Copley Place Expansion and Tower | Back Bay

[stick n move]

To be honest columbus center and the harbor garage probably arent gonna happen either.

 

[DZH22]

To be honest columbus center and the harbor garage probably arent gonna happen either.

Maybe eventually. I guess going from 5 to 12+ towers over 600' in one cycle was a bit too much to ask for.....

 

[tobyjug]

I think you'd want to start studying your PwC, BOMA data, absorption rates, the effect on impending interest rate hikes on property value, exchange rates (strengthening dollar weakens foreign purchasers), a forthcoming 1000-3000 pt drop on the Dow etc. before I'd get carried away on nimbys, etc.

If money can be made by building, things will be built. If Simon isn't building, it is because they have a pessimistic view of the tea leaves.

 

[stick n move]

Maybe eventually. I guess going from 5 to 12+ towers over 600' in one cycle was a bit too much to ask for.....

I think ultimately it will be. We just need the td garden base, pike parcels, and 111 fed and this was a success. The seaport is kind of its own thing I think itll stay business as usual over there for a while.

If copley is really dead I hope in the future they go for broke. Thats a nice spot for some centralized height.

 

[odurandina]

To be honest columbus center and the harbor garage probably arent gonna happen either.

Stick!! Wake up!! You were having a nightmare!!

 

[pel_north]

If our skyline looked like this, I would cry with enjoyment.

 

[stick n move]

Lol no way that would murder all of whats left of the Boston charm. Sometimes I wonder what Boston would have looked like if ny had never surpassed it and it had become the financial capital. If the runways also were aligned differently too. I think I have a better idea now haha. Based off of available land alone it would never have happened but if it did i think it would have grown more like London with pockets everywhere and not in the linear fashion of ny. It would have been hell to live here with our streets soo thank god it didnt.

 

[odurandina]

i went to the high extreme on the blocks up Huntington and Mass Ave. Nevertheless, we've determined many good places to reasonably build tall, and affect a minimum number of people and the historical neighborhood blocks.... including letting F-Line to Nirvana run the T.

We got this. You tear out every crap building and nook and crany you can do, and you could get 12 or 14 legit resident towers in Back Bay and still have all the charm - all through. You'd help things by building rowhouses clear the way toward Shawmut, JP, Roslindale, etc with strict architectural standards.

The way we're doing housing is pretty outstanding, in any case. The street level of Boston will rival the best urban neighborhoods anywhere.

Fuck Simon.

BRA needs to declare the Copley Tower site blighted and move forward.

 

[tobyjug]

BRA needs to declare the Copley Tower site blighted and move forward.

Easy there Cowboy! Private property rights still underpin the country.

Consider yourself lucky. You are young enough that you'll see something nice and tall built there someday. As for myself, I'm not so sure!

 

[stick n move]

I sincerely hope Boston never looks anything like that.

 

[tysmith95]

I sincerely hope Boston never looks anything like that.

+1. I think odura needs to move to Hong Kong.

 

[type001]

+2

 

[stefal]

We got this. You tear out every crap building and nook and crany you can do, and you could get 12 or 14 legit resident towers in Back Bay and still have all the charm - all through. You'd help things by building rowhouses clear the way toward Shawmut, JP, Roslindale, etc with strict architectural standards.

I don't think that would work. We haven't seen that many new buildings, especially tall ones, bring the charm of Boston with it lately. There are reasons for the zoning restrictions and design standards set in place. The Back Bay can not, and I don't think it should, be the next Hong Kong or New York. Yes, we should be developing a lot of the high spine, but we should only develop it to a certain extent, at least for now. Once we get a cohesive, well-built 'spine' running from the Back Bay/1 Dalton to North Station, Boston will have a nice juxtaposition of the 20th and 21st century buildings clashing with the 18th and 19th century buildings. It's Boston's perfect mix of old and new that makes it great. If you add too much new, it doesn't look or feel like Boston.

And that's coming from somebody that's almost always pro-development.

 

[bigpicture7]

I don't think that would work. We haven't seen that many new buildings, especially tall ones, bring the charm of Boston with it lately. There are reasons for the zoning restrictions and design standards set in place. The Back Bay can not, and I don't think it should, be the next Hong Kong or New York. Yes, we should be developing a lot of the high spine, but we should only develop it to a certain extent, at least for now. Once we get a cohesive, well-built 'spine' running from the Back Bay/1 Dalton to North Station, Boston will have a nice juxtaposition of the 20th and 21st century buildings clashing with the 18th and 19th century buildings. It's Boston's perfect mix of old and new that makes it great. If you add too much new, it doesn't look or feel like Boston.

And that's coming from somebody that's almost always pro-development.

You've captured it perfectly, stefalarchitect. What makes Boston so wonderful is the juxtaposition. What bothers me most is when someone has already destroyed something (e.g., leveled row houses to make parking lots or garages), and NIMBYISM prevents us from correcting that past mistake with something better.

 

[whighlander]

The merano and victor are air rights parcels.

Stick -- the Merano and Victor are effectively air rights over ground versus air rights over nothing -- its the difference between building a structure over a parking lot and a structure over a deep river gorge

Yes they are both suspended -- but in the case of the parking lot you just stick a support column where you want and don't have to build some complex truss to support the structure.

So -- those kind of air rights are easy - even South Station is relatively easy as the columns just have to avoid being in the middle of the tracks

You can't do that in the midst of a highway, and even doing it in the midst of city streets is frowned upon these days [the era of that kind of el is over]

So let's look at the Gulch of the Turnpike and RR as it comes out from Mass Ave.
Google Map's "Measure Distance" function shows that you can bridge the space with a span of from 158 ft to 215 ft depending where you are. The assumption is that the columns are all sitting outside the full width of the cut.

Now there are probably some columns which could be placed between the rail ROW and the Pike and potentially even in the median between the two Pike barrels [although the Pike is narrow by IH standards already]. Anyway compare that column spacing with the bays of the Merano or one of the steel frame structures being erected in the Seaport -- more typically about 20 ft spans.

A simple experiment with a ruler and the edge of a table or desk or Googling beam spans will let you find that the depth of the beam increases slightly faster than the length of the span

for example from a wood framing calculator*1 if you investigate the safe span for a laminated main beam [3 laminations] supporting the joists of a 2 story house made of Douglas Fir -- the maximum clear span for a 2x8 beam [38 X 184mm] is 7'5"(2.27m) for a 2x12 beam [38 x 286mm] the corresponding maximum span is 10"6"[3.22m].

If the scaling was linear the 2x12 should be able to span [286/184]x2.27=3.5m [11'7"]. The coefficients will of course be different for different materials but the rules don't change.

So now imagine that we want to support part of the load of a tall structure not on columns spaced 20' apart driven to bed rock but on columns spaced 100 ft apart -- the intervening beams or the depth of a truss replacing them gets to be significant.

*1 http://www.the-house-plans-guide.com/beam-span-tables.html

 

[whighlander]

You've captured it perfectly, stefalarchitect. What makes Boston so wonderful is the juxtaposition. What bothers me most is when someone has already destroyed something (e.g., leveled row houses to make parking lots or garages), and NIMBYISM prevents us from correcting that past mistake with something better.

BigPicture -- But part of Boston is that someone is always tearing down something and building something else -- tht's sort of true everywhere if the place is not decaying like Detroit.

The "Charming" part of Boston comes from the rate -- as opposed to Vegas -- here its slow enough that at any given time people remember a City which seems to have been there forever.

Thus -- Only a small number of people in Boston remember the Back Bay when there was a Mechanics Hall and a huge Rail Road Yard where today there is the Pru and Copley connected under glass. In the overall scheme of things going from there being mud flats to the Railroad Yard took about 60 years. It's also taken about 60 years to go from the RailRoad Yard to the current essentially built-out Pru and Copley developments.

Soon, there will only be old timers who remember the monstrous Green elevated Central Artery with the thundering sounds emanating from right in front of South Station -- the Greenway and the O'Neill Tunnel will be considered as timeless fixtures. South Station will soon be capped with its Tower.

What we wont know for a while yet is -- has Boston just gone through one of its periodic building phases [typically about 10 to 15 years duration] or is this fundamentally different era and we've transitioned to extended era of sustained growth. Only time will tell.

 

[bigpicture7]

Whigh, my point:

Quintessential Boston Juxtaposition: the Old State House in front of One Boston Place

a) I would be mortified if someone suggested leveling the Old State House to put something else next to One Boston Place

b) I would not be mortified at all if, let's say in 1959 someone already leveled the Old State House, and it was now a parking lot, and someone suggested putting something else there instead of the parking lot.

While obviously this is a gross exaggeration, my point is that a) is a lot different than b) and that not all redevelopment proposals are created equal.

And as for your claim that everything changes all the time, are you suggesting that the Old State House-Boston Place juxtaposition is going away anytime soon? Should I get out there to look at the Old State House a few more times this year in case it's gone tomorrow?

 

[stick n move]

Wigh-its still an air rights project...

Odurandia- Thats not happening, end of story, and thank god its not. Now can we get back to whatevers left to say about copley tower before the casket gets lowered.

 

[odurandina]

Great posts. ^^ Whigh, Yes, we're all aware setting up rows of trusses to support the Columbus Center tower is a far more serious endeavor than the Victor and Merano. In any case, the Commonwealth, no matter how impovershed should have built these killer Pike decks, during the early stages of permitting, sold them in a clean swap and seen them under construction by now.

i do believe Back Bay can handle about 5~6 >200m towers, and about 5~6 >180m towers to go along with all the 90-110m low highrises currently permitted or proposed, and still keep it's charm and unique character. But that's about it. That's a good practical limit... To pay for Back Bay Station, they should have shot for 180m/600' on one of the towers.

11-12 tall towers would be austere for residents behind Mass Ave and Huntington, but not to the point of untenable... The underbuilding of height in Back Bay has gone on far too long. Would building at such scale be Bold? yes. Outrageous, perhaps. Doable, absolutely. Windy, sometimes. Great, God Yes. What do you build after? Beautiful rowhouses all over the place.

When we reach about 740-760,000 population, that might be the right time for a multi-decades long pause.

As for the last word/s about Copley Tower; my God, this was like the 4th tallest, and one of the 3 or 4 coolest since the John Hancock Tower (considering it involved partial construction over the i-90 Freeway)!! Losing this feels iike getting run over by an 18 wheel truck.

 

[stick n move]

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