Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Re: Congress Street Garage Development

RIP

Garage rebuild plan has new developer
January 13, 2010 05:29 PM E-mail| |Comments (0)| Text size ? +

By Casey Ross, Globe Staff

A proposal to replace the Government Center Garage in downtown Boston with two skyscrapers has been stalled by the tough economy, and its owners have replaced its developer with a former City Hall veteran who will try to retool the ambitious plan.


The garage owners, a venture that includes a national pension fund for electrical workers, replaced Boston developer Ted Raymond, with Thomas O'Brien, who once ran the city's redevelopment agency under Mayor Thomas M. Menino. The owners are also looking for new tenants for the upper floors of the garage, instead of pursuing plans to demolish it and construct the skyscrapers, according to executives involved in the project. Raymond had proposed building a 52-story and 42-story tower.


Raymond, initially hired to advance the the $2.2 billion redevelopment plan, is being removed from the project after failing to move it forward. O'Brien, former director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, will manage the property and help revise plans for the site.

In an interview yesterday, O'Brien acknowledged the bad economy will make his job difficult, but said he and the owners will try to use the original building proposal as the basis for the revised development. Situated near City Hall Plaza, the project sits at a key intersection in the city along the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

"It's hard to envison any high rise moving forward in this environment," he said. "But the owners have made a $250 million investment in this property and they are committed to proceeding at the appropriate time.
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http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2010/01/garage_rebuild.html



UGH!
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

It's sad but I can't say this is a shock. These towers now join the long list of great, unbuilt proposals. This might be at the top of that list actually.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

:cry:

I still think they should put these buildings on Stuart and Kneeland and connect Boston's Spine.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

Horay!!! VICTORIOUS LINKING OF PROGRESIVE FORCE OF WEST END PEEPLES WITH FORCEs OF rep M. WALTS AND S> KRESSLE to crush shadows beneath your feet!!! SEE the evil shadow developers run!!!
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

Any chance of salvaging this?
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

Why would they drop Raymond so quickly? I'm wondering if there's a story behind the story. Did the institutional owners really think a skyscraper on the waterfront in Boston would have zoning approval by now?
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

First Saab, now this. Damn the economy!
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

This is a bummer. Especially if they've now, oddly, hired some BRA goombah and totally changed gears so quickly.

However, it seems that this piece of blight can't remain as it is forever. If there's such a thing as Manifest Destiny in Boston development, it'll turn the garage into dust in the next up-cycle.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

Boston is heading toward stagnation, similar to the period in the 1990s. It's terrible really. Back in 2002, I remember reading a forum poster remarking "Boston is building something? I thought that city was stagnant." Time to drop another level to mediocrity.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

It's not like this situation is at all unique to Boston.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

/\ This is a global problem. There are still cities much worse off. Get some perspective people.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

Sounds like Raymond wanted to keep look for financing and not re-commit to another 10 year lease with anyone to preclude their demoing.....sounds like the Pension Fund didn't give a damn about new development, and wanted to get something close to the promised ROI on its investment.....2 different agendas, only 1 possible outcome.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

stellarfun said:
pelhamhall, I would not be so sure that after the election anything will get built. I just posted on another subforum an article from the SF Chronicle today in which construction of new buildings has basically stopped in San Francisco because nobody can get financing.

What makes you think this project is any different from Filene's, SST, that certain project over the Pike, etc, which are approved, which have either construction drawings in place, or on which construction had actually begun?

Menino and the BRA can approve 50 projects, but they can't finance a single one of them.

IMO, the bigger the project, the greater the difficulty in financing it in these times, because a developer needs for multiple lenders to paerticipate and dilute the risk.
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I thought President OBAMA, Ben Beranke and CNBC said the recession is OVER?
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

I like the herald's take better.

Garage developer out
Government Center owner picks ex-city official for $2.3B job
By Thomas Grillo | Thursday, January 14, 2010 |
...

?We spent millions to devise a project that the city would support, but we?re not sure we?ll ever get it,? said Jeffrey Kanne, president of National Real Estate Advisors. ?Boston does not appreciate how much risk it takes to do a significant development. We can put a building up in Chicago in 16 months.?

But the project faced opposition from the North and West End neighborhoods and Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who argued that the project was too tall and too dense and lacked an elementary school.

Kanne said O?Brien was chosen because he will bring a fresh approach to the project. ?Sometimes new energy helps,? he said. ?We will keep at it, but I?m discouraged.?

Nancy Caruso, a North End activist, is still looking for something other than massive office buildings and luxury condos.

?We don?t need an office tower,? she said. ?We need a supermarket, a school and affordable housing and parking.?

Susan Elsbree, a BRA spokeswoman, said the project is seeking considerable zoning variances. ?This is a very complex project and we have to look out for the taxpayers,? she said.
/view.bg?articleid=1225478
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Full Article: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/real_estate


Nancy, you don't need any parking at all, and all those other things can be included in the tower.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

One of the adjoining Bulfinch Triangle developments is supposed to contain a Stop & Shop, but I don't know what its status is.

Could they really put up a building in Chicago in 16 months if they first had to demolish one (and that builidng spanned a major street)?
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

That's true, though let's not forget that Chicago is home to the country's two biggest stalled projects (Waterview Tower and The Chicago Spire) -- I was just staying at a hotel across from the former, and it wasn't pretty.

In many ways, this proposal looked like something out of "Aliens." The massing was just bizarre, and I half-think we may have dodged a bullet here. Mumbles won't be around forever, and the end of this term may coincide with the beginning of a new upswing in the market. If we can get a reasonable, pro-growth mayor (not in the sense of allowing historic blocks to be razed for crappy Sheratons built by his cronies, but in the sense of providing more transparency/less arbitrary personal/BRA control to economic and construction policies and, e.g., not red-lining college students and wanting to declare large, central parts of the city "affordable housing"), I imagine this garage will see something decent -- I hesitate to say "fantastic" -- replace it.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

What a day. My dog dies this morning and then I get this bit of awesome information. fml

That lady is totally retarded. "We don't need an office tower, we need a school, supermarket, blah, blah"

When did she become the only person in this city...and how does she know those things wouldn't have been included in this plan? This was a massive development that could have housed everything she's looking for.

I know this wasn't necessarily killed by NIMBYs, but the chances of this project getting off the ground were slim-to-none thanks to a combo of NIMBYs and Mumbles...but quotes like that just go to show how clueless and self-centered these people are.

@ Ron, I think the developer was citing the general lack of neighborhood resistance one faces when developing in Chicago vs Boston. Obviously the economy can stall any project in any city (New York has even hit some snags), but NIMBY presence in Chicago is extremely minimal and carry almost zero weight as far as I know.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

I wouldn't worry about it. As pretty as the pictures were, and the discussions so diverting, this was never going to happen any time soon. No one is going to build something on spec.

It isn't about Boston, per se, or even this project. It is now 2 AM at your favorite pick up joint. Put on your thinking caps, take off the beer goggles, go home alone, sleep it off. Right now the best thing that any would be lover of architecture can do is to hope that NOTHING big gets built for another couple of years. Otherwise, desperation will assure that there will be some ugly not so little somethings on the city's pillow for the next 50 years!

P.S. Condolences to Mac on the fallen brother.
 
Re: Congress Street Garage Development

^^ Thanks Toby. I've had him since I was in high school, so seeing him go was pretty tough. Luckily he's got a little brother still kicking around the house...hopefully he doesn't leave us anytime soon.
 
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