Boylston West @ Fenway Triangle (Van Ness) | 1325 Boylston Street | Fenway

Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

dshoost88 said:
Just a hunch, but I think since they're doing a 3-floor, 500-space underground parking garage, they may use reinforced concrete below grade to carry the loads of all those vehicles. If that's the case, then it could be a while before we see steel above ground. I don't have any information that they wouldn't be using steel for the garage, but my educated guess is they'd go with concrete based on experiences in other garages around the neighborhood (Trilogy, 1330, etc.).

Any civil/structural engineers care to chime in?
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Steel is fine for parking garages, especially if they are protected from the weather underground. Believe it or not, parking structures are built for less load than office or residential space. Cars are heavy, but they also take up a lot of room (something we've heard urbanists complain about;). If you had a bunch of people stand in a parking stall, they would actually weigh more than a car would. Parking garages also don't have to worry about heavy truck traffic.

Parking garage live loads are typically taken as only 40 pounds per square foot, versus 50psf for office space.

ASCE 7-10 Minimum Design Loads for Buildings and Other Structures is a handy guide for...exactly what it says.
Pricey though.
http://www.standardsbox.com/asce-7102010-p-970.html
http://www.asce.org/Product.aspx?id=2147487569

Back to the issue of concrete vs steel, it would be easiest to just make it match whatever the building above will be made out of.
 
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Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

Parking garages also don't have to worry about heavy truck traffic.
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But will this one also contain the loading docks for Target?
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

Ron Newman said:
But will this one also contain the loading docks for Target?
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No, the LD is actually in the center of the building on the ground floor and accessed by Kilmarnock St. The garage entrance is on the street that the trucks exit the LD thru-way from. Refer to this ground level plan posted (PDF) on Page 11:

Screenshot2013-08-04at103553_zps9b18002e.png
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

They've built the base of the crane:

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Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

Nice! Excavation almost done, bring on the concrete!
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

dshoost88 said:
If you're alluding to the Columbia Heights Target in DC, isn't that whole complex considerably larger in terms of retail uses?
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Yes, but it was specifically Target who demanded the spaces if they were to come to DC.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

The Target store in DC (Columbia Heights) is 180,000 sq ft on two levels. Supposedly highest sales volume of any Target. This DC Target includes perhaps a 20,000 sq ft grocery section with meat, produce.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

stellarfun said:
The Target store in DC (Columbia Heights) is 180,000 sq ft on two levels. Supposedly highest sales volume of any Target. This DC Target includes perhaps a 20,000 sq ft grocery section with meat, produce.
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And yet most people arrive by metro or walking...
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

stellarfun said:
The Target store in DC (Columbia Heights) is 180,000 sq ft on two levels. Supposedly highest sales volume of any Target. This DC Target includes perhaps a 20,000 sq ft grocery section with meat, produce.
Click to expand...

This store is over 160,000 SF on two levels. Guess is it will include grocery and will be one of the highest sales volume of any target given its location relative to schools, etc.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

Everyone, hold on, I'm taking notes.

Fenway: Shaws, Target supermarket, Wegmans okayed
Dudley: Walmart supermarket banned
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

Granted, Walt-Mart is an atrocious company.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

JohnAKeith said:
Everyone, hold on, I'm taking notes.

Fenway: Shaws, Target supermarket, Wegmans okayed
Dudley: Walmart supermarket banned
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I was under the impression that many Dudley residents were/are opposed to a Wal-Mart supermarket in the neighborhood because it would cannibalize business at Tropical Foods, which is being expanded (or may have already been... honestly, I haven't kept track of that store for a few years).

Unfortunately, it is financially advantageous for low-cost grocery stores to open in middle to upper-income communities... has been for decades. So this allows the food desert to exist in Roxbury, causing those residents to travel further to find quality groceries. If the Melnea Cass master plan takes off and Roxbury Crossing's hundreds (1,000?) market-rate apartments get built, a better case could be made in that neighborhood for a new supermarket.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

dshoost88 said:
I was under the impression that many Dudley residents were/are opposed to a Wal-Mart supermarket in the neighborhood because it would cannibalize business at Tropical Foods, which is being expanded (or may have already been... honestly, I haven't kept track of that store for a few years).

Unfortunately, it is financially advantageous for low-cost grocery stores to open in middle to upper-income communities... has been for decades. So this allows the food desert to exist in Roxbury, causing those residents to travel further to find quality groceries. If the Melnea Cass master plan takes off and Roxbury Crossing's hundreds (1,000?) market-rate apartments get built, a better case could be made in that neighborhood for a new supermarket.
Click to expand...

Seems like a Wal-Mart would solve that 'food desert' problem pretty well.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

Many Dudley / Roxbury residents supported it, as well.

Sorry, comment not nice ... I edited.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

Wal-Mart is a really terrible company though. Its not as though Wal-Mart is essential or the only option to fixing that food desert.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

Why is Wal-Mart a "terrible company"? Because it's profitable? That sounds like a decidedly not-terrible company.

Because it buys cheap Chinese goods and sells them at a price that allows large numbers of people to have more purchasing power than they otherwise would? Because it pays some of its employees what it feels (and what those employees agree) is an acceptable wage for relatively low-level work?

You can hope that a magical store of Whole Foods-quality products at Building 19 prices will decide it's willing to lose money and "invest" in this area to allow the people living nearby to buy high-quality-yet-very-cheap groceries right near their home (what you would call "ending the 'food desert'"). You'll probably need to wait some time for this to happen to avoid "terrible companies," though. ... If you think it's worth waiting that time out, I guess it would imply you don't see the "food desert" as such an overwhelming problem in the first place, correct?
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

Seriously? Bribes to local officials to get permits to open stores in Mexico? That's miniscule potatoes: Siemens sells centrifuge equipment to Iran; does that mean that you will protest any use of their trains or medical devices in Massachusetts?

I guess the logic is that because Wal-Mart did as it needed to do to open stores in a country that is utterly lawless and barely comparable to the US and paid bribes to open stores, that therefore Roxbury's residents should be the ones to pay the price, left indefinitely in their "food desert" to teach those Wal-Mart de Mexico people a lesson?

Less facetiously, Third World societies like Mexico do not have the same ethics expectations that the US has. If Wal-Mart wants to have business there, this is sadly what it needs to do - more the fault of Mexican society than of Wal-Mart, really. Of course, Wal-Mart could just ignore the Mexican market, but it would be the poor Mexicans who pay most for that decision.

I don't understand perpetuating "food deserts" for ideological reasons or to spite Wal-Mart because it's Wal-Mart. I do understand that residents may not want a store that has a huge parking lot, deliveries late at night, etc., etc. - but that's a question of putting in place zoning laws that meet a neighborhood's needs and expecting a business to adopt if it so chooses (which of course may be self-defeating for the neighborhood depending on its needs and how the zoning is handled). But saying "Wal-Mart bad, no come here" if it otherwise is willing to play by the rules is only going to hurt people's access to groceries and other goods that are sold at a price they can afford.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

I may not like Walmart for their questionable labor practices, and arguable degradation of standard of living, but as long as they can enter a city market in an urban-friendly way, there's no reason to keep them out. My worry is that they'll slap a suburban style sprawl store in a parking desert somewhere in Roxie. If it can be mixed-use development akin to the way Target is moving in, come on down...
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

My worry with Wal-Mart is that I vividly remember one of their store's fish counter/butcher and it was in the most disgusting and neglected shape I've ever seen.
 
Re: 1325-1341 Boylston St (Fenway Triangle/Former Goodyear Tire)

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