Channel Center | Fort Point

AmericanFolkLegend said:
What's that construction site you see in the foreground in the last pic???
Well that's the parking garage that goes up next to the office building and inexplicably has a far larger footprint.
Click to expand...

GNHnI.png


Garage ground floor, 4 sides, including side abutting park: Zero active uses.
Tower ground floor, frontage on 3.5 sides including Channel Center Street side: Zero active uses.
Tower corner facing park: 1 retail space (cafe) approx 4,000 sf.
 
Southie's own Liberty Mutual then?
Way to capitalize on a great chance to start bringing together Southie proper to the waterfront. Connecting to Broadway, or at least giving people a reason to hang a turn onto A when on foot.
 
It looked good last night walking over the bridge at sundown, but I didn't pull my camera out in time. That garage blows though. plain and simple.
 
The thing that totally blows my mind is that this thing broke ground in OCTOBER and is almost finished. That's the same time it takes to build a McMansion...

...Given the cookie-cutter design of its buildings, which have no objective other than to max out the amount of floor space, maybe we should start calling SBW the Corporate Cul-de-sac?
 
At least the fauxcade is patterned instead of featureless blocks...
 
The pictures don't do justice to the sheer massiveness of the building. It practically goes right up to the sidewalk. The stretch of A Street between Barlow's and this project is very barren, almost hostile. Though bike lanes have recently been added...

Driving up S. Boston Bypass Road you can see a stray piece of example material hoisted 10-15 feet in the air that is very colorful, almost psychedelic. My hunch is that its going to be attached to at least one side of the garage as per design plans. Looks nothing like the leafy print in earlier renderings on this thread.
 
Is that the garage that will be covered in that decorative siding shown in one of the above renderings or is this gonna be the final look?
 
The garage was all precast and brought in in huge sections. Went up incredibly fast.
Not exactly thrilled that they're finding ways to build above ground garages quicker and cheaper.
 
atlantaden said:
Is that the garage that will be covered in that decorative siding shown in one of the above renderings or is this gonna be the final look?
Click to expand...

Yes, that will be covered in the decorative siding. It looks like they might have added a floor to the garage though?

Anyway, the building is another European-quality masterpiece (a suitable brother to Spaulding) and the garage is a testament to Grand Ole American parking infrastructure.
 
I actually quite like the facade - reminds me of some of the new construction around cities like Copenhagen, and in a similar context to boot.
 
I love love love the cladding on this. A welcome deviation from the norm.
(This is the cladding that should be going up on the new Berklee dorm...)

Happy to hear some sort of decoration will be going on the garage, though I doubt any sort of design would help it much. It's terrible.
 
I don't like the dark cladding too much, but it actually works a bit when they're seen together...overall I'm not really a fan though.
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
The garage was all precast and brought in in huge sections. Went up incredibly fast.
Not exactly thrilled that they're finding ways to build above ground garages quicker and cheaper.
Click to expand...

I just got back from a trip to Austin, TX one of the fastest growing cities in the US. Virtually every building U/C there, and some are quite tall, is built on a parking pedestal 8 stories tall. In addition there are multiple parking structures lining some blocks with no retail or anything at ground level. We may have some ugly projects but after visiting Austin I think things in Boston really aren't that bad.
 
I don't know if I'd paint such a negative picture of Austin. Yes there are new garages galore (this is Texas, after all) and I will say the waterfront district is disappointing, but I wouldn't let that overshadow the majority of downtown that is walkable. It isn't perfect but it's far from bad.
 
I saw some pretty epic traffic jams in Austin. The streets are too damn wide as well. I thought they were smarter than that but I saw plenty of surface lots and parking lots going up downtown. They're going to have some major problems unless they get a clue about transit, and subways are unlikely to happen. My friend tells me that underground construction is almost impossible, for some reason, there. Their Red line makes you appreciate the Green line here, remarkably.
 
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