Boston 2024

[MBTAddict]

Richard Davey named new CEO for Boston 2024



Hopefully this should go a long way toward ensuring really smart transportation upgrades.

Yesssssssssssssssssssssss

 

[stellarfun]

The venues, all new, at Sochi cost $5-6 billion, depending on whether you count a $600 million stadium that was used only for the closing ceremonies. The other $40+ billion was for infrastructure, housing, and rampant graft.

Officially, Sochi had 100,000 security personnel, unofficially 150,000. The reason 18,000 military personnel had to be assigned to London at the last minute was that a security contractor was unable to find enough people.

The Boston Olympics submission, by direction of the USOC, omits security and leaves that to the Federal government. But in doing so, it doesn't discuss where one is going to find the tens of thousands of personnel who would be used for security at Boston, and where they would be housed. The submission does report that to secure TD Bank North for the Democratic convention which was post 9-11, 4,500 security personnel were involved.

For Brazil and the World Cup, and probably duplicated for the Olympics.

Brazil's National Secretariat of Public Safety is responsible for overall security at the World Cup (as well as the 2016 Olympics being held in Rio de Janeiro) with help from the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, FIFA, the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil Organizing Committee and the Brazilian justice and defense ministries. Brazil has committed roughly 170,000 troops and police to be deployed across the 12 host cities to better guarantee safety at the tournament. About 150,000 personnel will come from the armed services and police, and 20,000 security guards will be trained and work inside the stadiums. An additional 15,000 FIFA volunteers will be distributed among the host cities to assist tourists with basic information about the matches, host cities, transportation and the like.

http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/assessing-security-brazils-world-cup-2014#axzz3Pk6vMnSn

Security is the elephant in the room with respect to Boston, particularly as major venues are either on top of, or proximate to major transportation hubs. The mentality of the Secret Service is that if you do less than what others have recently done -- and the Olympics in the U.S. would be considered a high threat environment -- and something happens, you will be blamed for not doing enough. So they err on the side of excess.

 

[stellarfun]

Boston Globe op ed calls for the Urban Ring to be built for the Olympics.

Imagine intercepting the “spokes of the hub’’ with a circumferential line that would, among other things, connect Columbia Point to Dudley Square, the Longwood Medical Center (and its jobs and health services) to Brookline Village, Allston to Harvard Square and Somerville, without several T transfers? That would be useful long after the Olympic torch is extinguished.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/...gmJ/story.html?p1=Article_Related_Box_Article

and, Zimbalist on the likelihood of budget overruns.

The real kickers though are twofold. First, every single Olympic Games has experienced massive cost overruns. The Summer Games have an average cost overrun of 252 percent in real terms since 1976 — that would put Boston’s final cost at $28.5 billion, not counting the separate infrastructure budget.
....
Second, the International Olympic Committee requires that the implementation of the final bid be financially backstopped by local government in case private funding falls short. [City of] Boston’s budget is $2.7 billion.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/...lIJ/story.html?p1=Article_Related_Box_Article

 

[West]

Boston Globe also follows up on the Dot News scoop that FK previously linked to.

http://www.bostonglobe.com/business...erty-owners/v6RgqFCV2ChQvCYQFECiOL/story.html

As they say in soccer, this is an "own goal".

Their bid puts in writing in numerous places that they've consulted with, or are working closely with, all landowners. They riffed on it verbally on Wednesday. Now there are multiple landowners saying, not with us they didn't?

if it was just the food market people, I'd be open to the chance it was misinformation to get leverage. But multiple people, including someone with permits and breaking ground on Tuesday? At least that one parcel is way off at the fringe of the athlete's village, perhaps could get carved off with nominal impact. Corcoran's parcel and the hotel's parcel are way more central, and they never contacted them, either?

Foolish.

 

[West]

Additional analysis on boston.com:

http://www.boston.com/sports/olympi...g-documents/Zg912p2KBecxLc0m6VyDhO/story.html

I've barely had time to skim, so no comment, just wanted to post the link.

 

[stellarfun]

If one is willing to pay enough money, one can secure the land. But then the economical Olympics becomes less so. I mean, Chiofaro paid $155 million for 1.2 acres because he coveted it.

 

[FK4]

FK4 you seem to have totally forgotten that South Boston is right next to it with no highway in the way and the Broadway red line stop is pretty close especially if they provide plenty of pedestrian connections to Broadway which it looks like they plan to. It isn't as convenient as the seaport or downtown no but it is at least as convenient as Beacon Yards and arguably more so as it has a convenient and direct connection to the red line.

No. Look at the map. Widett Circle has I-93 on one side and on the "South Boston" side to the east, train yards a dozen + tracks deep (Cabot). After that you have a very industrialized corridor, then Dot Ave and several blocks of light industry and some very shitty housing mixed in between 2 large housing projects. On the far (west) side of 93, you have the Albany St corridor (which probably eventually will get redveloped, for people who dont mind living between an elevated interstate, a prison, 2 methadone clinics and the BU biolab), but further down you have Newmarket and the rest of Boston's industrial and warehouse district and pretty much the last part of town dirty enough to still find streetwalkers and cracksellers out in the open. And even IF they build twenty bridges across the tracks, it's a long walk to Broadway, even so. Im not saying that someday in the way distant future development wont be possible here, but it's a damn long way away.

On the other hand, with the re-routing of the Pike, Beacon Yards is far more desirable: it is adjacent to Cambridge, Harvard Business School and all the new institutional anchors Harvard is planning here, as well as proximal to BU; and again, with Pike gone the land will be directly contiguous with the rest of Lower Allston. No large infrastructural separations at all (you might say that about Cambridge St but that's getting a total rebuild and redesign, and yes, Storrow will separate it from the river, but overall it is/will be totally embedded into the adjacent road networks). Much better location and much better connectivity.

Edit: Another transit benefit to Beacon Yards is that it also (hopefully) will have a commuter rail stop RIGHT THERE. I would love to see the Olympics at Beacon because maybe, maybe, maybe they would consider spurring a new Green Line branch Kenmore->Beacon->Stadium->Harvard, a project we've discussed on Crazy Transit Pitches that I am strongly in favor of.

 

[George_Apley]

^ Depending on how they design the plan for Widett, they could have a DMU stop right at/under the stadium. I'm skeptical of the Widett plan too, mostly because of all the rail infrastructure that would have to be moved/decked over at great expense. I'm not that concerned with the area being in a dead zone though. It seems like Boston 2024 is preferring the Widett site because it would require the least public expenditure on transit infrastructure (really just South Station expansion at a bare minimum). Put the stadium at Beacon Yard or Suffolk Downs would seemingly require a lot more transit improvements (which I would love, but the allegedly spendthrift 2024 would not).

 

[FK4]

^ my main argument really is over which area is better situated for redevelopment. the olympic committee said that this was prime redev territory because it's so close to southie and the south end. i strongly disagree. im not anywhere near as invested in which site is better for the just the stadium... though it does seem to me that the infrastructure decking/ped connections would be pretty pricey. i guess if this was actually done in a way to really link widett to the fort point channel (could we reopen the channel down here?) it could work well with an unbroken olympics-themed promenade from south station down to here, so might work maybe even better than beacon. although, on the other hand, you could say that if all we are talking about is highway and transit connections, a dmu stop at west station and the mass pike would kind of be the same thing as a dmu stop at widett and i-93.

 

[stefal]

Widett Circle seems to be a suitable location for a stadium.
I may be wrong, but isn't this the same location that Robert Kraft wants to build his soccer stadium? If so, perhaps Kraft could pay a little and get his stadium after the games in the same fashion that they did with London 2012, dismantling part of the stadium thereby downsizing it. This would save both sides money.

 

[FK4]

the kraft stadium is proposed for the site north of widett circle, along the frontage road. here's images of the kraft proposal and just a re-post of an image probably already put up here of the olympic map. Also throwing in the copley-convention center rail shuttle proposal map, because with all the money spent on bridges and decking here it's not unreasonable to think the bridge necessary to support this shuttle could also be built.

I also want to point out that in the second image of the olympic map, there is another bridge over the cabot yards, connecting i-93 with roughly where D St hits Dot Ave. Also, someone commented further back about one of the olympic renderings showing a new bridge over fort point. Notice in the render here that the new bridge lines up with a series of parks (already planned out as part of prior ft pt developments) that stretch down to A St.

3 important maps:

 

[Proposition Joe]

There is a lot of questionable things going on with these renders. First, all parking lots in this area of the city are covered up by green space even though I find it unlikely that Gillette or Castle Island are giving up their parking lots. That makes it hard to gauge what exactly in this render is legit and what is only in there to make it look pretty.

Second, speaking of Castle Island, there seems to be new developments planned on space currently a part of the Conley Terminal? I also hope that they aren't so careless about the health of Sullivan's (or other small businesses near proposed venues).

 

[FK4]

The parking lot at Castle Island would remain just because there will need to be one... I would think Gilette would allow a temporary park over their lot - cheap turf job and a repaving after. What's funny is that giant new park (it IS a park, right? I cant find much on the internet for some reason) on E 1st St, under construction now, isnt shown as greenspace, yet they green out all that useless turf under the 90/93 ramps.

Edit - well, for some reason i always thought we were getting a new park down there off 1st... looks like i was wrong (conley is expanding, how did i not know this??)

 

[Equilibria]

Apologies if these have been posted before - I only went back a few pages to check. All 3 renders are nominally from Reuters, though the last one was on BDC this morning. I was interested because unlike the one released by Boston 2024 itself, this one is accurate. The article isn't bad either, although it doesn't account for Kraft Group's role in land acquisition and Rich Davey's expertise in infrastructure projects.

http://www.boston.com/sports/olympi...2KBecxLc0m6VyDhO/story.html?p1=feature_sec_hp

 

[bdurden]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around "Midtown" -- not because I hate it (although, I do) rather because it is wedged between South Boston and the South End. How does this equate to a "Midtown" at all?

 

[Lrfox]

Was the Tea Party Museum wrapped in plastic like a winterized boat to create one of those modern islands in the Fort Point Channel?

 

[Equilibria]

Was the Tea Party Museum wrapped in plastic like a winterized boat to create one of those modern islands in the Fort Point Channel?

I think it's shown as a featureless gray platform just above the first barge from the bottom. Regardless, I wouldn't expect it to be seriously altered.

 

[West]

I'm still trying to wrap my head around "Midtown" -- not because I hate it (although, I do) rather because it is wedged between South Boston and the South End. How does this equate to a "Midtown" at all?

"Midsouth" would make more sense, geographically. Or, in the spirt of all the variations on Soho, (Sowa, etc), they could shorten Midsouth to Miso. Then market it to Asian restaurants afterwards.

OK, now that I've had them, I officially hate both these ideas as much as I hate Midtown. I vote for calling it Widett Circle. Worked fine for Baltimore when they named their new ballpark after the rail yard it replaced. What the hell is wrong with that for this location?

Who was Widett, anyways? The web is filled with so many articles around recent political topics, i can't find anything on who it's named after.

 

[PaulC]

Since it's between South End and South Boston how about renaming it SouthLand

 

[JeffDowntown]

Since it's between South End and South Boston how about renaming it SouthLand

You could call it South Bay, which is what that land used to be.