Re: Copley Place plan calls for condo tower
This car wreck of a post brought to you from the makers of A-M-B-I-E-N®
So, tell me, does your support, or lack of support, waver at all if what it's being built for changes?
This is a condominium tower, right? At least most of it? With retail at the bottom, maybe a couple floors of offices?
What if it was a hotel? What if it was an apartment building? What if it was an office building, either full of one company's employees (mostly) or many companies employees?
Would it alter your opinion as to whether or not you'd like it? (Let's leave out any other option, such as prison, dormitory, or Level 4 BioLab.)
When you measure what is suitable, acceptable, and practical, in a building such as this, shouldn't its use(s) be considered, too? Actually, should they be considered more than the actual height and density?
It matters because it determines how many people are going to through there every day, live or visit or play there, the number cars going in and out, and how much support staff will be needed, how many employees will be hired, how many residents will live there. The answers to those questions are extremely important because those are the things that affect the lives of abutters, neighbors, visitors, business peoples. Politicians.
Obviously, an office building will be busiest between 8am - 6pm. And there will be a lot of employees along with support staff like lunch ladies and engineers and the annoying guy with the badge at the front gate who won't let you go through security just because you forgot your ID (again).
You may be able to convince some of your workers to commute by subway, train, bus, water taxi, or bicycle. The majority, however, will drive in. So, you've become part of the mess of the Boston parking nightmare. Evey employee you have that drives is coming into work at 9:12am, 12 minutes late because some a-hole almost cut him off or somebody was on his ass so bad that he decided to get off the highway and go the long way ... They come into work, bull-shit, furious, angry, oh, and in a great mood for your 2.5 hour meeting on picking out the theme for this year's Holiday Party. Then, you lose his interest around 4:15pm because he starts thinking he's got to to back out there, spend another 90 minutes on the Expressway, jerking forward, jerking backward, over and over again and could he please hear a song, one single song before they go to commercial? Why are they always playing commercials and I have is my "Falco's Greatest Hits" CD with me.
Office building workers will not travel far to eat lunch or to shop. Actually, they won't go far to eat, but they will go far to shop. Liberty Mutual and 888 Boylston Street workers will run right over to Newbury Street to shop, from 5-455 Newbury Street. They might prefer eating in the Pru Food Court or right on Boylston.
At the end of the day, they'll jump in the cars and get the hell out of town as quickly as possible. Maybe have drinks with the crew on a Thursday night because Nancy's last day is tomorrow, maybe leave the car in the garage and walk up to Fenway for a game ... maybe dinner in the South End or take the car to North Station and catch the women's lingerie football team playing a game.
An apartment building has lower density than an office building, no? 2.5 people per apartment on average. They take up more square footage than probably 6-10 white collar workers would need. Of course, every apartment has to have lots of windows, so the design is different. The number of staff might be less. A superintendent, a plumber, front desk, valet parking, security. Lots of maintenance costs.
A condo building is similar. Bigger units than in an apartment. Bigger windows, more bathrooms, more piping for sinks and tubs and dishwashers clothes washers. A staff of people to do everything to clean it, to walk you dog, to hold the door for you, to make appointments, to have an extra set of keys.
I would guess that a condominium project similar to the Ritz-Carlton Towers or Four Seasons or Belvedere or Grandview or even the W or 45 Province has residents who don't go out much and when they do, it's out of town. Some probably enjoy a night at theater or museum or concert. I don't know. But, I think they stay to themselves .
Their affect on the neighborhood is limited. The support staff is always in the streets, or kitchens, or in the furnace room, doing something, making things work. In some ways, the buildings are like little vertical cruise ships with a captain and his crew and his passengers.
Apartment buildings are similar in that there are a lot of rooms, that it's housing where you sleep and eat, and the style and layouts of the floors in the buildings are often similar. You may have higher density in the apartment building than in the condominium - a guess - because the apartment building might be priced so high that three or four people are living in a one or two-bedroom apartment.
The support staff at the apartment complex is similar to what it is at the condominium tower. They may be paid less and be required to do a lot more, but it's similar to what goes on in a condo project. You'll definitely need parking in an apartment building. But, maybe less than in a condo building. The difference is, condo buyers (in the city at least) are of some financial means; and they moved to Boston to make life easier. They want a nice, new, clean, home with high-quality fixtures and good-quality workmanship. They want to be able to get around when they want to, to take a car when they want to do something.
Apartment renters may or may not have cars. Some may have two, many will have one, a good number will have zero. They don't have the money (to buy the car and to insure it, but also to put it in a parking garage), they don't want the hassle, they ride a bike, they like to use ZipCar, they borrow a friend's.
So, less traffic on the streets than if it was a condo, perhaps.
A hotel isn't so great. There are so many cars going in and out. And, unlike the offices, hotels tend to stay busy throughout the day, from early morning checkout to families looking for stuff to do, to afternoon golf games, tennis games, and activities for the kids, and trips to the Public Garden, and Cheers, and a Duck Tour, and The Hard Rock, and our Merry Go Rounds, and Copley Square and the Trinity Church, and Mother Goose's grave site (sort of). So, lots of in and outs, lots of traffic and through early and late hours. (I wasn't the biggest fan of the hotel they were going to build as part of Columbus Center). It was right at the corner, requiring taxis to come in from two locations, undoubtedly cause traffic jams on their own but also inconveniencing commuters and residents (and me as a walker)
So, this turned out be a a very long blah blah blah about what should people be focusing on as much as aesthetics and shadows and wind. It's going to be build as condos. Is that what's best for that area? Do we need some more density, more people who can bring more jobs and interesting life stories that we can hear about while eating dinner with them? More people to get involved in civic engagement?
Or, should we want apartment dwellers, transients, who might not ask a lot of us. They just want access to low-cost transportation, ease of getting around town by bus, subway, and bicycle, cheap supermarkets, maybe a fitness gym, maybe a small parking garage, say one spot for every two apartments; the rest have to go without.
Hotel visitors bring money to spend, which is good. They spend it in the hotel, they spend it outside the hotel. They pay their cab drivers, they pay their waitresses for bringing them food. And the pay to go on tours of "Boston", which sometimes means they spend more time in Cambridge.
Fortunately, as you pointed out, this site is north of the Tent City apartments. Since Boston is in the Northern hemisphere, sun exposure begins from the east-southeast, then continues into the center sky from the south, and sets in the west-southwest. So none of the shadows from this project will ever cast on Tent City."
