Boom Town

[BarbaricManchurian]

In today's business section of the Globe:

Downtown
Boom Town
In wake of Big Dig and harbor cleanup, buildings sprout up

By Steve Bailey, Globe Columnist | July 13, 2007

Today I take a break from my usual cranky self for 700 words of optimism. The reason: Boston, and some of its surrounding towns, are in the midst of the kind of building boom we haven't seen in more than a decade.

While residential foreclosures remain high, a legacy of the subprime mortgage bubble, and home prices are soft, the pace of construction in Boston is reaching a level not seen since the last great boom, from 1987 to 1991. What is most striking about this construction wave is just how broadbased it is: from the hospitals and universities to hotels and residential, and now even office and industrial space.

And it is happening across the city, downtown, and in the neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Waltham is in the middle of its own building boom, and in Cambridge commercial rents are exploding as Blackstone Group jacks up prices after buying Equity Office. (Call it "the Blackstone effect.")

Consider: In June, there were 75 projects under construction -- 11 million square feet in all -- in the c ity of Boston, according to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, or the equivalent of 10 Prudential Towers. That represents $3.3 billion in investment and 13,000 full-time construction jobs.

"It is an unprecedented square-foot-per-year we are dealing with," says Kairos Shen, the BRA's director of planning.

Look around the city. After years of delay, work has started on a 25-story W Hotel and condo building on a parking lot in the decrepit Theatre District.

Related Cos. of New York and Beal Cos. of Boston are building a 32-story condo and apartment tower at Stuart and Clarendon streets.

Another long-delayed project, the 12-story Two Financial Center office building, just broke ground at South Station. Yesterday, developers broke ground on an apartment complex in the Bulfinch Triangle near North Station.

On and on it goes. Russia Wharf, with its base of classic Boston red-brick buildings now latticed in scaffolding, will finally get underway as the city's next big office tower, as soon as Boston Properties repairs the "alien on the park" design. The huge $700 million redevelopment of the Filene's block in Downtown Crossing -- with its 500,000 square feet of office space, 125 condos, a hotel, and retail -- is set to begin in September. Boston developer Joe Fallon promises to start construction on at least one building on Fan Pier this fall, but considering the history of that windblown parking lot I will wait and see.

And Arthur Winn? If the reluctant developer, with all the help from his friends at the State House and City Hall, cannot get his too-big Columbus Center started in this environment, he should let someone else do it.

All this activity is being driven by Boston's robust university and hospital sector, an office market where rents have risen by 50 percent and vacancies have fallen by half in 18 months, and gobs of global money chasing real estate deals. It is also the payoff for the $20 billion-plus in public infrastructure investment in the city over the last two decades. While we don't say it very often, the pols and the courts got it right when they bet big on the Big Dig, the harbor cleanup, and the new convention center.

"In the next five to 10 years, we're going to see the largest building renaissance in the history of New England," says John Fish, chief executive of Suffolk Construction. Adds development consultant Michael Vaughan: "It is happening all over the city. I go to Dorchester, and people complain their neighborhood is being overwhelmed by development. Isn't it wonderful that people actually want to invest in your community?"

Managing all this growth and preserving what makes Boston so attractive in the first place will be a challenge. (Hiring a strong BRA director would help -- but there I go again.) Growth is a wonderful thing. It has a way of making everyone seem a whole lot smarter.

Steve Bailey is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at bailey@globe.com or at 617-929-2902.
? Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.

Finally Boston is picking up some development. I would say it is a long way away from a boom town. Las Vegas is a true boom town, because they have over 70 high-rises under construction (source: VegasTodayAndTomorrow.com) and have proposed the 2nd tallest building on the Western Hemisphere (Crown Las Vegas, 1,888ft). But it's nice to see Boston go through some changes, and get it out of it's NIMBY-induced paralysis.

 

[type001]

This is far from a boom. I think the columnists are just running out of things to write about. This is just development as usual, especially since a great bulk of the development is residential. Maybe the article would have been more convincing if it had actually listed Boston's soon-to-be 3rd tallest tower SST. How could they leave that off the list?

 

[KentXie]

I think it is a boom in Boston standards but a depression in every other major cities.

 

[vanshnookenraggen]

The fact that this is a "boom" for Boston just shows how poor off this city is. I live in NYC and, literally, if you take your eyes off a place for a little while, when you come back it has changed. You can't walk down the street without having to detour through a maze of construction scaffolding. I can count more buildings going up outside my window then there are buildings planned for downtown Boston. Hell, I just watched them take down a 40 story tower just so they can put up a 50 story tower! Now I don't think it is entirely right to compare Boston and NY but it just makes me laugh to read that article.

"In the next five to 10 years, we're going to see the largest building renaissance in the history of New England," says John Fish, chief executive of Suffolk Construction.

He would say that wouldn't he? But unfortunately he doesn't have history on his side. Boston's booms are short.

 

[underground]

Comparing Boston and New York is a non-starter because New York belongs on the list of world mega-cities while Boston belongs on the list of American large cities. Comparing Boston and Las Vegas is also a non-starter because, built into Vegas's main source of revenue flow (entertainment) is an inherent need to build huge buildings. It's more appropriate to compare Boston with cities like Worcester, Providence, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Philladelphia, Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinatti, Baltimore, you get the picture; eastern, cold weather, former manufacturing cities, large education/research/medical precence. In that light, yes, Boston is having a boom in comparison to those cities. All the Debbie Downers in Boston need to stop comparing it to New York, because it's just totally inappropriate. If they made the correct comparison's, they'd see how well off we really are. Anyone who thinks otherwise can more to Hartford.

 

[KentXie]

Hartford however would not make a good comparison as it is a much smaller city than Boston. I think comparison works well for cities that have similar population or similar density (mainly density).

 

[BostonObserver]

last boom

Hartford however would not make a good comparison as it is a much smaller city than Boston. I think comparison works well for cities that have similar population or similar density (mainly density).

In the last boom Hartford was bragging how they were about to build the tallest building in New England, so I think this is a good comparison.

Boston is in a boom period, possible there greatest boom since the depression. Because New York is undergoing a massive boom that does not mean that Boston isn't beginning a major boom. In the next year there will be an enormous number of projects underway and before long there will be many projects visible on the skyline. It will be as dramatic as the 60's and 70's. Of course there were almost no buildings on the skyline then.

Bostonians need to stop this inferiority complex and not just in regards to NYC.

 

[JaysonL]

At this moment, a reader in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, just read the comment about New York?s building ?boom? and chuckled to himself in a patronizing fashion.

 

[castevens]

New York City
High-rise Buildings of the city

High-rise Statistics
128 under construction
5,569 completed
36 approved
118 proposed
1 on hold
31 under reconstruction
2 under demolition

Boston
High-rise Buildings of the city

High-rise Statistics
12 under construction
264 completed
14 approved

New York is (literally) more than 6 times the land mass of Boston, with 15 times the population and 21 times the number of existing buildings. In fact, if you use existing 12+ story buildings as a measure of a city's size, Boston is currently going through an "under construction" boom twice the proportional size of New York City's current 'boom' (12 x 21 = 252 > 128) and an "approved boom" of 8 times the proportional size of NYC's (14 x 21 = 294 > 36).

Yes, people, I know that that is a terrible comparison, I'm just trying to put things into perspective.

 

[KentXie]

New York City
High-rise Buildings of the city

High-rise Statistics
128 under construction
5,569 completed
36 approved
118 proposed
1 on hold
31 under reconstruction
2 under demolition

Boston
High-rise Buildings of the city

High-rise Statistics
12 under construction
264 completed
14 approved

New York is (literally) more than 6 times the land mass of Boston, with 15 times the population and 21 times the number of existing buildings. In fact, if you use existing 12+ story buildings as a measure of a city's size, Boston is currently going through an "under construction" boom twice the proportional size of New York City's current 'boom' (12 x 21 = 252 > 128) and an "approved boom" of 8 times the proportional size of NYC's (14 x 21 = 294 > 36).

Yes, people, I know that that is a terrible comparison, I'm just trying to put things into perspective.

That perspective will not work. You have to count the height and size of the skyscrpaers. As you can see, Boston's skyscrapers are much shorter than those of NYC, thus providing a lower amount of space compared to those of NYC.

 

[castevens]

This wasn't about space or height. This was about boom of 'high rise buildings' (as defined by me and Emporis: 12+ stories) being built at a given moment in time.

If you want to give me the existing SF numbers for both Boston and NYC, and then give me the SF numbers for all of the projects that are under construction in both cities, I bet we will still find that Boston's current 'expansion' might be PROPORTIONALLY larger than NYC's.

and THAT was the point of my post. If you're going to compare Boston and NYC, admit that NYC is larger, and take that into account. Point being, for BOSTON, this IS a boom.

 

[KentXie]

Re: last boom

Hartford however would not make a good comparison as it is a much smaller city than Boston. I think comparison works well for cities that have similar population or similar density (mainly density).

In the last boom Hartford was bragging how they were about to build the tallest building in New England, so I think this is a good comparison.

That should not play a role. Building one tall tower should not mean that its comparable. It's like having the Nashville trumping LA because their signature tower will surpass the height of US Bank Building.

 

[TC]

Interesting numbers. A quick comparison tells me that about 4.5% of Bostons high rises are under construction compared to just under 2.5% for NY.

But the numbers that tell me we are not in a boom is the comparison between what's approved to what's actually being built. NY is building 78% of the projects that they have approved while Boston is only building 46%.

We could be in a 'boom' very quickly if these project all start like they say, but I will wait and see.

 

[Ron Newman]

Las Vegas is a true boom town, because they have over 70 high-rises under construction.

Yeah, but if we really wanted to live in a place like Las Vegas or Dubai, we'd move there.

 

[BostonObserver]

Re: last boom

Hartford however would not make a good comparison as it is a much smaller city than Boston. I think comparison works well for cities that have similar population or similar density (mainly density).

In the last boom Hartford was bragging how they were about to build the tallest building in New England, so I think this is a good comparison.

That should not play a role. Building one tall tower should not mean that its comparable. It's like having the Nashville trumping LA because their signature tower will surpass the height of US Bank Building.

If a 'smaller' city was planning a tower of that height then it is a good comparison.

The question was

Do you think Boston is booming?

and immediately it became "oh poor us we're not New York" again. The boom in New york is already 5-10 years old, Boston has just started. New York is loaded with nimbys, what do you thing Woody Allen does with all his spare time.

How anyone can not see what a giant boom is starting to take place is beyond me. The MFA expansion is the the largest art project outside of New York and 3rd overall in the country, and that was a few years ago when the Guggenheim was still planning a new building it may be #1 now.

 

[czsz]

Let's be clear. The office market is booming in Boston, but it's not producing:
-high quality buildings - the SBW is an architectural travesty, the Transnational tower is formlessness defined
-highly visible buildings - because so much of the construction seems to be taking place on the SBW or along FP Channel. The only very visible crane and steel skeleton I've seen is that of the new research center in Longwood. Maybe that's about to change, but thus far, I don't get the sense of "boom" looking out over the city.
-injections of new residents (the latest proposals have been relatively free of residential components)
-substantial changes to the streetscape of most parts of the city...this above all gives Boston a torporish flavor; you can come back here after a four year hiatus and patronize the same stores in the same locations - streetscapes in New York shift much more rapidly.

I sometimes feel as if the cityscape of Boston, with notable exceptions like Millennium Place and 111 Huntington, has been frozen since the mid-80s, and the streetscape has been begging to be rescued from a late-70s craze for brick.

As vanshnook said, construction envelops New York everywhere. I could not look out of my old place overlooking Harlem without seeing a daily change to the skyline. NIMBYism exists there, but the fact that the preexisting built environment in Manhattan is so intense tends to dampen arguments that the character of neighborhoods is being swept away definitively (by comparison, Brooklyn is more like Boston; opposition to Atlantic Yards reminds me very much of the hue and cry against Columbus Center). On the Upper West Side there are now twin condo towers that are easily double the height of anything around them. Yes, the NIMBYs came out for zoning restrictions after the fact, but think about how, by comparison, it's not even easy to put up a three story commercial building in Davis Square, which has the transit capacity for highrise development, without the torches and pickaxes being drawn.

 

[BostonObserver]

architectura(not new york)lBOSTON

czsz you prove my point again. I've lived in NYC for may years, still visit regularly and and I'm aware of the changes, wish I owned a scaffolding company there. But I get exasperated with this forum's obsession with NYC especially people who see NYC as the Holy Grail but know nothing of the city. It can be very difficult to build there, isn't there a new Foster building planned for 5th Ave that is getting a lot of resistance? When was the last time they had a major improvement or expansion to the subway or road system?

 

[czsz]

It's true that public investments have lagged behind private ones in New York. The money that went to the Big Dig was originally earmarked for the Westway project in Manhattan; it's a testament to the power of New York activists and Massachusetts lobbyists that one was completed and the other was not. But there's been a renewed push for such projects under Bloomberg. The Second Ave. subway is finally underway, there are all kinds of new rail tunnels being built under the rivers, and while congestion pricing remains controversial, it certainly reflects the city's concern for transportation. Yes, the state of highways running in, out, and through the city is not exemplary, but, as a carless city resident, I far preferred that state of affairs to the highway-riddled center of Boston and the ceaseless complications that presents for future development.

None of this has really affected the capacity of New York to boom with private investment. Isolated examples of sustained NIMBYism in traditionalist enclaves like the Upper East Side are just exceptions that prove the rule. It might still be difficult to build there compared to Dubai or even Atlanta, but it's nothing like Boston. More is proposed, what's proposed is more adventurous, and more of what's proposed is actually realized.

 

[atlrvr]

Everyone is Boston is obsessed with NYC....that was one of my biggest surprises after moving here.

Most everyone I meet asks why I moved to Boston from Charlotte, and I say I wanted to live in a big city environoment, and that Charlotte was many years away from providing that.

The automatic reaction from EVERYONE in Boston has been...."Boston's not a big city, why didn't you move to New York"

Ok, it's not AS BIG as New York, but in terms of feel, its bigger than any place in the US besides NYC, and in my opinion comparable to Chicago, Philly, S.F. and D.C.

I think everyone here is warped having NYC so close by, that they don't appreciate how un-urban the rest of America is.

Would it be great if there were some more high-rises. Sure, especially for those who don't like what they see in the mirror after stepping out of the shower, but its certainly not the biggest issue.

I'm torn on NIMBY's in this town. Often times I agree with them in principal, but I also think they are dillusional, or so entenched in their ideology, that they fail to recognize the consequences of the alternatives. I do like, that what gets built, is usually far superior to the shit being thrown up at a torid place around the country (and yes, there are some horrific 50-story highrises going up in NYC).

If the city wants to boom, it needs do several things:

1. Take some power away from the Mayor. I would imagine there are pro forma line-items here that allocate "mayor appeasement expenses." His heart is in the right place, but his blood pressure is just too high.

2. Invest heavily in public transit. Capacity needs to be increased substantially on the green line (can we get some three-train sets), the silver-line needs to be completed and upgraded to LRT, and the Urban Ring HRT needs to begin ASAP.

3. People need to understand that the universities are the life-blood of this city, and allowing them to expand is what will continue to make Boston relavent in the 21st century.

 

[czsz]

I think everyone here is warped having NYC so close by, that they don't appreciate how un-urban the rest of America is.

Its presence helps Boston constantly re-evaluate and better itself, theoretically, which can only be a good thing.

Imagine how Philadelphians must feel...