Boston and Space, or something...

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whighlander

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shmessy said:
That train left the station years ago.

The company is now called Procter and Gamble of Cincinnati, Ohio.

(For now) They have an enormous, low slung plant/office at the elbow edge of Fort Point Channel.

They could get a nice profit selling that underutilized land and acres of parking lots and move to Lynn or Chelsea or wherever the hell. We've all saying the same about the USPS facility on the Channel.

Should THAT land really be taken up by enormous, low slung industrial plants??? Is that really the best use for that real estate?
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Shmess -- you are starting to sound like Rif -- firing away without cheking the barrel for fouling

Moving something such as the World Shaving HQ is not like moving a bank or insurance office -- there is close to $400 M of equipment most of it qute recent (last 3 years or so) -- some of the equipment is so sensitive to vibration and such that is mounted on its own foundations sunk to bedrock

USPS also has a huge investment in equipment in its "Plant" -- the difference:
People's beards still grow and people still shave
fewer and fewer people need lots of mail handled -- I just saw an ad for USPS telling companies why paper is better than e-mail, statements, etc.

Come to think of it -- the USPS site would be a good location for the "Boston Marathon Steeple Chaser"
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

shmessy said:
I'm not talking about a Ferris Wheel. I, too, think that would be derivative and a big shrug.

However, the knee-jerk Boston-attitude (yes, it IS a Boston attitude) to any attempts to think outside the box is hurting the competitiveness of the city.

The future belongs to the creative entrepeneurs and scientists. They are increasingly choosing Silicon Valley and NYC (not to mention foreign cities)over the town of the landscrapers.

.
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Smss, between you and Itch and Riff -- do some homework

the Silicon Valley of today is a shadow of the real Silicon Valley of the 1960s - 1990's Caliornia put so much waste and fraud into its budget and laid such a heavy hand on business through envronmental and similar regualtions that nothing of significance is being done in Silicon Valley

Even Intel the quitisential Silicon Valley company founded by the Robert Noyce, co-inventor of the IC and "unofficial Mayor of Silicon Valley" does no significan investment in its HQ complex

the only thing to come from Silcon valley recently is hype and rehashing of old stuff in new shapes and colors of boxes (e.g. Apple)

As for NYC -- the technical contributions stopped when Bell Labs moved to Murray Hill, NJ

NYC is desparatly trying to create a Kendal Sq environment even to the extent of recruiting a Stanford "evening school"
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

+1

And I'm getting sick of all this misguided talk about how Boston doesn't take risks and all Harvard grads always leave for other cities and blah blah blah.
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

whighlander said:
Smss, between you and Itch and Riff -- do some homework

the Silicon Valley of today is a shadow of the real Silicon Valley of the 1960s - 1990's Caliornia put so much waste and fraud into its budget and laid such a heavy hand on business through envronmental and similar regualtions that nothing of significance is being done in Silicon Valley

Even Intel the quitisential Silicon Valley company founded by the Robert Noyce, co-inventor of the IC and "unofficial Mayor of Silicon Valley" does no significan investment in its HQ complex

the only thing to come from Silcon valley recently is hype and rehashing of old stuff in new shapes and colors of boxes (e.g. Apple)

As for NYC -- the technical contributions stopped when Bell Labs moved to Murray Hill, NJ

NYC is desparatly trying to create a Kendal Sq environment even to the extent of recruiting a Stanford "evening school"
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You're arguing like a scientist.

Whighlander, you can keep your Wang or Digital, I'll take an Apple anyday of the week and twice on Sundays.

Everyone knows Betamax was superior to VHS. The only victory for Betamax occurred in the eyes of the techies. It means PIFFLE if it doesn't turn into business.

This is a BUSINESS situation. Check the trends where the VC money is going. Boston has now slipped to 3rd place.

No doubt, Boston/Cambridge makes the brains. Silicon Valley and NYC make the money from it. You fail to see that dynamic.

It is a dynamic that is in the best interest of the Boston/Cambridge area to stop.

We have the scientists. We need smart people WITH ELBOWS to keep the product. It's time to enter the real world.

Otherwise, you're only staring at another LBJ post-assassination NASA theft.
 
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Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

shmessy said:
Otherwise, you're only staring at another LBJ post-assassination NASA theft.
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My personal recollection of those times is that Houston became Mission Control as part of the deal which got LBJ to accept the Vice Presidency. I suppose if Kennedy had backed LBJ for President and served as Vice President, mission control might have been over in Kendall Square. Johnson had a long standing interest in the "space race".

In any event, you are twisting the facts to suit your argument. Here is a little piece to educate you on the events that occurred decades before your birth:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/396/1
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

Toby, now don't you feel bad about not liking the London Eye?

You've doomed Boston to failure. Good work.
 
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You sound just like assorted ex-wives and girlfriends.

By all means...build an Eyeful Tower just to stop the non-sense!
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

tobyjug said:
My personal recollection of those times is that Houston became Mission Control as part of the deal which got LBJ to accept the Vice Presidency. I suppose if Kennedy had backed LBJ for President and served as Vice President, mission control might have been over in Kendall Square. Johnson had a long standing interest in the "space race".

In any event, you are twisting the facts to suit your argument. Here is a little piece to educate you on the events that occurred decades before your birth:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/396/1
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Nope.

http://www.governing.com/topics/economic-dev/cambridge-mass-space-center-that-wasnt.html


".....In the 1960s, Cambridge, Mass., officials lobbied NASA to bring its new $64 million space center to Kendall Square, a former industrial neighborhood that needed a boost. With President John F. Kennedy’s support, Cambridge was successful and the city’s redevelopment authority reportedly delivered 14 acres for NASA buildings in Kendall Square’s 42-acre urban renewal zone. Land was razed. Businesses were relocated. Buildings were built.

Cambridge was all set to launch NASA’s electronics research hub. But after Kennedy’s assassination, congressional support faded. In the blink of an eye, and allegedly without warning, NASA pulled the project out of Cambridge to relocate in Houston......."


http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-...dall-square-high-tech-mecca-academic-research

".......Yet for a good part of the past five decades, the Kendall Square area was a wasteland of parking lots and abandoned factories. In the mid-’60s, with the promise of a new NASA space center locating there, Cambridge acquired and razed more than 40 acres around Kendall Square as part of an ur ban renewal effort.

Nearly 100 businesses were relocated at government expense, yet the project never lifted off. After the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who backed NASA’s move to Cambridge, congressional support for the project dwindled. Although NASA had constructed several buildings on the site, the project was eventually lost to Houston, in the home state of Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson......"
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

shmessy said:
Nope.

http://www.governing.com/topics/economic-dev/cambridge-mass-space-center-that-wasnt.html


".....In the 1960s, Cambridge, Mass., officials lobbied NASA to bring its new $64 million space center to Kendall Square, a former industrial neighborhood that needed a boost. With President John F. Kennedy’s support, Cambridge was successful and the city’s redevelopment authority reportedly delivered 14 acres for NASA buildings in Kendall Square’s 42-acre urban renewal zone. Land was razed. Businesses were relocated. Buildings were built.

Cambridge was all set to launch NASA’s electronics research hub. But after Kennedy’s assassination, congressional support faded. In the blink of an eye, and allegedly without warning, NASA pulled the project out of Cambridge to relocate in Houston......."

http://articles.boston.com/2011-06-...dall-square-high-tech-mecca-academic-research

".......Yet for a good part of the past five decades, the Kendall Square area was a wasteland of parking lots and abandoned factories. In the mid-’60s, with the promise of a new NASA space center locating there, Cambridge acquired and razed more than 40 acres around Kendall Square as part of an ur ban renewal effort.

Nearly 100 businesses were relocated at government expense, yet the project never lifted off. After the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who backed NASA’s move to Cambridge, congressional support for the project dwindled. Although NASA had constructed several buildings on the site, the project was eventually lost to Houston, in the home state of Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson......"
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Shmess - that is old revisionist history

The businesses that were there were to a large extent living on borrowed-time anyway -- although the comment about 5 decades is bogus

Those businesses were booming through WWII and into the 1950's -- their slow decline started about the time that Eisenhower was reelected and the Interstates started to proliferate

that said -- It's highly unlikely that what has happened on MIT's backdoor could have happened without there being a lot of vacant land -- taken for NASA -- which ordinarily would not expct to be found in a compact and dense city such as Cambridge

Yes -- I too pine for the loss of the NASA ERC - with only the pale reflection left in the Volpe Center -- but that is the past -- today there is 1 Millon Sq. ft. of Lab space under construction in the Kendal / cambridge Center area and Vasser / Main St. is the global Hub of Innovation and the Center of the Knowledge Economy
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

tobyjug said:
I think the first two paragraphs from the Johnson Space Center website dispel your shabby research and post-assassination blarney; note the dates:

http://www.spacecenter.org/AboutUsJSCHistory.html
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You're referencing the website of the Johnson Space Center visitor's page for the real story about this?

Really?

The two links I provided showed that the Cambridge NASA center was targeted for the MID-60's. The MSC was already established in 1961 and Houston's temporary site operated the Gemini missions. The project referenced was for the PERMANENT center to replace the quickly put together Gemini center.

The Cambridge center was already being built with NASA already having built SEVERAL BUILDINGS, with over 100 businesses relocated at GOVERNMENT EXPENSE. That doesn't happen just on a hunch.

And you want to link to the papered over history of the Visitor's Center website of the JSC?
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

Schmessy's problem as an advocate is that he tends to mistake cause and effect. And he assumes that anyone who doesn't agree with him is somehow anti-Boston, which means his arguments are black and white rather than rendered in the grey tones that more accurately approximate life.

(That, plus it is always dicey to rely on newspaper accounts written by people who are a stone's throw away from the hourly minimum wage.)

As for the Space Center, my aunt worked over in Kendall Square for Nasa in the 1960's. Eventually she left there for MIT when she was told she could keep her Nasa job if she wanted to move to Houston.

The JSC was part of the price JFK paid for being President; Sunbelt congressional power made sure that what was bought from JFK stayed bought. And no one since Henry Clay worked Congress better than LBJ.
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

whighlander said:
Shmess - that is old revisionist history

The businesses that were there were to a large extent living on borrowed-time anyway -- although the comment about 5 decades is bogus

Those businesses were booming through WWII and into the 1950's -- their slow decline started about the time that Eisenhower was reelected and the Interstates started to proliferate

that said -- It's highly unlikely that what has happened on MIT's backdoor could have happened without there being a lot of vacant land -- taken for NASA -- which ordinarily would not expct to be found in a compact and dense city such as Cambridge

Yes -- I too pine for the loss of the NASA ERC - with only the pale reflection left in the Volpe Center -- but that is the past -- today there is 1 Millon Sq. ft. of Lab space under construction in the Kendal / cambridge Center area and Vasser / Main St. is the global Hub of Innovation and the Center of the Knowledge Economy
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Once again, you're posting as a scientist and not a businessman.

Boston/Cambridge should REAP THE REWARDS of its talent. This intellectual satisfaction of 'Yes, our city loses out when the profit is made, but at least we are feeding the other cities/regions around the world with talent' is not something I am going to support. That's YOUR choice.

Your entire post can be melted into one less wordy summary:

'Yes, Shmessy, sharper elbows DID steal the Space Center away from Cambridge, but in my view (Whighlander) all's well that end's well because better things eventually happened 40-50 years later.'

I'm sorry, Whighlander, I'm not okay with Boston/Cambridge getting outmuscled continually into the future and I take a much less sanguine vierw of that. It's better that Boston/Cambridge KEEPS what it grows and doesn't have to continually work to pick itself up off the canvass over 40-50 year periods while poachers make profits.
 
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tobyjug said:
Schmessy's problem as an advocate is that he tends to mistake cause and effect. And he assumes that anyone who doesn't agree with him is somehow anti-Boston, which means his arguments are black and white rather than rendered in the grey tones that more accurately approximate life.

(That, plus it is always dicey to rely on newspaper accounts written by people who are a stone's throw away from the hourly minimum wage.)

As for the Space Center, my aunt worked over in Kendall Square for Nasa in the 1960's. Eventually she left there for MIT when she was told she could keep her Nasa job if she wanted to move to Houston.

The JSC was part of the price JFK paid for being President; Sunbelt congressional power made sure that what was bought from JFK stayed bought. And no one since Henry Clay worked Congress better than LBJ.
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"(That, plus it is always dicey to rely on newspaper accounts written by people who are a stone's throw away from the hourly minimum wage.)"

-As if the intern who writes the blurbs for the Visitor's Center at JSC in Houston is Woodward and Bernstein.

"And he assumes that anyone who doesn't agree with him is somehow anti-Boston...."

Where do you get off making that kind of statement. It's everyone's right to argue a point here. Why do you have to leap to saying something like this? It has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion.

"which means his arguments are black and white rather than rendered in the grey tones that more accurately approximate life...."

What a condescending this to write (along with your earlier and quite incorrect "Here is a little piece to educate you on the events that occurred decades before your birth:". How about arguing your point? I find when people start to resort to attacking the poster instead of their point, that says more about the retorting poster than it says about their point.

If JFK gave LBJ the space center in order to have him on the ticket in the late summer of 1960, then why was Cambridge relocating 100 businesses and NASA building buildings there 3 years later? The answer is simple. What eventually became ERC as a consolation prize (which was later defunded by Nixon) was originally slated as the MSC.
 
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Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

^^^^The reply to Westy being a good example of the Schmessy rhetorical technique.

I'm not attacking Schmessy as a poster; I am exposing his shallow thought process; his willingness to assume ill will on the part of those who disagree with him; his vituperative tone; his uncritical boosterism, and the apparent C-minus nature of his intellect.

He is indeed a specimen. A Ned who likes tall buildings.

With me he runs from his original contention that Mission Control was some "post assassination theft", which he can't back up. Does he even know when JFK was assassinated? Was Cambridge relocating buildings in 1963? Which ones? When? Who owned them? Were they taken by eminent domain? He can't explain away the fact that the JSC pre dates the assassination and all the "clearance"? He can't figure out that there were multiple NASA centers, Huntsville, Canaveral, Houston. No, he says, it is all theft.

To return to the original head fake that sent us this way, does anyone know how many of these big foolish ferris wheels are being built? There is one in Singapore. Calcutta was thinking of putting up one on the banks of the scenic Hoogly. A dozen? Two dozen? Would building one in Boston make us some sort of world center for innovation? Answer that simple question, Mr. Schmessy.
 
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Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

This might answer your question.
http://listverse.com/2011/07/12/top-10-ferris-wheels/
I also found referance to The Great Dubai Wheel at 607ft (yet to be completed) the Beijing Great Wheel 682ft (yet to be completed) the Skyvue Las Vegas 500ft (under construction) and the Skywheel 200ft in Myrtle Beach SC which is the tallest wheel in the Eastern US.
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

Thanks! I've been on five of the ones on the list.
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

tobyjug said:
^^^^The reply to Westy being a good example of the Schmessy rhetorical technique.

I'm not attacking Schmessy as a poster; I am exposing his shallow thought process; his willingness to assume ill will on the part of those who disagree with him; his vituperative tone; his uncritical boosterism, and the apparent C-minus nature of his intellect.

He is indeed a specimen. A Ned who likes tall buildings.
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I don't understand people who need to make personal attacks on an internet forum when discussing something.

Best regards.
 
Re: Charles River Esplanade Given Landmark Status

Kicking sand in everyone's face, and then retreating in a self righteous huff when others kick back is also conventional rhetorical technique.

Kid, I actually agreed with a lot of stuff you said (not so much on NASA). But damn it. UP YOUR GAME. You have the passion. Just remember that the best pitchers have more than one speed. The guy who throws 100mph every time starts getting lit up by the batters.

Get it right and maybe you can make a difference where the old dogs failed.

(and I am a cynical pompous old hound)
 
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tobyjug said:
Kicking sand in everyone's face, and then retreating in a self righteous huff when others kick back is also conventional rhetorical technique.

Kid, I actually agreed with a lot of stuff you said (not so much on NASA). But damn it. UP YOUR GAME. You have the passion. Just remember that the best pitchers have more than one speed. The guy who throws 100mph every time starts getting lit up by the batters.

Get it right and maybe you can make a difference where the old dogs failed.

(and I am a cynical pompous old hound)
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The problem with being cynical, pompous and old (your words) is that it creates a calcified person who pre-judges without knowing any facts. This is a common strain in your posts.

Despite your attempt to paint a picture to conform to your certitude, I'm no "kid". Am a 47 year old CFP and have owned an investment advisory practice down here in Rockville, MD for the past 20 years.

Before that, after graduating college and moving out of the Boston area, I was a linguist/intelligence analyst with the NSA for 5 years. I've been to places, and in situations, that would fill your Depends.

So thank you, Kind Sir, for the sage advice on how to 'play with the big leaguers' on an internet forum. Being a moderator (under the same poster name) on a New England Patriots fan website that has over 18,000 members and 15 times the traffic of this site could never prepare me for the "big leagues" of this place (which, by the way, is an excellent site). I am truly intimidated by internet admirals like you laying down the law on 'how to throw more than just a fast ball' when the going gets tough on an internet forum. Not everyone can perform under such daunting and pressurized situations.

Your final semi-sentence was the only valid portion of your conceited and delusional post.
 
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