Boynton Yards | 99-101 South/808 Windsor | Somerville
- Thread starter Equilibria
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IMG_5322Personally I can't muster up any enthusiasm for this box either - - - I guess it's a good thing that there is a lot of workspace inside and that may help the human race?
Equilibria
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I think of this as the 1 Marina Park Drive of Union Square. Sore thumb now, but better is coming to make it a background player.
yea, I saw the plans for this and thought it was so bland but figured I'd give it a chance. Yea, It's still so bland and boring.
I've a bad feeling the east/southside of union is going to be a mess of boring boxes with a bit of cladding to try and hide the banality.
Bottom line boxes to stuff with people with no forethought for the tiny surrounding street layout.
I'm all for development and actively want to see it but I fear they might make a pigs ear of this area.
I've a bad feeling the east/southside of union is going to be a mess of boring boxes with a bit of cladding to try and hide the banality.
Bottom line boxes to stuff with people with no forethought for the tiny surrounding street layout.
I'm all for development and actively want to see it but I fear they might make a pigs ear of this area.
Equilibria
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Compared to what it is right now? A tangle of narrow lanes between rusting heaps of junk metal and vacant lots?
You build a district of lab buildings and you know what you're getting.
I kinda see it as a blank canvas. Yea, I know what I’m getting. That’s the problem
Charlie_mta
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The cladding looks too much like a wire mesh fence, but I agree with Equilibria, you can't always do the quantum leap from a junkyard environment to premium architecture.
stick n move
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Yea the 1 marina park drive reference is hopefully a perfect description of what were going to see here. Itll be interesting to watch how it all shakes out.
whighlander
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Stick -- No -- One Marina Park Drive has two things going for it that this development will never have:
1) A major league Pharma Company i.e. Vertex
2) the Seaport District and the Harbor
Somerville will always be the "back-office" district for Kendall and the Seaport
stick n move
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Thats not the point of the reference... Nobodys saying any of that, just that you start out with something low cost and bland to get the ball rolling and it gets better from there. Nobody thinks Boynton will be Seaport sq 2.0.
whighlander
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Stick -- it could however become the home for a significant Bio-manufacturing complex. Somerville has a long and somewhat storied history of factories -- which as they say "good jobs at good wages" even if they aren't jobs needing an advanced degree in STEM
And 30 years ago nobody around here would have thought any upper-tier tech company would want anything to do with the South Boston waterfront area that is now the Seaport/"Innovation District." And, aside from MIT and Bell Labs and a few others, Kendall was a ghost town until the '90s. So maybe pump the breaks on your "Somerville will *always* be blah-blah-blah" nonsense. You don't have a crystal ball.
+1. It always amazes me how someone can be so stuck in “this is the way it has always been” thinking when the unimaginable changes that have occurred the past two decades in the Seaport, Allston/Brighton, Columbus Avenue corridor, North Cambridge, Chelsea, etc are so patently obvious to anyone with a pair eyes. The person to whom you are responding has truly missed out on an incredible era in Boston’s history these past 20 years. To think that the future will somehow revert to the Mayor Curley administration is comical.
I think you're both kind of right.
Somerville (union/Boynton) can definitely re invent it's self and become a busy employment and living area but it is pretty clearly planning on jumping on Kendal's coat tails.
And all this first Boynton building says to me is 'yea, this is going to be a budget kendal'
One of the few things that can stop it being a kendal afterthought is innovative unique design and place making. I haven't seen any of that in the US2 or Boynton plans and the first building is not instilling confidence.
Sorry to be such a downer, and I really hope you're right with your Vertex comparison.
Excellent points, Ruairi. Importantly, you recognize that this is a fluid situation and will be unfolding over several decades and generations. Per my earlier post:
1) Given, the poster I was talking about had just written " Somerville will always be the "back-office" district for Kendall and the Seaport". (italics, mine)
2) During the prevous decade he wrote post after post declaring the Seaport would always be a 'back office district' of Kendall Square.
1+2=3) I tend to read his pronouncements of constant (not dynamic) certitude with the level of gravitas they deserve.
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Just breathe y’all, it’s one building as part of a massive development. It’s not make or break.
That said, I feel like it’s really made an impact on the square, or at least a big visual impact when walking around the square. Feels like you can see it from everywhere.
That said, I feel like it’s really made an impact on the square, or at least a big visual impact when walking around the square. Feels like you can see it from everywhere.
