Boston Landing | New Balance Complex | Brighton

Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

davem said:
I've always had a grandiose idea of the city doing a land swap for those businesses and moving them to Western Ave on Smith field and the adjacent DCR lot. Then bulldoze the whole thing and make a park. Yeah they are all corporate, but its the only Starbucks in the area, a really good liquor store, a 24/7 ihop and the iparty gets pretty good business too. The only real shame would be losing the first Staples ever, but its such a dumpy building its not too much of a loss. Instant tenants might get a developer interested.

The Birmingham Parkway is the most useless road in the city. It's been redundant since they extended SF Road past Market Street, and even more useless after they built the pike. I don't understand why it wasnt torn out 50 years ago. It does NOTHING but make every intersection it touches harder to navigate.
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Why not get rid of SF Road and leave the parkway? The park would be better abutting the river than sandwiched between a couple of highways, no?
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

Equilibria said:
Not necessarily. "Boutique hotel" does not mean "locally-owned bed-and-breakfast" unless you have some specific info on what's going in there. I bet in this case you're looking at an Aloft or some other corporate "boutique" concept.
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Thank you I agree. The majority of 'locally-owned" boutqiue hotels are actually owned by REITs or development firms located around the country. For example, Hotel Commonwealth is owned by Sage Hospitality out of Denver.

In terms of what would be a better business plan, a flagged hotel would be more successful than any boutique you put there.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

Equilibria said:
Why not get rid of SF Road and leave the parkway? The park would be better abutting the river than sandwiched between a couple of highways, no?
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SF Rd. is grade-separated inbound after the ugly-ass strip mall and has a proper exit to Market St. as opposed to Birmingham which just mashes into Market and Lincoln at a bad angle and poorly-designed signal. And SF Rd. does have a decent amount of buffering on the river side. It's a nice walk on that end.

I don't know if I'd wipe Birmingham off the face of the earth rather than recast it into something very different.

1) Take the Birmingham WB carriageway. Re-center it square on the Lincoln/Market intersection. Reshape it through the general center of the redevelopment on the ugly-ass strip mall properties as a leafy 2-lane access road to the developments. Spit it out square on the N. Beacon intersection. Call it "Lincoln St. Extension" or something. Delete most of the SF Rd. curb cuts except for a single-point split/merge into the development since Lincoln Ext. will handle most local traffic in traffic-calmed fashion.

2) Trade the Birmingham EB carriageway in for a Pike WB offramp interfacing with the Beacon/Lincoln Ext. intersection. Slip a Pike WB onramp off Nonantum right past the rotary in the Brooks St. vicinity. This will draw all the Watertown-bound traffic away from Exit 17/Newton Corner and funnel it onto sorely underutilized N. Beacon. And draw a lot of Cambridge-bound traffic away from the Allston tolls and onto the sorely underutilized west end of SF Rd. Newton, Watertown, A-B, and Cambridge all get much saner traffic distribution by load-spreading from the two current mis-designed exits over to the empty portion of the river roads. Let the Pike EB traffic that doesn't have an exit option use Newton Corner and Cambridge St., but make the rest of it manageable heading out from inside the city.


This reshaping/repurposing also juices the redevelopment of the ugly-ass strip malls while substantially improving the Market-to-Western clusterfuck that is totally the fault of the current Birmingham Pkwy.'s configuration.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

Bergeron37 said:
Can someone explain to me the draw of building a boutique hotel? I understand the city still lacks hotel rooms, but why go boutique when you could issue an RFP and very likely get a Hilton or Marriott-flagged property.
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The term boutique hotel does not mean what it once did. Now we hear about proposals containing boutique hotels with 200-300+ rooms. I believe there is one opening up on Washington st in Downtown Crossing in the next year that is about 250 rooms and has been widely referred to as a boutique hotel (i.e. The Godfrey). The term has somehow evolved from a small, independent hotel usually less than 100 rooms to any hotel not flagged by Marriott, Sheraton, Hilton etc.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

"Boutique" hotels attempt to be younger, fresher, cooler. That says nothing about who owns them. Starwood introduced the W as it's boutique brand. Kimpton Hotels owns something like 80 hotels and they're all boutiques including the Onyx and Nine Zero in Boston.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

The backhoe on the site is moving around doing something. I can't see what from my apartment because of the trees along the pike. Winter needs to come and kill these trees…
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

davem said:
The backhoe on the site is moving around doing something. I can't see what from my apartment because of the trees along the pike. Winter needs to come and kill these trees…
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I noticed the other day on my drive home on the Pike that they have been moving heavy equipment onto the site.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

saw six puma-city style containers stacked on the site and some banner being hoisted. Wonder what that is about...
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

New Balance breaks ground on new headquarters

By Casey Ross / Globe Staff / September 23, 2013

Boston’s next mega-development broke ground Monday in Brighton, where sports apparel giant New Balance started construction of a world headquarters complex with a hotel, stores, and a massive athletic facility.

The $500 million project, to be called Boston Landing, will create a new cluster of buildings at the western edge of the city, where New Balance’s headquarters will be part of a broader sports and health district along the Massachusetts Turnpike.

Monday’s groundbreaking was the latest of several major projects to move forward in recent months, with developers now building thousands of new homes, office buildings, grocery stores, and major hotels in neighborhoods across the city. Just last week, work began on a 17-story office building in the South Boston Innovation District, and another developer started construction of a towering redevelopment of the former Filene’s property in Downtown Crossing.

Full story behind the Globe paywall
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

Newbie here, but I thought this originally promised residential housing ... or was that just my fervent imagination?
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

JohnAKeith said:
Newbie here, but I thought this originally promised residential housing ... or was that just my fervent imagination?
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Imagination. This has been office/retail since they helped to shoot down the lowes proposal.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

JohnAKeith said:
Newbie here, but I thought this originally promised residential housing ... or was that just my fervent imagination?
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New Balance either owns or possibly may acquire some underdeveloped parcels south of the u/c New Balance Complex site being built now, and I believe it's in a long range plan they've presented that they'd like to expand mixed uses onto these parcels... including residential housing.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

My hope is to get at least a couple residential towers in the Aurthur/Guest Street areas, esspecially with close proximity to grocery store, transportation, retial, resturants, two major employers.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

John, just to echo dshoost88 and racerc03, I think the answer is that the immediate build is the core business section around the station and that residential will be a large component in the second circumference - - still within easy walking distance to the station. But I think you are right, residential was probably mentioned originally by NB.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

They're hoping to attract other developers as well. There's two projects with LOI submitted in the vicinity between Union Sq and Guest Street now.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

Matthew - do you know if they are developing the hotel themselves or going to an RFP?
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

I don't know offhand, sorry.
 
Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

The Guest Street Planning Study sort of shows the direction they want the area to move in.

New Balance themselves aren't interested in building any residential, but they are obviously hoping their project will attract that type of development on adjacent parcels.


Edit: As I was looking through that again, I noticed a lot of the "future views" show the stop and shop remaining, with the dollar tree / homegoods portion demolished and rowers along most of it. Its just a massing model, but I can't help wonder if S&S is looking to get more value out of their property. Are there other examples of the company investing in mixed use?
 
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Re: New Brighton Landing | New Balance Complex

This type of development is so exciting. I haven't been down that way for about two years; I used to be there often while visiting my uncle at the retirement home near there on North Beacon. I am excited about this project and can imagine projects like it around the city. Of course, not many other companies would have the financial resources or even the desire to be the lead developer on something of this size but who knows? Harvard owns some of the apartments at Trilogy. Maybe we could get some hospitals to build some housing in Longwood or even at NorthPoint. Open to everyone but convenient for those working nearby. (The Albany Street apartments being put up near BMC is similar, I guess.)

I'd live out there in Allston if there was a full-service building (rental or condos) if the commuter rail was very close. I wouldn't want to have to take the 57 or 66 to the B Line to get downtown.
 
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