraged to use their existing property in the absolute most efficient manner possible, so not to necessitate further property acquisitions that only serve to erode the city's tax base. This means building taller and denser. Opposing height here will only increase the likelihood that this entire area will eventually be completely gobbled up by Berklee's outward sprawl.
 
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