Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Yikes....This is suddenly a major proposal......

Those two towers are going to have to look amazing and irresistable on the initial rendering to help overcome a NIMBY and City Hall backlash over the height

This area is sort of no man's land in Boston so I really don't see how the West End NIMBY's can be afraid of the tower....if the design is impressive

On the other hand, this area calls for something thin and vertically acceuntuated....wide and thick would not work at all....that's what she said

Plus, this is a ton of space to fill.....how the hell are they ever going fill/sell most of this space??
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

These guys know what they are doing. 52 stories between the West End, North End, and Beacon Hill? HA! They are very smart. They see the need for something like 40 or 30 stories and do the song and dance where they bid high and we yell low.

Is this a broken system? You bettcha.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

The taking of the police station gives this a pretty large footprint (and the loss of another alley if i remember previously). Is there a reason (both towers on this footprint)? Maybe they want another mall inside?

I attended a couple of the early meetings that the garage owners held in the spring. There was some talk about actually restoring some of the old streets. No idea if this is still on the table.

These guys know what they are doing. 52 stories between the West End, North End, and Beacon Hill?

In this particular location, it's a no-brainer. They should have opened with 75 and 60 stories.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

If a building (a single building, however many there actually are in the development) is promoted as a symbol of Boston's future, and if people buy in, neighborhood whiners organizations will have a much harder time stopping the project.

There's no neighborhood here. The closest place where anyone lives is Endicott Street or Lynn Street in the North End.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

^^

True as that may be, it likely won't stop someone from getting their hands on it. I've always liked this site for the 1,000 foot proposal for exactly this reason, although I'm not sure how rational that is. On the other hand, the success of the Copley Place Tower in public hearings should impart a strong sense to these developers of how important design is to the success of a project.

If it's beautiful (which means appealing, not 'unique'), people have a hard time fighting it. NIMBYs are as seduced by genuinely good-looking architecture as anyone else.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

High-rises may replace Government Center garage
Developer proposes towers of 42 and 52 floors, hotel, stores

Developer Ted Raymond is proposing to build two office towers, 42 and 52 stories high, as part of a massive mixed-used complex on property now dominated by the hulking Government Center garage near Boston City Hall.

The proposal, estimated to cost $2.2 billion, would result in the demolition of the 2,300-space garage. Raymond would replace it with a row of retail stores, restaurants, and a hotel that would hide new garages with space for more than 2,000 cars.

"The thinking is oriented toward people walking along a downtown sidewalk, so it looks very much like a typical Boston streetscape," said Steve Kasnet, the chief executive of Raymond Property Co.

Raymond's proposal would extend the Financial District down Congress Street and open up a corridor whose continuity was interrupted by construction of the garage in the early 1970s.

The complex would be built in stages, with the first buildings estimated to be finished in 2014.

The two towers - one on Congress Street, the other along New Chardon - would add more than 2 million square feet of office space during the next decade. Raymond is betting that demand for office space will be on the upswing when he seeks to proceed with construction in 2010.

The proposal also includes two new residential buildings across Congress Street, along the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. Those structures would be 12 and 17 stories in height, consistent with the size of buildings that now border the Greenway.

Raymond has previously built Trinity Place in Copley Square and Flagship Wharf in Charlestown. His financial partners in the Government Center development are the $12 billion pension fund of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and Lewis Trust Group, a British company with worldwide property interests.

The Raymond Co. does not expect to begin construction for about 18 months, when officials hope credit markets will have reopened to help finance the development of large commercial projects.

Kasnet said the firm expects to file a proposal with the Boston Redevelopment Authority within two weeks, though.

In recent months, Raymond Co. officials have been meeting with community members and have created their own website, demolishthegarage.com. Representatives of the company were to meet with neighbors last night to discuss the towers' heights, long a principal point of concern.

Bob O'Brien, executive director of the Downtown North Association, said the towers could meet resistance from owners of the nearby Charles River Apartments, whose downtown views could be partially obstructed by the new structures.

But he said Raymond has been generally well received by neighbors, who want to see demolition of the Government Center garage.

"To call it the Berlin Wall disparages Berlin," O'Brien said of the massive gray structure.

Still, Raymond faces considerable obstacles. For one, he doesn't own all of the land he is proposing to use. The city owns property along New Sudbury Street that currently houses a newly renovated police station, and several other structures that would be in the way of the 52-story tower. There is also an NStar substation on the property.

John Palmieri, director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, said the city must also study the effects of wind and shadows on the Greenway, as well as parking and traffic. "It's a robust development, so the question is whether the city could accommodate it," he said.

Raymond's architect for the project, Chan, Krieger, Sieniewicz of Cambridge, conducted a study that showed there would be shadows from the office towers over the Greenway for no more than one hour a day. They also said the building heights would be similar to those of existing structures near the Greenway, including the Custom House and the 75 State St. tower.

House Speaker Salvatore DiMasi, a North End Democrat, and State Representative Marty Walz have raised the possibility of Raymond's setting aside space within the development for Suffolk University, which is seeking to build more student housing.

"I want to have Suffolk brought into the conversation about this site, because it is within one of the school's targeted expansion areas," said Walz, a Back Bay Democrat.

Suffolk is not currently included in the plan, but Kasnet said developers will entertain new ideas as the permitting process moves forward

http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/10/24/high_rises_may_replace_government_center_garage/

can somebody post the pic?
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

I never envisioned anything approaching this level of density or height, but I rather like the massing. The two towers appear a bit stout, but that can be refined. It is certainly a step in the right direction, and it's a million times better than what we are dealing with at the present.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

539w.jpg
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

More throwaway architecture. The towers should be slimmer and...better.

I hope the nimbys choose their battles wisely.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

The design is better than most towers in downtown, and will breathe life into a struggling area, I'd say go for it; it would look better when taller though, and due to its fatness, it will look quite squat if short.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

NIMBYs are as seduced by genuinely good-looking architecture as anyone else.
Provided it's good looking in a thrice-familiar way.

Even then, you can expect the height card to be played. Even if you proposed the Custom House Tower you could expect to see the height card on the table.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Some of Chan, Krieger, Sieniewicz's past projects are fairly nice but they have never done anything remotely as big as this project nor does it appear that they have ever designed a tower....

looking at that rendering above of this new project...the main tower looks ok, it isn't vomit inducing like the Mandarin or some of the Seaport boxes but it is a bit bland....at least from this angle....
 
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Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

This firm's specialty is bland but correct urban design.

A possibility to consider: correct urban design encourages a certain blandness of expression in building design?
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

well Boston certainly does a fantastic job of absorbing a tremendous amount of unambitious modern architecture....so it must be correct!
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

There's so much shiny rendering gloss on those towers that I don't even know how to react. I expected the bulkiness (you're not going to get boutique-sized floorplates on 40-story towers), but as far as I can tell the design is as mediocre as it gets.

A couple of things they got right: in between the 42-story tower and the glassy midrise they included a set of small-scaled "buildings" (which of course will just be precast brick panels in a couple of different colors); and they included all the Greenway development (the YMCA and that L-shaped CBT office building ) so as to soften the blunt of this development hitting the parks.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

I'm not going to complain. Most people in other city will see these towers as great looking. Seeing how Boston doesn't have many amazing looking towers, I'm not going to keep a high standard. These are probably the tallest it will get in downtown and probably much taller than NIMBYs will allow. I'm guessing from the picture that the 52 story tower is around 600ft. And if I'm correct, there's a "spire" on it which brings the total structural height to at least 700 ft?
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

the taller one looks like a rehash of TNP.
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Three Words- General Services Administration

These towers will never get off the ground. They send security guards to the garage, if god forbid, you take a picutre of downtown, nevermind build two towers that will SOAR over the JFK Building. They kill every proposal made in redeveloping City Hall Plaza.

This is the pic that caused a 20 min interrogation:
171011024_4xHA4-S-1.jpg
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

What ever functions are done at the JFK, really, really need to move down to the SBW, or better yet 128. (Or in Ron's world, abolished altogether ;))
 
Re: Congress St Garage is being sold.

Hello All,

Been lurking on these boards for a while, and now making my first ehem...post.

Just wanted to say that this garage definately needs to come down, its such an eye sore. But also, when I parked my car in the garage last week for a concert at the TDBN Garden, the spiral down to street level is so tight to the bottom (went down about 7 floors) I honestly got nauseous driving and nearly crashed my car i was so dizzy. Then I payed 26 bucks to park my car for like 2 1/2 hrs....lovely. thank god it was a good concert and I was in a good mood.

Anyways, I think building up the Congress St area is agreat idea.
 

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