Boston 2024

[F-Line to Dudley]

Don't build directly over the substation. A deck could be built at the bridge level. A deck does not need to built over a trench. The bridges are the ground plane of the pedestrian city at this area. The new deck gets built over the existing rail yard and makes its pedestrian connection to the two bridges. Once done the bridges no longer look or feel like bridges. It would be a similar situation to Summer street in the fort point area.

You're not making any sense here.

The South Bay Harbor Trail seawall is the ground plane. That's 10 feet above the water level of the Bass River. West Broadway and W. 4th get up about another 5 feet from there before the bridges even start. Both bridges have a hump in the middle...W. 4th's slight, W. Broadway's very steep. The peak is 25 feet about "ground" level and at the tops of the 3rd floor windows on that brick building on Foundry St. that I linked to twice.

To build air rights here means putting something on stilts to the level of the I-93 South Bay main carriageways...one of the biggest eyesores in the city. To carve out a square parcel on top of that means building a deck as wide as South Bay is from the Albany St. southbound onramp to the South Station northbound offramp where it all overhangs W. Broadway. Reinforced many times over so it can support building pilings. Go look up Big Dig costs for South Bay interchange. $1B expense for $500M (or less) in development is not an exaggeration. It would shroud the Bass River, all trails around it, and what little sunlight makes it underneath the interchange on W. 4th and W. Broadway in complete darkness...dividing the neighborhoods that already have a serious divide in the form of the highway. It would plunge the lower three floors of that Foundry St. building into darkness...all before you plunked a structure on top of that 25 ft. tall "deck" to block a couple more floors. The opposition from Southie and South End on either side of the parcel would be withering and relentless.

Get it? That's not ground level. That's as high in the sky as the roof of the brick back half of the Post Office by South Station. That will not get approved. That will not get the consent of any abutters underneath or across the street. That will not get built. That is so expensive to build that by the time you've built the stilts you have blown money equal to one Olympic stadium just to get the property in place to build an Olympic stadium. That is not a rational proposal.

Move on. The acreage at Suffolk Downs, Beacon Park, the Globe headquarters...hell, the NStar wire spool storage yard and employee parking lots on Mass. Ave. at Newmarket Sq. and the garbage strip plazas on Morrissey Blvd...all have more acreage than this on flat terra firma to do as you please without having to invent some billion-dollar Rube Goldberg-designed landfill-on-stilts just to say it's theoretically possible. Target fixation at making a buildable parcel at the single most difficult place to twist and pervert into a buildable parcel isn't going to get Olympic venues built. It's going to waste a lot of time and resources that could go to other Olympic venues. Build the venues, not the very land they sit on.

 

[CSTH]

^ F-Line, the engineering cost/feasibility is one (significant) thing, but on the urban environment points you've got a lot of NIMBY-esque hyperbole going on here, and I think you must not quite realize it (as much as I hate to say it...)

"The ...seawall is the ground plane": Are we getting distracted by semantics? Clearly what matters is, "what feels like the 'surface' to a pedestrian?". Examples: what's the ground plane where Sumner crosses A? Where WTC cross congress? Where the western segment of Newbury kisses the bowker? Where the North End Parks cover the approaches to the harbor tunnels? (or for that matter, on Wacker Drive in Chicago). The answer is it doesn't matter - what matters is which level (or both of them) feels like the 'surface' to a pedestrian ... same here.

"Building...to the level of the I-93 main carriageways...one of the biggest eyesores in the city". If the implication is that a residential window looking out on the highway is inconceivable, then the people who are paying top-dollar to live in the Ink Block, the MacAllen & the Courtsquare press (the foundry st. buildings) - not to mention the Clarendon - disagree.

"Plunge ... river (and) W 4th and W. Broadway .into complete darkness" ..really? Compare and contrast the effect on the interchange sidewalks of the Ink Block, which is much closer. Darker, maybe, but not exactly immured, and also more active. And as for the Bass River and the Harborwalk - yes, the design would be challenging, but it would be no more doomed than are the various pathways under and around the Zakim.

"Plunge the lower three floors of the foundry st. building into darkness": This wouldn't have to be any more inhumane than the treatment of Haverhill st next to the Victor. (Note especially the little tree peering over the edge from on top of the Victor garage section...) Haverhill St. is an alley now, and foundry st. would be too, but the point is that building a multi-floor windowless wall here isn't outside the range of unremarkable development elsewhere in the city. The neighbors wouldn't all love it (although the cabot yard isn't exactly a great neighbor either), but they wouldn't have any grounds to be outraged.

"dividing the neighborhoods".... we're talking about extending the urban fabric across the gap between the neighborhoods, leaving just the scurry under I-93 as the pain point for someone walking West Broadway. I just can't imagine what you could have in mind here to expect that the neighborhoods would be divided by street-level development here, rather than linked together....

"That's not ground level - that's as high in the sky as the PO". What matters is what's on the street wall of the pedestrian routes, right? We won't get activation on foundry st. (which will remain an alley / driveway) or on the distributors under I-93 - but if we get them on Broadway and 4th, isn't that the point? ....and if the wider area gets perforated by a web of ped-accessible streets and pathways, isn't that even better (even if not every vista, access point or through way is ped accessible / ped friendly?). Again, we have familiar precedents: The Pru works even though I have to take an escalator to access the mall / gallery from Boylston or Huntington (or take stairs to the podium under the new tower next to Lord and Taylor), and even through Cambria St. was made into a dead-end zombie in order to facilitate the vertical stacking of functions on a complex site.

Again - yes, I imagine the engineering would be a beast, and that alone probably makes it unwise to think too hard about this location vs. regular-old dandelion-speckled brownfields elsewhere. But from an urbanism perspective, some complex layering could be a feature, not a bug. Ever been to Lisbon, Porto, Edinburgh, Utrecht, or Luxembourg City? Or Shinjuku? Or Cinequeterra, Jerusalem, or Santorrini (or gotten deep into some of the mews and staircases on the north slope or Beacon Hill...or on the west side of bunker hill?)

Bottom line: Urbanistically, what we're talking about isn't a deck - it's a hollow hill. Boston spent 150 years chopping down its hills to build a bunch of a flat land in the tidewater and marshes (mostly to create space for train yards). Wouldn't it be really interesting if this generation started the process of creating a bunch of new ones - by building hollow hills like this, with the "garage / basement / broom closets" below ground level, and the "living, working and playing spaces" above?

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

I give up. If some notion that attempting the impossible = ¡manifest destiny! is what this Olympics bid is all about, Boston doesn't stand a chance of getting IOC approval and it's every bit as self-defeating to Boston's bid as CBS's post suggests. There is a giant difference between aesthetic flights of fancy and engineering flights of fancy. As much as the IOC loves monument-building, it also wants shit to get done. So dropping this extreme amount of resources--and years and years of construction--into preparing a slab of land so that it can eventually have something constructed on it...is a red flag. A big one.

As much as they don't care if a city crashes after the Olympics because it bit off more than it could chew, they sure as hell care if the city crashes BEFORE the Olympics because it blew too much time and resources on too many impossible projects and finds itself unable to cope with deadlines, basic facilities, and well-engineered facilities. The one thing infinite money can't buy is infinite time. If half the run-up to the event is spent land-prepping, designing the land-prepping, spending money on the land-prepping...instead of designing and building a centerpiece facility...the timeframe for facilities prep gets compressed compressed compressed. And the IOC starts disaster-planning against the odds of having to fend off fallout from a mad and half-assed sprint to the finish.

These are the kinds of risks a desperate bidder makes. Usually when a whole country has something to prove and no tactical nuclear strike is going to stand in their way from proving it. Russia in the last winter Games, for instance. Qatar with the 2022 World Cup it's probably gonna cough back up. The IOC bends more on that for international geopolitical reasons. Russia was a clusterfuck behind the scenes on those last games. The U.S. has hosted this event so many times the Vlad Putin manifest destiny playbook doesn't work for U.S. bidders. The IOC is going to value competence; it doesn't want another Atlanta or Salt Lake City toxic mess, and the kinds of stupid risks developing nations and wannabe world powers take for a Games bid get red-flagged here. The other U.S. cities most likely to be Boston's competition won't be chasing windmills like this, won't be confusing ambition in the presentation with ambition in engineering. The IOC will choose accordingly. Whiffs of desperation and distractions from focus in the name of swinging for the fences are a bad thing from a U.S. bidder...the sign of amateurs who don't know how to manage their time and resources.

With all the underutilized acreage still left in this city, they are going to hold it against Boston if the over-focus on impossible-for-ambition's-sake land prep sends our planners diving down the rabbit hole. If anything, if they say a location that close to downtown is an ironclad requirement instead of all the greater underutilized acreage near downtown...it's their way of tapping Boston on the shoulder and saying "Err...you might want to take the hint." I mean...continue with these acid dreams of being able to deconstruct and reconstruct the entire city "...because Olympics, why not??!!6!!" if you think that makes for fun daydreaming, but it's not useful activity for finding a scenario that gets Boston any closer to hosting the Games. It quite likely puts them further off.

 

[Equilibria]

I give up. If some notion that attempting the impossible = ¡manifest destiny! is what this Olympics bid is all about, Boston doesn't stand a chance of getting IOC approval and it's every bit as self-defeating to Boston's bid as CBS's post suggests.

Please remember that we have no real idea what the actual proposal is. Outside of AB, no one in the city is engaging in this type of speculation before December - the interested parties are either privy to the information, or they aren't.

If the plan presented in December includes things that aren't buildable, that's a huge disappointment, especially since the bid is headed by a construction executive. According to the rumor, Bob Kraft is putting up the money for the deck, and he's not a man prone to suggesting flights of fancy when his money is at stake.

Thus far, the IOC has demanded nothing of Boston. The Olympics in general have demanded nothing. A million-and-a-half dollars of private money have made a cool 3D model, a bunch of powerful people have talked in smoke-filled rooms without revealing much, and a bunch of internet idiots have argued for weeks about the feasibility of things that no one, to date, has actually suggested outside of some Globe reporter with an unreliable source.

I say it again: Wait for the proposal to exist before you start despairing about it.

EDIT: Here's a much better summary than the Globe.

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/b...ership-offers-details-about-where.html?page=2

Highlights:

- Widett is the entirety of the decking plan. Not the yard. Only the loop track would be at issue here, as of course would the land acquisition inside the loop. I suspect any "decking" other than that would be limited to some sort of plaza tracing the haul road over to Dot Ave, in the style of the Target Field entrance plaza in Minneapolis, because...

- The "boulevard" described by the Globe is Dorchester Ave along the Channel, not some pedestrian deck to the rear end of South Station. Basically, the same plan that's existed for the USPS site for decades.

- MIT seems to be in for an actual fencing facility, not just space somewhere to hold the event. They also seem to be paying for it.

- Boston 2024 seems to be throwing around the idea of Silver Line service (or some other BRT) to Franklin Park, presumably from Dudley, to serve the equestrian events.

- Rowing is slated for Lowell, not Worcester. Not sure why, but maybe that city was more receptive. It does create some minor access issues, though, since most of the venues will be centered on the southside commuter rail lines. Interestingly, Rowing is the only event noted for "outside 128" other than preliminary Soccer, though BMX, Whitewater, and a few others will probably need to go there as well.

- The $4.5B figure includes everything specific to the Olympics. Infrastructure costs aren't included, but the BizJournal speculates that they would include only things we know about already and that are already in long term plans. ALL of the $4.5 billion is slated to be private money.

 

[underground]

Makes you wonder if the Globe went to the same briefing or fell asleep in the middle of it.

 

[Equilibria]

Makes you wonder if the Globe went to the same briefing or fell asleep in the middle of it.

To be fair to the Globe, the BizJournal cites a "conversation with journalists" or some such thing. The Globe reporter might not have had the same access, or could have left early, or could simply have wandered over a little later. Given that it was a front page story, though, it's a little sad that the BizJournal ate their lunch facts-wise.

F-Line, let's say all they wanted to do was raze everything inside Widett, build the stadium foundation and field surface at ground level, then put the entrances at the level of Mass. Ave. and the frontage roads, with the main plaza (and only the plaza) fronting the Mass. Ave. intersection. Only those two tracks decked. At maximum, the maintenance shed on the north edge removed to provide access to the tow yard and Public Works yard, to be redeveloped by Bob Kraft. All deliveries entering at the current Access Rd.

Is that not buildable? It doesn't seem nearly as wacky as I had been expecting, assuming they can get the land. Then, after the Olympics, Kraft develops the city yards and the T gets their layover space. Note that the article DOES NOT IDENTIFY A SOCCER STADIUM AS A RE-USE.

 

[underground]

Sounds like the hardest part might be the negotiations with everyone who's already down there.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Before we even get into transportation impacts. . .

You're going to nuke the Food Market? Booting the wholesale meat suppliers for all of Boston's high-end restaurants by relocating them to a trucking-inferior location jacks the prices--permanently--at every eatery that's going to be serving this Olympic audience. That is just a little bit of a logistical problem if you're nuking the mission-critical food distribution district and can't come up with a better location and fast. The IOC is going to have immediate concerns about that. Bob Kraft is going to have immediate concerns about that.

Food Market off-limits until you have a fully-designed replacement location and transition plan. On-deadline for finding that replacement location and squaring all transitional details BEFORE Olympic bids are due. And not a day later.



Then there's Amtrak. They can't deadhead out to Readville to empty the toilets between every Acela and Regional run. It cuts their schedule. They will be expanding Southampton to satisfy 2030 demand levels in and out of Boston, which call for an increase from 38 to 48 daily trains in/out of Boston, hourly Acelas, 10 Inland Regionals movements per day, and large increases in the amount of Downeaster equipment they have to service out of that facility. Giddayup on the pace of those 2030 projections if you want to rely on the NEC for the 2024 games. They will be razing that entire mostly asphalt + small building parcel on the Frontage Road between Southampton St. and the Fairmount Line overpass of 93 to build out their facility space and plunk down expanded electrical substation capacity to feed all the new tri- and quad-track capacity going online between here and the next NEC substation in Sharon as well as all power boosts needed for commuter rail.

It does not matter how gung-ho our next Governor might be about Olympics and about unleashing the tactical nuclear strike on Widett/Southampton...they do not have the authority to eminent domain the feds. Amtrak is not only off-limits, but also is impervious to being squeezed if you try to put them on-limits. It's been tried before here and elsewhere. They don't care. Their Olympics is the fare collection. In whichever the next U.S. city is to wins the Games. IOC's also going to have a problem with this, because they know the host city can't control Amtrak and that the escalation in service levels for the Games is a necessity.



I won't even get into the problems involved in disrupting anything related to the Red Line, but since you're only talking the 93/Mass Ave. side of the site let's compartmentalize. Amtrak and the Food Market are still fatal blockers. For the same reason building a deck is...you expend more resources, time, and energy just getting a cleared parcel (or deck) of land that you have eaten up two-thirds of the time to the Olympics dropping a billion dollars on landfilling. That is patently insane. The IOC will wonder where the hell Boston's head is if they're focusing so much attention on that over just getting well-engineered venues built and debugged before the Games. Other competing cities won't be undertaking such time-suck flights of fancy for something as basic as land prep. It's a waste of bandwidth.


This is the NStar yard on Mass Ave. at Newmarket Square, exactly 1 mile from Widett Circle @ Mass Ave. Connector, 1 block from Newmarket station on the Fairmount Line, and 5 blocks from JFK/UMass on Red. It is a bigger parcel than what you are proposing on Widett...lots bigger. It has a small 2-story office building, a large NStar truck half-garage, half-shed, a larger NStar truck parking lot, a larger employee parking lot that's usually half-empty, and a gigantic (and supremely ugly) asphalt lot facing Mass Ave. that is nothing but wire spool storage.

[*smacks head!*] Gee...I don't see much of anything at that very central location that has any reason to be there instead of the outskirts of the city, or which can't be packed more vertically than the asphalt sprawl that's there.



Until you fill up every last parcel like that, Suffolk Downs, whatever temporary usage is appropriate for the flat expanses of Beacon Park (which Harvard can not possibly fill up by 2024 if the Pike construction isn't even gonna be done till 2018), and every ugly strip of asphalt where a little long-overdue redevelopment or no-harm-to-tenants 1:1 trades of parking acreage for garage height churns out parcel after parcel after parcel of stadium-size flat strips of barren land in the span of months not years...Widett is nothing but a distraction.

C'mon...we're not even close to exhausting the unused/underused land options within a 1.5 mile radius of South Station. Let alone the 4-mile radius that encompasses Suffolk Downs and Beacon Park.

 

[Equilibria]

You're going to nuke the Food Market? Booting the wholesale meat suppliers for all of Boston's high-end restaurants by relocating them to a trucking-inferior location jacks the prices--permanently--at every eatery that's going to be serving this Olympic audience. That is just a little bit of a logistical problem if you're nuking the mission-critical food distribution district and can't come up with a better location and fast. The IOC is going to have immediate concerns about that. Bob Kraft is going to have immediate concerns about that.

Food Market off-limits until you have a fully-designed replacement location and transition plan. On-deadline for finding that replacement location and squaring all transitional details BEFORE Olympic bids are due. And not a day later.

Okay, let's say they have one. Any one of those empty pieces of asphalt you cited is an alternate site for the Food Mart, which would be nuked anyway for the MBTA layover yard. I seem to remember you supporting Widett as the "obvious choice" back when we were discussing siting options for that project, so what's the difference here other than how much you support the Olympics?

Then there's Amtrak.

No, there isn't. No one is suggesting decking or removing Southampton Yard. The stadium would fit solely within the boundaries of Widett Circle and the loop track. The borders of the site are 93 on the west, the South Boston Haul Road on the south, the rail tracks at Cabot Yard on the east, and Berkeley St on the north. Nothing else. All of the Amtrak uses you cite are south of the stadium, and would be unaltered. The only passenger rail impacts as far as I can tell, would be to the loop track itself and to the small cement structure that covers a section of it to the north, and all of that track would be either decked over or left open to the air, a la McCormick Place in Chicago.

For the same reason building a deck is...you expend more resources, time, and energy just getting a cleared parcel (or deck) of land that you have eaten up two-thirds of the time to the Olympics dropping a billion dollars on landfilling.

The stadium they are proposing at Widett does not need to be built on a deck. The development north of the stadium needs no deck. I'm not saying they won't propose it, but there is fundamentally no need for it. The foundations for everything go on solid ground - the stadium inside the loop track, and the north development on the city yards.

The business of the cleared parcel is a reasonable point, but that could be said of any parcel in the city for some reason. Suffolk Downs has the wetlands. Beacon Park will be unusable if MassDOT builds out its ramp and roadway grid as currently proposed. Site costs are an obstacle to any building this size. I'm not saying this is the best option, or even a good option, but it's not the only one with this issue.

This is the NStar yard on Mass Ave. at Newmarket Square, exactly 1 mile from Widett Circle @ Mass Ave. Connector, 1 block from Newmarket station on the Fairmount Line, and 5 blocks from JFK/UMass on Red. It is a bigger parcel than what you are proposing on Widett...lots bigger. It has a small 2-story office building, a large NStar truck half-garage, half-shed, a larger NStar truck parking lot, a larger employee parking lot that's usually half-empty, and a gigantic (and supremely ugly) asphalt lot facing Mass Ave. that is nothing but wire spool storage.

That's a reasonable alternative I hadn't thought of. You'll still have acqusition costs there, though, and unlike Widett there's going to be some serious neighborhood opposition to that one (yes, I know the MBTA had NIMBYs at Widett before, as well).

Until you fill up every last parcel like that, Suffolk Downs, whatever temporary usage is appropriate for the flat expanses of Beacon Park (which Harvard can not possibly fill up by 2024 if the Pike construction isn't even gonna be done till 2018), and every ugly strip of asphalt where a little long-overdue redevelopment or no-harm-to-tenants 1:1 trades of parking acreage for garage height churns out parcel after parcel after parcel of stadium-size flat strips of barren land in the span of months not years...Widett is nothing but a distraction.

Any Olympic stadium site needs to be (by my measurement of the 2012 London structure) 950' by 1000'. That eliminates several of your examples. Even when it doesn't, assembling the parcels in each case would be every bit as onerous as the equally pavementey Widett, which, remember, you were eager to sacrifice for a layover yard. Not to mention that most of those sites are surrounded by single family homes, jacking up the impacts of construction, which for a temporary stadium and redevelopment will extend years after 2024. The only site you cite that's clearly big enough is Bayside Expo, and they're planning to use that for the village. I'd rather put the stadium there and the village on the Globe site, but whatever.

Again, the end state of a Widett concept COULD be a re-daylighted loop track, a layover yard, and a bunch of mixed use buildings on the City of Boston lots. If that were proposed without the Olympics, there would be nonstop cheers on this board.

EDIT: This is the concept I'm referencing. Decks are shown in white. Only white is decked.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Okay, let's say they have one. Any one of those empty pieces of asphalt you cited is an alternate site for the Food Mart, which would be nuked anyway for the MBTA layover yard. I seem to remember you supporting Widett as the "obvious choice" back when we were discussing siting options for that project, so what's the difference here other than how much you support the Olympics?



No, there isn't. No one is suggesting decking or removing Southampton Yard. The stadium would fit solely within the boundaries of Widett Circle and the loop track. The borders of the site are 93 on the west, the South Boston Haul Road on the south, the rail tracks at Cabot Yard on the east, and Berkeley St on the north. Nothing else. All of the Amtrak uses you cite are south of the stadium, and would be unaltered. The only passenger rail impacts as far as I can tell, would be to the loop track itself and to the small cement structure that covers a section of it to the north, and all of that track would be either decked over or left open to the air, a la McCormick Place in Chicago.



The stadium they are proposing at Widett does not need to be built on a deck. The development north of the stadium needs no deck. I'm not saying they won't propose it, but there is fundamentally no need for it. The foundations for everything go on solid ground - the stadium inside the loop track, and the north development on the city yards.

The business of the cleared parcel is a reasonable point, but that could be said of any parcel in the city for some reason. Suffolk Downs has the wetlands. Beacon Park will be unusable if MassDOT builds out its ramp and roadway grid as currently proposed. Site costs are an obstacle to any building this size. I'm not saying this is the best option, or even a good option, but it's not the only one with this issue.




That's a reasonable alternative I hadn't thought of. You'll still have acqusition costs there, though, and unlike Widett there's going to be some serious neighborhood opposition to that one (yes, I know the MBTA had NIMBYs at Widett before, as well).



Any Olympic stadium site needs to be (by my measurement of the 2012 London structure) 950' by 1000'. That eliminates several of your examples. Even when it doesn't, assembling the parcels in each case would be every bit as onerous as the equally pavementey Widett, which, remember, you were eager to sacrifice for a layover yard. Not to mention that most of those sites are surrounded by single family homes, jacking up the impacts of construction, which for a temporary stadium and redevelopment will extend years after 2024. The only site you cite that's clearly big enough is Bayside Expo, and they're planning to use that for the village. I'd rather put the stadium there and the village on the Globe site, but whatever.

Again, the end state of a Widett concept COULD be a re-daylighted loop track, a layover yard, and a bunch of mixed use buildings on the City of Boston lots. If that were proposed without the Olympics, there would be nonstop cheers on this board.

EDIT: This is the concept I'm referencing. Decks are shown in white. Only white is decked.

Marine Terminal is the only site in the city that offers equal trucking access and better rail access to preserve these vendors' rates. Time is the enemy when it comes to when you can move them.

The T would not need it for storage until you layer on the North-South Link and onto the system. Then it's the permanent future-proof to end all future-proofs. For just incremental southside growth (+ SCR and other past-495 extensios) the cold storage warehouse and slice of the BTD tow lot would've been enough for 20 years of growth curve and South Coast Rail. Where acquiring the parcel today would have more immediate utility is for pulling in the Albany St. bus garage into the Southampton complex and dishing off that valuable South End property. But none of these future considerations require immediate action. They could buy the land out from under the Food Market, IOU the Food Market a new facility, and just sit on it for 10 years like Harvard did with Beacon Park while CSX kept about its daily business. Or longer, if they just tell the BRA "you had your chance!" as while they stare covetously at the Albany property. The main impetus for doing any expediting of the Food Market sooner is that Marine Terminal is a blank slate right now. So if you envision the Food Market needing to pick up in 20, 30 years by necessity...better get it over with proactively in the next 10 while plush digs are still easy to come by.

The T has unbounded time to secure a critical land hold. The Olympics don't. You have only 9 years to go until facilities have to be complete and debugged. Environmental cleanup at Marine Terminal is still ongoing, Massport construction of the transportation links and utilities onsite is not fully-funded and in design, won't begin for another 3 years at least. Fund the relocation tomorrow and you still have to get in line behind Massport's schedule. You will have to design the Food Market a more compact facility of equal capacity to satisfy all their needs. Probably talking 2 stories and the logistics to get loads between bottom floor and storage floors. The Food Market, because they have been abused so often by the city, state, and BRA in the past, will proceed very cautiously to make sure it's perfect. And will pull out if they get bullied. It is unlikely you could move them out--starting from scratch today, with all hands on deck--in one day less than 6 years. You then have to demo their site and do all this decking work over a busy rail yard. Keeping in mind that you're not driving giant piles into the ground between the months of December and March.

The Olympics bid is revving up now. What are you going to be able to promise the IOC about this schedule? That this was your only land choice so they need to accept this is going to go down to the wire? They don't want to hear that from a U.S. bidder. They've sweated out too many cities in less-developed countries that have had to huff and puff to get their venues finished. They won't hear it from the other 3 U.S. cities preparing bids: L.A., Washington, and San Fran. What about this--and about the overhead associated with this--is going to give Boston a leg-up over those 3 competing cities or prevent a schedule-uncertainty liability from opening up vs. those 3 cities and the schedules for their would-be Olympic Stadium parcels.


Also...this was not "MY" idea: http://atlanticnortheast.com/onl/iss/i020103_174940.pdf. Page 5. The Food Market relocation / T eminent domain was first proposed in the mid-90's after one of Menino's bitch-fests about Readville being expanded to house overflow while northside Boston Engine Terminal was being constructed. The state explored the possibility of Food Market eminent domain. Food Market freaked. BET construction finished, Readville didn't shrink back because of the Old Colony expansion, Menino got pissed again. An election year came around, with the election year's contingent of union endorsements...now this time Menino's triumphantly on the side of the Food Market and wants the state to find a better train storage parcel instead of taking Widett from the poor defenseless meatpackers. The state can't find a suitable one that's not at Widett and not in Menino's backyard at Readville. State commissions a study of 28 (!) potential layover sites. 4 of the ones that made it as far as Tier 2 screening were parcels in the links in my last post: NStar, the Morrissey Blvd. strip mall, that industrial + school bus parcel just south of Savin Hill, and Arborway bus yard. Eventually site needs get whittled down to just South Coast Rail + incremental growth, and the sites they just made a decision on: cold storage warehouse, BTD lot, or Beacon Park. If the N-S link ever happens...they're gonna need a bigger boat and this will come up yet again. Maybe by that point Menino--and the machine he built--will have passed long into the afterlife and the gazillion acres the T already owns at Readville will...you know...actually be made available for its owner to use without getting an flurry of Operation Chaos molotovs thrown across town from City Hall.

I was about 2 years away from first moving to Boston before all this first first blew up, so not sure how this became my idea. But thanks for this misguided credit for officially proposed solutions to a dispute that's been chafing the city's and T's balls for 20 years now.




As for neighborhood opposition, look how intensely that recycling center proposed for the cold storage warehouse is being fought by Southie and every Southie pol. It is a serious underestimation that this is going to be any more free-and-easy on the approvals front than that NStar parcel: http://www.dotnews.com/2014/transfer-station-dispute-erupts-south-boston-line.





I am sure the manifest destiny of a complicated-for-complicated's sake Olympic stadium rising over Widett Circle and "and but...", "and but..." arguments will continue. We're at Somerville Soccer Stadium levels of target fixation in this thread, and I got nuthin' that's going to convince the ArchBoston tactical nuclear strike force that there's a sliding scale of overhead from parcel-to-parcel and very real time limits that no force of will are going to overcome.

So let's look at this from a different perspective. How would you pitch this to an IOC that has the luxury of being risk-averse in a bid field with multiple U.S. cites?. I have yet to hear somebody make a pitch specifically to the IOC's ears that is going to inspire their confidence for bid purposes that this Olympic Stadium site is so important and so worth cutting the schedule that close versus what other competing U.S. cities are likely to pitch that this gives Boston the upper hand. Spell it out...to IOC Prez. Thomas Bach. What is he going to nitpick on the IOC executive board's behalf. What, for that matter, is Bob Kraft going to nitpick if the last great accomplishment of his lifetime is the Boston Olympics and you have to pitch him a schedule where tenant relocation and land prep eats up a minimum 7 of the 9 years you've got to go before showtime?

Are you that sold on this? Please quantify for Mr. Bach and Mr. Kraft how much rolling the dice on Widett Stadium helps or hurts Boston's chances for winning the Games. THEN conclude whether we've looked hard enough and done enough risk assessments at the various flat-ass open asphalt or grassy parcels around town. I'm not the one who needs convincing that you're going to pull off the logistically hardest site of them all to coordinate and prep. The big money is.

 

[Equilibria]

Marine Terminal is the only site in the city that offers equal trucking access and better rail access to preserve these vendors' rates. Time is the enemy when it comes to when you can move them.

Ok, so do it. That's the point of the Olympics. You do the things that you wouldn't have been able to do otherwise, because, as you said, it would take the MBTA on its own a decade to slowly play with their food until they finally got around to eating it, but it IS possible. It's not even prohibitively expensive. It can be done whenever someone has the money (like a share of $4.5 billion in private investment) to make it happen.

You're assuming that this is going to move at the same speed that things normally do with the T, and that's just not true. The Olympics might not be run efficiently, but they won't be run glacially.

Are you that sold on this? Please quantify for Mr. Bach and Mr. Kraft how much rolling the dice on Widett Stadium helps or hurts Boston's chances for winning the Games. THEN conclude whether we've looked hard enough and done enough risk assessments at the various flat-ass open asphalt or grassy parcels around town. I'm not the one who needs convincing that you're going to pull off the logistically hardest site of them all to coordinate and prep. The big money is.

No, I'm not that sold on this. I think this is the idea that John Fish is going to propose. I think that if he's going to propose it that he's going to have done some back-room negotiating with the major stakeholders, and that a plan to seize and redevelop the Food Mart and the other lots isn't just going to appear on their doorsteps with the Globe (ok, it might in some cases, but not the big ones). I think that this committee is not comprised of idiots, so they've done their homework on every single potential site within the city limits. They will have a massive amount of funds. If they've concluded that this is possible, it is.

Thomas Bach and the "big money" don't need a point-by-point testimonial from me, they need the bid book, which will have the financials and the alternatives analysis. If Widett is indeed the proposal, then given the history on the site Boston 2024 should be ready with their own take on whether the presence of a food purveyors' warehouse by itself makes this the hardest possible place to construct a stadium in the entire damn city with $4.5 billion of backing, as you say it does.

The I-93 adjacent site has been mentioned in multiple Globe and other articles dating back six months or more. If the Food Mart was going to be an immovable object, Fish would know that. Hell, if they're as immovable as you say they are, they'd have written an opinion column in the Globe defending their location. That hasn't happened. If they're unhappy, Fish has clearly decided he can work with it.

 

[underground]

If hard ass Southie Pols were going to block this plan, I don't think we'd have Nick Collins (currently hard ass Southie Pol #1) going on record saying,

"“I went in skeptical, and came out optimistic,” said Nick Collins, a state representative who chairs the Boston delegation. “If other cities around the world can pull this off, why can’t we?”
​

I don't know what they told him behind closed doors, but Widett's out in the open and Collins has to know what the issues there are.

 

[Equilibria]

A Wednesday article from BBJ that goes into some more detail on the stadium:

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/b...-local-olympics-organizers-switched-to-a.html

The article confirms the Widett Circle location and cites the Food Mart as an obstacle, though interestingly it only says that "at least one concept" would move it. I'm not sure how you do this at Widett and not have to move it.

Other interesting points:

- The fact that the interview is with David Manfredi offers some suggestion of who would design this thing (it shall be known as the Precast Bowl). The article cites his firm's work at Lambeau, but I really hope they get someone like Populous who specializes in sports venues.

- Space requirements are 37 acres for the stadium. The IOC has lowered the capacity requirement to 60,000 for 2024 from 80,000.

- They're done with the Revs. The stadium would be completely removed after the Games, with sections of stands going to high schools and colleges. The structure would be designed to look nice on TV.

- The fine print on Olympic financing says that you can use your Olympic budget only for fully temporary structures dedicated to the Games (I didn't know that). A fully temporary structure will qualify, which means they can spend TV money on it. A convertible stadium for the Revs would not.

- The price, as expected, is somewhere around $500 million. 100% is slated to come from private sources. Construction costs would be from the Boston 2024 general budget, site acquisition and preparation from a private developer (Kraft) and local infrastructure split between the developer and the public. Infrastructure costs, as always, aren't included in the cost estimate.

- For some reason, BBJ frames the Manfredi interview around skepticism about temporary stadiums. I have no idea why, since temporary stands (though not a full building) have been done many times. The last US Olympic stadium in Atlanta put almost half of its capacity in fully temporary stands.

 

[underground]

I heard an early rumor, back when Kraft was first linked to a Widett stadium, that it would actually be the Patriots moving in. Obviously, that would entail a lot of finagling about what would happen down in Foxboro. Maybe the silence from Kraft and the shifting uncertainty about the stadium is related to Kraft weighing the options: 1) use the stadium for the Revs; 2) use it for the Pats; or 3) use it for redevelopment. Who knows though - this is pure speculation based on rumors from months ago. Being able to use TV money if the stadium's temporary definitely has an impact on that decision. Pay for the stadium with TV money, and then get more money from a redevelopment? Seems like that could be a winner over moving the Revs or Pats (and having a suddenly less valuable Gillette Stadium).

 

[datadyne007]

- They're done with the Revs. The stadium would be completely removed after the Games, with sections of stands going to high schools and colleges. The structure would be designed to look nice on TV.

WTF? Isn't the whole point of the Boston Olympics to show the IOC that the Olympics don't have to be an egregious waste of resources like previous Olympics? It sadly sounds like like the Boston committee is selling out to placate the IOC's wasteful standards.

Building a stadium and then taking it down is just as bad as building a stadium and abandoning it a la Athens venues. It's an enormous waste of resources either way.

 

[underground]

WTF? Isn't the whole point of the Boston Olympics to show the IOC that the Olympics don't have to be an egregious waste of resources like previous Olympics? It sadly sounds like like the Boston committee is selling out to placate the IOC's wasteful standards.

BBJ is making it sound like building a temporary stadium actually is the more financially sound thing to do because you can access private funding (the TV money) for the stadium if it's temporary, but you can't if it's permanent. Like I said above, temporary stadium looks like it gets you a double down deal; TV money to construct, and then additional money when you sell off the development rights.

 

[Equilibria]

I heard an early rumor, back when Kraft was first linked to a Widett stadium, that it would actually be the Patriots moving in. Obviously, that would entail a lot of finagling about what would happen down in Foxboro. Maybe the silence from Kraft and the shifting uncertainty about the stadium is related to Kraft weighing the options: 1) use the stadium for the Revs; 2) use it for the Pats; or 3) use it for redevelopment. Who knows though - this is pure speculation based on rumors from months ago. Being able to use TV money if the stadium's temporary definitely has an impact on that decision. Pay for the stadium with TV money, and then get more money from a redevelopment? Seems like that could be a winner over moving the Revs or Pats (and having a suddenly less valuable Gillette Stadium).

I think the Pats aren't a possibility here. First, as I've said many times, Bob Kraft has made a huge private investment in Foxboro. Without the Pats there, he has a poorly-located lifestyle center with some strip mall stores. The restaurants and bars in Patriot Place all depend on the team sticking around, and he gets a cut of all of that action, while he wouldn't in Boston. Second, Boston doesn't do publicly-funded stadiums for pro sports teams.

WTF? Isn't the whole point of the Boston Olympics to show the IOC that the Olympics don't have to be an egregious waste of resources like previous Olympics? It sadly sounds like like the Boston committee is selling out to placate the IOC's wasteful standards.

Building a stadium and then taking it down is just as bad as building a stadium and abandoning it a la Athens. It's an enormous waste of resources either way.

Money is money. The most wasteful option is the one that wastes the largest amount of public funds. With a temporary stadium, they get $500M of NBC's money to throw at the stadium. No public money goes into it. A bunch of cities and towns don't have to spend a million apiece on new high school football stadiums. Who knows if that would offset the cost of infrastructure in Boston, but viewed across the Commonwealth it could help ameliorate some of the public costs.

With a Revs stadium, not only do you have the uncertainty around the move (and it should be crystal clear to you above everyone else that Bob Kraft has not one ounce of real interest in moving the team), but the costs would be higher and would be distributed in a less advantageous way.

London Olympic Stadium cost $830M to build in 2014 dollars. The conversion cost is $225M according to the NY Daily News, and only $25M is being covered by the team. In the end, London paid $1.3B for a 54,000-seat stadium for West Ham United. Remember, for a convertible stadium all of the cost would have to be covered by the public or the owner of the team.

Even if the Boston stadium cost 75% of the London one commensurate with capacity, that's still about a billion dollars. I don't think either the Krafts or the City or State see that as a sane cost for a 20,000-seat MLS stadium.

Incidentally, Athens Olympic Stadium was a renovation of an existing facility, and has been used extensively since 2004. It's not one of that effort's many white elephants.

 

[underground]

I think the Pats aren't a possibility here. First, as I've said many times, Bob Kraft has made a huge private investment in Foxboro. Without the Pats there, he has a poorly-located lifestyle center with some strip mall stores. The restaurants and bars in Patriot Place all depend on the team sticking around, and he gets a cut of all of that action, while he wouldn't in Boston. Second, Boston doesn't do publicly-funded stadiums for pro sports teams.

Oh yeah, totally agree that Patriots Place becomes less valuable if the Pats move (I think I mentioned that in my post). The only calculus that makes that happen is if having the Pats in Boston makes them that much more money that it makes sense. Also, just to clarify, the rumor (and what the reporting has backed up with the private financing numbers) was that Kraft paid for the stadium out of pocket based on future ability to redevelop the parts of Widett not taken up by the stadium.

 

[Arlington]

Oh yeah, totally agree that Patriots Place becomes less valuable if the Pats move

I disagree. It is hard to say that the value of Patriot Place is in 8 home games per year, and not the 357 days that it's open as a mall. As far as I can tell, the synergies are mostly in the roads and parking, not in some magical aura cast by 8 home games per year.

The only calculus that makes that happen is if having the Pats in Boston makes them that much more money that it makes sense. Also, just to clarify, the rumor (and what the reporting has backed up with the private financing numbers) was that Kraft paid for the stadium out of pocket based on future ability to redevelop the parts of Widett not taken up by the stadium.

Stadiums still have finite economic life. By 2024, Gillete will be 22 years old--and Foxboro stadium was only 30 years old when demolished as obsolete. (1971 to 2001)

If anything, Patriot Place proves that Kraft knows the value of destinations, not the value of stadiums. If Foxboro gets transit (CR), it will be more valuable as a "town center" development" for the 280 working days of the year (as an office park) than for the 8 home-game days (football) per year.

So by 2025, Gillette could be torn down on its 23rd birthday in favor of transit-oriented / Town Center (Tyson's Corner) style development, and the Pats could move to Olympic Stadium, and Kraft could fund it in part from Patriots Place and in part from ancillary development rights in "Downtown South"

And maybe we never get that soccer-specific stadium elsewhere, but actually see the Pats and the Revs playing in the same central stadium (sure'd beat playing in the same hinterlands stadium)

 

[underground]

That's an interesting way of looking at the value/potential value of Gillette. I never thought about that. Yeah, maybe they think a joint Revs/Pats stadium downtown would be like Century Link is Seattle? The Sounders manage to sell it out.