I
InTheHood
Guest
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.
People on this board tend to way overestimate NIMBY power.
A couple of years ago, I was at a meeting where Beal and Related presented the Clarendon proposal. Several people in the neighborhood engaged the presenters on materials - why, exactly, did this need to be pseudo-brick, given that it is across from the glassy Hancock and stone Hancock? The architects smiled, and interestingly did not bother justifying this decision - instead, they responded that "they had been told" that brick would be received most warmly. It seems the BRA was filtering the feedback.
Developers unsurprisingly often come forward with dull (or worse) proposals simply because landscaper boxes are inexpensive to build and the numbers work. They also look at recently approved projects for guidance on the path of least resistance. There is definitely an annoying contingent of NIMBYs who are fixated on irrelevant or misguided fetishes, like height and distant shadows. But most neighborhoods have at least some people with an urban sense.
Since the BRA is our planning agency by default, it should be playing a positive role in managing streetscape, promoting good urbanism, and encouraging excellence and creativity in design. You can't fault the NIMBYs for screw-ups like Hotel Commonwealth or mail-in designs like One Charles and its fifty clones. Or Shreve. Or these Congress Street Garage proposals. Or the fact that the Seaport will all be precast megablocks. Vivian Li may have limited understanding of what makes urban greenspace work, and Shirley Kressel may be absurdly fixated on height and the supposed adverse consequences of "density," but I've never heard either of them say, "golly whiz, what we really need are ten more buildings that look like those Seaport hotels." Indeed, at the meetings it's often some lone voice from the neighborhoods - someone like a Ron Newman - who is asking the pointed questions along the lines of: "why is there a garage entrance on the main street?" "can't there be windows along the secondary facade?" "will this be stone or precast?" "what sort of retail spaces do you envision for the ground floor?" "can't you do something about the dead space at the corner?" "why so much parking?" "do you really need to tear down the XYZ building to square up the parcel?" And the BRA rep at the meeting will smile and nod and shuffle the dear soul aside so that someone else can speak.
What then emerges is a precast box, five percent shorter than the original proposal, with optimized loading docks and vehicular drop-offs, regular floorplans, and a hulking anonymous aesthetic, perhaps with a flower pot or two in response to the neighborhood ... One Charles and its fifty clones. Can't blame NIMBYs for that.
People on this board tend to way overestimate NIMBY power.
A couple of years ago, I was at a meeting where Beal and Related presented the Clarendon proposal. Several people in the neighborhood engaged the presenters on materials - why, exactly, did this need to be pseudo-brick, given that it is across from the glassy Hancock and stone Hancock? The architects smiled, and interestingly did not bother justifying this decision - instead, they responded that "they had been told" that brick would be received most warmly. It seems the BRA was filtering the feedback.
Developers unsurprisingly often come forward with dull (or worse) proposals simply because landscaper boxes are inexpensive to build and the numbers work. They also look at recently approved projects for guidance on the path of least resistance. There is definitely an annoying contingent of NIMBYs who are fixated on irrelevant or misguided fetishes, like height and distant shadows. But most neighborhoods have at least some people with an urban sense.
Since the BRA is our planning agency by default, it should be playing a positive role in managing streetscape, promoting good urbanism, and encouraging excellence and creativity in design. You can't fault the NIMBYs for screw-ups like Hotel Commonwealth or mail-in designs like One Charles and its fifty clones. Or Shreve. Or these Congress Street Garage proposals. Or the fact that the Seaport will all be precast megablocks. Vivian Li may have limited understanding of what makes urban greenspace work, and Shirley Kressel may be absurdly fixated on height and the supposed adverse consequences of "density," but I've never heard either of them say, "golly whiz, what we really need are ten more buildings that look like those Seaport hotels." Indeed, at the meetings it's often some lone voice from the neighborhoods - someone like a Ron Newman - who is asking the pointed questions along the lines of: "why is there a garage entrance on the main street?" "can't there be windows along the secondary facade?" "will this be stone or precast?" "what sort of retail spaces do you envision for the ground floor?" "can't you do something about the dead space at the corner?" "why so much parking?" "do you really need to tear down the XYZ building to square up the parcel?" And the BRA rep at the meeting will smile and nod and shuffle the dear soul aside so that someone else can speak.
What then emerges is a precast box, five percent shorter than the original proposal, with optimized loading docks and vehicular drop-offs, regular floorplans, and a hulking anonymous aesthetic, perhaps with a flower pot or two in response to the neighborhood ... One Charles and its fifty clones. Can't blame NIMBYs for that.
