Chelsea Infill and Small Developments

Crime is hardly an excuse, and anyway, it's more a symptom than a cause. Plenty of crime ridden neighborhoods have become gentrified (both in good ways and in bad ways). Look at Williamsburg, the prototypical example. My parents would never go there back in the 1970s when they lived in the city, too scary. And they lived in the West Village/Chelsea (NYC), which was itself a haven for junkies and bums. Now it's all too damn expensive.

Roxbury's problem is that it was wiped out by "urban renewal / highway building" and nothing was ever done to fill the hole for three decades.

East Boston has a big hole, with spectacular views, near Maverick for reasons I don't completely understand, but something to do with MassPort.

Both those spots have excellent rapid transit. Chelsea may be different because it does not.
 
Max Power said:
I tend to agree with this analysis. Has anyone seen the "Favored quarter" theory of cities? Gentrification and development tend to follow corridors and "add on" to each other rather than just start up somewhere equidistant to the core, but in a different direction.

And it makes sense. If your'e investing your hard earned dollars in a marginal area - you want that area to at least be right next to nice areas, and not isolated from them. Geography of course plays a huge role.

Somerville has een going down this road. Gentrification started around Porter/Davis and is marching through Winter Hill and East Somerville now.

JP is the same way, going south from Longwood.

South Boston finally gentrified, and it's next to freaking downtown. But it is/was isolated by a sea of parking lots, industrial uses, and highways. Now what are we seeing? Yup - Dorchester will be the next to gentrify, following down that corridor, specifically Savin Hill.

Yes, eventually we'll see pioneers start to invade Eastie. But that will be a much, much slower process and I wouldn't expect to see that happen within the decade. It doesn't really build off of anything, and has to begin from scratch.

This is pretty far off topic from Chelsea, but I suppose it helps explain just why it's so far behind compared to comparable areas.
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This is really interesting, and makes total sense. Do you think that due to the fact that outside of Dorchester, there really isn't much opportunity very close to the city's core, so Eastie and then Chelsea could be next? The opportunities for gentrification seems more likely than in the industrial sections of Roxbury due to the existing foundation, no? Maverick station alone greatly helps Eastie's chances.
 
Another advantage that Eastie and Chelsea may have (in addition to proximity to the core) is their density. Eastie (at least between Wood Island and Maverick) and Chelsea (south of Route 16) have population densities that are only found in Back Bay, Beacon Hill, North End, Southie, Charlestown, Fenway and the South End. Unlike this list they are both affordable.

If someone's looking for a more urban experience (neighborhoods of attached dwellings, businesses dispersed throughout neighborhoods rather than concentrated only in squares or main drags), Eastie or Chelsea can offer that in a way that JP or Somverille really can't.
 
I think a frequent bus connecting Chelsea to Kendall Square via the Tobin and Gilmore bridges would open up a lot of commuting possibilities
 
ParkerChris said:
This is really interesting, and makes total sense. Do you think that due to the fact that outside of Dorchester, there really isn't much opportunity very close to the city's core, so Eastie and then Chelsea could be next? The opportunities for gentrification seems more likely than in the industrial sections of Roxbury due to the existing foundation, no? Maverick station alone greatly helps Eastie's chances.
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You're forgetting about JP. And I guess the area around the orange line, if you consider that Roxbury. There are quite a few developments planned for that area. Roslindale too, perhaps. And dont forget East Somerville and Medford, in the other direction.



...The jeffries point area isn't all that bad and will 100% be the jumping off point for revitalization. Some waterfront developments might accelerate that a little bit. But Eastie is still a pain to access. Remember tons of people still drive to work. Would you like to sit in the tunnel for hours, twice a day, to get to work on 128 or 495? Geography is a huge barrier. The area hasn't gotten that critical mass yet for it to spread, ala southie/JP in the past decade. It'll still be a while for it to arrive there.
 
Union Sq. Somerville will take off when the GLX arrives. It already has in many ways in anticipation. Somerville is doing some good planning around the squares and will grow in access when finally built. Assembly Sq., somewhat isolated and an outlier, will raise the areas profile. Somerville is already very dense, but there is room for more (two many 1-story commercial buildings in the squares!).

But to bring this back to Chelsea, I don't think these things are necessarily sequential. They build and feed each other, especially as new employment centers grow in Seaport and near North Station. The opportunity for Chelsea is to get into the action already happening, rather than wait for its turn.
 
Just some thoughts here on connectivity, walkability, cyclability, etc for Chelsea and Eastie...

What the inner harbor is lacking is... a badass ferry system. I don't mean a stupid little F1 (Navy Yard to Long Wharf) alllll day longggg. I'm talking about routes, with stops along the way. Chelsea - Central Square - Long Wharf / Central Wharf - Seaport (not sure where in the Seaport). This services multiple markets with one routing: Chelsea to Eastie, Chelsea to Seaport, Eastie to Seaport, etc. And, of course, bikes are allowed on ferries.

I'm also firmly in support of the Tobin replacement either being a tunnel somehow, or US-1 just being rerouted entirely via MA-60 to MA-1A to I-90/Ted Williams. In turn, however, the Broadway bridge, predecessor to the Tobin, must be revived. This will be a complete win for walkability and biking, as well as being better for local buses. While it would be somewhere on the capacity level of the Chelsea St bridge, it should absolutely be electronically tolled. Significantly. This will keep it freed up for buses, essential traffic, and bikes all alike. For a good deal of northern and eastern East Boston, this could make a bike commute much more viable.
 
The old Chelsea Street Bridge that connected Charlestown to Chelsea was far too low to accommodate the Auto Carriers and LNGs that go beneath the Tobin. If the Tobin is replaced someday in the distant future by another bridge, it will have to be of a similar height, unless by that point in time both the Autoport and the Everett Power Plant have closed.
 
The old bridge was a drawbridge. Any new pedestrian/bike bridge would have to be one, too.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
The old Chelsea Street Bridge that connected Charlestown to Chelsea was far too low to accommodate the Auto Carriers and LNGs that go beneath the Tobin. If the Tobin is replaced someday in the distant future by another bridge, it will have to be of a similar height, unless by that point in time both the Autoport and the Everett Power Plant have closed.
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It wouldn't have to be the same height, that'd just be absurd. As Ron said, it was a draw. I think a vertical lift (a la Chelsea St Bridge) is probably most likely. Maybe a double leaf bascule or double retractable would work.
 
The Tobin is not anywhere close to due for a replacement. It needs more maintenance than the average bridge because it takes a pounding from the weather and salt air, but that's typical for trusses over water crossings. Braga Bridge is in the same boat where cycled maintenance and repainting is everlasting, restarting at the opposite end of the bridge when they finish a cycle. That's not a bug, it's a feature. It was designed to have constant low-grade maintenance done on it instead of letting it wear out as-is and get replaced after 50 years like most highway spans. That's a cost-over-lifetime control strategy. It's supposed to work this way.

Long water-crossing trusses get a bad name because of the Tappan Zee Bridge (severely underbuilt because of wartime materials shortages) and the infamous I-35W collapse (fatal unfixed engineering flaws meet negligent maintenance), but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the Tobin and it's going to be there for the long haul. It's space-invasive on the Charlestown and Chelsea approaches, but 6 lanes is adequate capacity after you high-speed toll the thing. Route 1 doesn't have any sources for more capacity than that from the 93 end or where it fizzes out to the north, and it doesn't divide enough streets from each other on either approach to be the kind of economy-limiting divider the Central Artery was. It doesn't have Big Dig-like justifications for replacement. Only aesthetic. And aesthetics won't float the cost of replacing with a tunnel.


It's not worth considering in any Chelsea redevelopment dreams. It's too far out-of-range. The thing will probably live to see its 100th birthday before formal replacement gets underway. Accelerated deterioration from sharply-increasing loads is unlikely to push the issue so long as Route 1 remains the barely 5-mile stub highway it currently is.
 
The Tobin is just north of the old Chelsea St / Broadway bridge alignment, so they could put in a new draw bridge there to allow pedestrian / bike travel across the Mystic. I would advocate for 2 or 4 lanes for automobiles as well, so that buses and cabs could take advantage. The toll should be higher by a good dollar or two than the Tobin above to discourage it being used as an induced demand toll work around a'la Alford St, with cabs getting a discount. Trucks banned altogether.


As for the Tobin itself, I agree its not going anywhere anytime soon. It's also (IMO) a really beautiful piece of engineering, which I would be sad to see go. It's just that the approach spans are so fugly, and a massive waste of space. I would just like to see a long term plan that looks at relocation north (along 16/99 to 93) or putting it in a tunnel. I don't want to pull the conversation away from Chelsea, so I'm starting a new thread to discuss the Tobin..

Edit: link to the new thread.
 
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From the Boston TV Digital Library:

http://bostonlocaltv.org/catalog/2394_02081

So these are basically just screen shots from that film of empty lots from October 1974, a year after the infamous Chelsea fire.

Yeah, it would be interesting to do a "then-and-now" but my internet connection is show and I can't get Google Maps Street View to work.

http://s369.photobucket.com/user/JohnAKeith/slideshow/Chelsea 1973

General location of fire:



General location, today:



Toward Rt 1:



Toward Rt 1:



One more:



Another:

 
Three Chelsea Square - Broadway - "then and now" images from 1974 and 2013.

I don't see any differences, actually. LOL.











 
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JohnAKeith said:
Three Chelsea Square (what's it actually called?) "then and now" images from 1974 and 2013.

I don't see any differences, actually. LOL.
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Not seeing any images, but the main square in Chelsea is Bellingham Square.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
The old Chelsea Street Bridge that connected Charlestown to Chelsea was far too low to accommodate the Auto Carriers and LNGs that go beneath the Tobin. If the Tobin is replaced someday in the distant future by another bridge, it will have to be of a similar height, unless by that point in time both the Autoport and the Everett Power Plant have closed.
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I major problem with Chelsea is that it isn't part of Boston. If you live in Eastie, you have the resources of the City government, you have Latin school, pilot schools, resources for building first rate parks, street infrastructure, and well-funded and well-run police department. In Chelsea you have a limited tax base, a parochial small city government, and some of the most depleted public services in the state. Chelsea Public Schools make Boston Public Schools look like Weston Public Schools.

Somerville's gentrification is exclusively a result of it's proximity to Cambridge and the mass of young professionals and grad students that can't afford Cmabridge. Otherwise, it would be like Chelsea but with a worse building stock.

Make no mistake about Roxbury: it will fast gentrify based on the housing stock rule: even if a given neighborhood takes longer to gentrify, if it has excellent building stock it gentries exponentially faster than it otherwise would. Look at South End vs. South Boston. South End was sketchier than South Boston 20 years ago, but because of it's extraordinary building stock it has flown way passed South Boston in housing prices. Roxbury has the nicest housing stock outside of downtown Boston and has gentrification pushing against it from South End and from Jamaica Plain. Prices in Fort Hill are skyrocketing. It also shares qualities with many fast gentrifying neighborhoods: abutting ample parkland, aforementioned building stock, access to transportation and downtown. It won't be south end driven gentrification that will push into Roxbury--it will be those wanting to live the JP lifestyle and unable to afford it.
 
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