Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

I don't see why having a tall building is important at all. What's important is rebuilding a connection between the Bulfinch Triangle, Haymarket, and the Blackstone Block.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

I'm just hoping for a well designed building that will look futuristic and stuff. Yeah it's vague but it will make Boston more interesting looking.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Just got the email from my former colleague, Raymond's web site on this project is at www.demolishthegarage.com - no renderings or anything, just the PR campaign laid out in simple terms - nice site.

I guess the days of typed-up 8.5x11 hand-outs at community meetings are over!
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

thanks for that link ... there's some interesting stuff in there.


?We want to end up with a project that looks like three city blocks,? said Raymond, adding that they wanted a intimate streetscape. ?We want it to look like Boston. It might end up looking like fifteen buildings.? Rebecca Mattson, Chief Operating Officer, said, ?We want to avoid Seaport?a single block, a single building?it is so sterile looking.? ?We have no plans to build 100-foot towers said Alex Krieger, of the urban design firm of Chan Kreiger Sienwicz, which was hired to develop the master plan. Krieger is leading the planning process. ?The lowest building will be adjacent to the Greenway, and will get progressively taller as you move toward the Bulfinch Triangle.?
Click to expand...

The developer is considering adding another 1.6 acres to the site by including the abutting New Sudbury Street sites where the Area A police station, an NStar transformer, and a social service building are located,
according to Raymond. ?The police station will remain in the area of redevelopment,? said Mattson.
Click to expand...


http://www.demolishthegarage.com/pdf/news/North_End_News_2008_06_30.pdf
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Too bad its not economically feasible to actually build fifteen buildings rather than three buildings that try to look like fifteen.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

^ Oh, it's economically feasible alright --just not optimally lucrative. If zoning controlled footprint as it controls height, it would automatically become optimally lucrative as well.

Developers build whatever they're allowed to build. What do you expect?
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

ablarc said:
Developers build whatever they're allowed to build.
Click to expand...

And publicly congratulate themselves for "sticking to the script" even if it guarantees a bad result.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

ablarc said:
If zoning controlled footprint as it controls height, it would automatically become optimally lucrative as well.
Click to expand...

Is there any place in Boston where zoning does control footprint? Do other US cities have this? (I imagine European cities like Berlin or Rome must.) Has there ever been talk about this in Boston or elsewhere? Could it ever happen?

That's a lot of the same question. I think controlling footprint would be great -- then we'd have less State Transportation Buildings and more contemporary versions of the South End. I just doubt (but am hopeful) that there's any push for this in Boston today. People would call it "anti-capitalist" or something, though they have no problem with height restrictions. And yes, that is hypocritical -- and neither of them is necessarily "anti-capitalist" in the least.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

itchy said:
Is there any place in Boston where zoning does control footprint? Do other US cities have this?
Click to expand...
Single-family and other zoning controls footprint everywhere in Suburbia by means of setbacks. If you have a 50' x 150' lot with 5' side setbacks, 40' at the rear and 20' in front, your buildable footprint is 40' x 90'.

As is the case with all things suburban, however, this does not resemble the urban condition and has no effect on scale.

In cities, you could start by forbidding the development of more than two adjacent properties as a single parcel. This would have the effect of slowing the assembly of large lots and seriously out-of-scale buildings such as the one Druker is proposing in place of Shreve's and several other parcels. It would also encourage sliver buildings, which are rarely out of scale. There's a sliver building on Beacon Street facing the Common, that no one thinks is out of scale, and there are a couple on Commonwealth Avenue in the tenderloin of Back Bay.

New York has oodles of them --some over forty stories tall.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

ablarc said:
There's a sliver building on Beacon Street facing the Common, that no one thinks is out of scale.
Click to expand...

Perhaps it is apocraphal, but I have heard that the building to which you refer caused such a stir when built that building height, hitherto restricted only by elevator technology, became subject to city zoning for the first time.

I like that assemblage restriction idea. Clever.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

tobyjug said:
Perhaps it is apocraphal, but I have heard that the building to which you refer caused such a stir when built that building height, hitherto restricted only by elevator technology, became subject to city zoning for the first time.
Click to expand...
Sounds like retro-history to me.

Russians used to be good at that.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Ron Newman said:
I don't see why having a tall building is important at all.
Click to expand...

It's not important, but it is sensible, given the proximity to no fewer than five public transportation options, and it does not interfere with any flightpath at Logan.

Ron Newman said:
What's important is rebuilding a connection between the Bulfinch Triangle, Haymarket, and the Blackstone Block.
Click to expand...

Not just important -- critical.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Next Meeting:
Topic: Front (East) Parcel Planning
July 23, 2008 6:00-7:30pm
The public is welcome. Please enter at the One Congress Street entrance at the corner of New Chardon and Merrimac/Congress Streets, and remember to bring photo ID for building security.
Click to expand...

http://www.demolishthegarage.com/meetings.htm
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Did you guys notice that an "office space for lease" banner has gone up on the garage? They are going to market the office space on the upper floors of the existing garage throughout the planning process to act as a hammer hanging over the head of the planners/public - very smart tactic. If they lease the space on the upper floors, the garage stays for another 10-year lease term.

The leasing banner is a very visible tactic.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Unfortunately, I can't make this tonight. Can anyone get to it?
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

^^ Govno sobachee (dog shit)? (говно собачее)
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Check out the project's web site - I have so far missed every single meeting on this project, but they post the PPT shows. The most recent one shows renderings and models for the front parcel (the bus station parcel). Very much worth checking out!!!

I love what they're doing - and how they're doing it - their PR agency has them presenting bad options, and then the one that they want. It's a very powerful PR strategy. At the end of this process, the neighbors are going to want exactly what the developer wants and everyone will laud the "collaborative neighborhood process"! The busybody "activists" will think they actually had some input - brilliant! Steve Bailey, angry little former Globe communist, has seen the plans that the developer wanted all along - from over a year ago. How much do you want to bet that the activists end up with this same exact plan? Does Bailey still have copies of that plan? Would he leak them to the Globe or others? I bet he would.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top