Decking the Mass. Pike.

[JeffDowntown]

^ It seems crazy, but it actually feels it could be saleable.

South Cove Boulevard.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Kind of interesting looking from an abstract perspective. It's not really thru Chinatown, but I quibble.

Setting side a bunch of other severe hurdles, just the deck part of this looks less likely to get through than any of the previous proposals that have croaked.

In your proposed scheme, there will still be the great cost of a deck, but a very high percentage of the deck will be occupied by a road. Unless it’s a toll road (ha! Wouldn’t THAT be a laugh!), it will generate no revenue. Those buildings to either side might have to pay partial deck lease costs (I don't think they've got room to be completely on terra firma), but their hinter sides will be on land that is currently city streets, presumably to be re-platted under your plan. So most tax revenue there will go to Boston. Do you really think the front sections of those buildings, the parts over the deck, will generate enough lease revenue to pay for the deck? And if I'm wrong about the depths, and you CAN squeeze buildings in there completely on terra firma, then there'd logically be NO deck lease payments.

This plan looks like it would generate far less lease revenue to pay for and then maintain the deck, as compared to previous proposals. And if those buildings are partly on the deck but partly on City-controlled land, that just exacerbates the turf war between DOT and BRA over who collects what from property owners to make it all work. That will only make the existing political logjam between DOT and BRA even worse.

On the political / financing front, which as I understand it is where these things keep dying, this looks like a step into a deeper quagmire. If DOT and BRA cannot sort themselves out within the existing framework, I think they'd be even less likely to sort themselves out within this idea. Far more upfront hassles (switching horses in mid-stream, relocating utilities, taking away street frontages, etc) and way less revenue. That's going to be the most expensive boulevard evah.

Looks nice as an abstract idea, though. I like considering these outside the box ideas, but this one I think is too far outside the box.

The lease payments would be for the developable terra firma. Which would be some combination of City of Boston and MassDOT. I think the financing goal would be to offset the deck cost with the very valuable land leases on the newly exposed terra firma. Plus of course ongoing property taxes for developed buildings where none exist today.

The roads are 3-4 lanes wide plus connecting to a lot of underutilized real estate. Very developable! You do not need to put building footprints onto the deck. The deck is the enabler, but you need a partnership between the City and the State to make it work.

 

[F-Line to Dudley]

Kind of interesting looking from an abstract perspective. It's not really thru Chinatown, but I quibble.

Setting side a bunch of other severe hurdles, just the deck part of this looks less likely to get through than any of the previous proposals that have croaked.

In your proposed scheme, there will still be the great cost of a deck, but a very high percentage of the deck will be occupied by a road. Unless it’s a toll road (ha! Wouldn’t THAT be a laugh!), it will generate no revenue. Those buildings to either side might have to pay partial deck lease costs (I don't think they've got room to be completely on terra firma), but their hinter sides will be on land that is currently city streets, presumably to be re-platted under your plan. So most tax revenue there will go to Boston. Do you really think the front sections of those buildings, the parts over the deck, will generate enough lease revenue to pay for the deck? And if I'm wrong about the depths, and you CAN squeeze buildings in there completely on terra firma, then there'd logically be NO deck lease payments.

This plan looks like it would generate far less lease revenue to pay for and then maintain the deck, as compared to previous proposals. And if those buildings are partly on the deck but partly on City-controlled land, that just exacerbates the turf war between DOT and BRA over who collects what from property owners to make it all work. That will only make the existing political logjam between DOT and BRA even worse.

On the political / financing front, which as I understand it is where these things keep dying, this looks like a step into a deeper quagmire. If DOT and BRA cannot sort themselves out within the existing framework, I think they'd be even less likely to sort themselves out within this idea. Far more upfront hassles (switching horses in mid-stream, relocating utilities, taking away street frontages, etc) and way less revenue. That's going to be the most expensive boulevard evah.

Looks nice as an abstract idea, though. I like considering these outside the box ideas, but this one I think is too far outside the box.

Yeah. We're making a giant leap in assumption that there's something fatally wrong with the provisioned air rights absent any proof that they've tried and failed to sell these air rights on the merits of the configuration and gotten point-blank confirmation from the private sector that the configuration of the grid is Numero Uno problem giving off stink lines. Can anyone cite concrete evidence of that from actual developer rejections over the last 50 years? Or is it just that MassDOT/ex-Turnpike Authority, the city, and the BRA have been so inept at staying out of their own way it takes 30 years per parcel for anything to survive the planning gauntlet and proceed to design-build?

You can't exactly flip that on its head and say "Well, you're just shitting over it and backing a failure because reasons" without answering that question. Where is the evidence proving failure of the layout? This is what sets up the whole value proposition of the reconfig: prove the fatal flaw that mandates blowing up the footprint that's already paid for...for an all-new footprint you have to find a way to pay for. "+1 neater" doesn't get you to the starting gates. This isn't an abstract exercise. Point to the smoking gun for failure of layout over 50 years of history. Absence of action on the layout isn't a smoking gun. This is a physical layout that's supposedly failed, not an event or lackthereof. Who with money and power outside of this AB thread has rejected putting their money and power into it because of layout? Name names, not logical conundrums.


And, boy oh boy are we severely underestimating the deck costs of changing the entire weight distribution. We haven't figured out the civil engineering of suspending a tall building foundation over the Pike center lane with nothing to anchor it. Physics!...how does it work? "Lease payment" offsets? This could be a $300-400M project that rebuilds the entire Pike and NEC cut from scratch to change where the deep-driven load-bearing walls are. How big a lease surcharge is this going to have to be to pay that down, and how are you going to get developers to swallow that? Are we forgetting Boston 2024's "Master Developer" poison pill @ Widett Circle mere months ago? That's real current-events history with all-new decking provisions and the perils of shoving the risk on the developer. Does that not factor in when comparing air rights pilings bought and paid for 2 generations ago vs. a perfectionist nuke/rebuild? Prove the financing will work with real-world examples, not abstraction and wishful thinking that cost is a cinch to break low instead of high.

 

[West]

I’m taking the liberty to rearrange your quote a bit; I’m not intending to alter your thoughts, rather to organize my response.

The lease payments would be for the developable terra firma. Which would be some combination of City of Boston and MassDOT. You do not need to put building footprints onto the deck. Plus of course ongoing property taxes for developed buildings where none exist today.

Wait, if I’m a developer, I’m paying lease payments for the deck that I’m not on plus real estate taxes? I get your concept that the deck is the enabler of these new parcels, hence the deck payments from those parcels. But I’m not going to pay more per parcel than what regular taxes would be. They’ll be nice parcels, but not nice enough for some premium over real estate tax on a regular parcel.

I think the financing goal would be to offset the deck cost with the very valuable land leases on the newly exposed terra firma.

Sure, that’d clearly be the financing goal. My gut tells me the numbers just don’t work. Those parcels will have the same carrying costs to the city as any other parcels, so why will the city lower RE taxes as compared to the parcels just around the corner? The city would have to do that to allow for lease payments on the deck while keeping the parcels otherwise of like attractiveness to other parcels. This just seems like you’re assuming the parcels will be so much more valuable than other parcels that developers / investors will pay a combo of RE taxes and deck lease payments that outweigh RE taxes on a parcel around the corner. I don’t see it.

The deck is the enabler, but you need a partnership between the City and the State to make it work.

And there’s the rub: to do this, you’d need a partnership between the City and the State to make it work. Said partnership is exactly what has been failing on the currently planned air rights parcels. What you’ve said here is almost a perfect example of the old saw “If pigs had wings, pigs could fly”. If that partnership existed, they could probably get one of the current proposals to work. If they switch to this plan, they have to toss out and replace decades of planning and engineering studies, redesign street networks, relocate utilities from under Marginal and Herald, go through the entire public input process (a decade right there), and somewhere along in there they have to sort out the deck funding partnership that has eluded them for decades. While doing all this other stuff. As I said before, this is way deeper into a quagmire than we’ve already been for several decades.

 

[JeffDowntown]

I’m taking the liberty to rearrange your quote a bit; I’m not intending to alter your thoughts, rather to organize my response.

Let me respond...

Wait, if I’m a developer, I’m paying lease payments for the deck that I’m not on plus real estate taxes? I get your concept that the deck is the enabler of these new parcels, hence the deck payments from those parcels. But I’m not going to pay more per parcel than what regular taxes would be. They’ll be nice parcels, but not nice enough for some premium over real estate tax on a regular parcel.

Lease payment are not taxes. They are lease to use the land. If it were private property you would pay a lease to the land owner to build on it. So you pay a lease to build on public property. And you still pay real estate taxes. BRA collects a lot of lease payments.

Sure, that’d clearly be the financing goal. My gut tells me the numbers just don’t work. Those parcels will have the same carrying costs to the city as any other parcels, so why will the city lower RE taxes as compared to the parcels just around the corner? The city would have to do that to allow for lease payments on the deck while keeping the parcels otherwise of like attractiveness to other parcels. This just seems like you’re assuming the parcels will be so much more valuable than other parcels that developers / investors will pay a combo of RE taxes and deck lease payments that outweigh RE taxes on a parcel around the corner. I don’t see it.

Cannot say one way or the other on this. It would be an expensive deck. But it is also valuable land. Benchmark was just set with the final purchase by National Development to lock in the last piece of the Ink Block site. Also there are a lot of contiguous parcels that are improved by this extra land. So it is valuable (but perhaps not enough to pay for the deck). Also, I think you would be surprised how few utilities ruin down either Herald or Marginal. These are not part of the historic street grid, they are recent urban renewal constructs. Building feeds seem to come in from the historical cross street: Tremont, Shawmut, Washington and Harrison.

And there’s the rub: to do this, you’d need a partnership between the City and the State to make it work. Said partnership is exactly what has been failing on the currently planned air rights parcels. What you’ve said here is almost a perfect example of the old saw “If pigs had wings, pigs could fly”. If that partnership existed, they could probably get one of the current proposals to work. If they switch to this plan, they have to toss out and replace decades of planning and engineering studies, redesign street networks, relocate utilities from under Marginal and Herald, go through the entire public input process (a decade right there), and somewhere along in there they have to sort out the deck funding partnership that has eluded them for decades. While doing all this other stuff. As I said before, this is way deeper into a quagmire than we’ve already been for several decades.

Historically I would have said this was true. But the Walsh administration is working a lot better with MassDOT and Baker. I've been up close and personal to the process for MassDOT Parcels 25, 26 and 27 and it gives me reason to believe that the Walsh and Baker teams could actually pull something like this off. I mean they pulled off getting GE to relocate here by working together.

 

[West]

Let me respond...

Lease payment are not taxes. They are lease to use the land. If it were private property you would pay a lease to the land owner to build on it. So you pay a lease to build on public property. And you still pay real estate taxes. BRA collects a lot of lease payments.

I understand that lease payments are not taxes. My company has lots of investments in properties on ground leases (usually where the landowner is a housing authority and some sort of mixed-income privately developed apartments are on it). Sometimes the real estate taxes are paid by the Ground Lessor after they collect the lease payments, with a bit extra on top for the HA to pocket, other times the RE taxes are separate. But in all cases, if the taxes and lease payments get to be way up above what real estate taxes alone would be for a comparable property, it kills the deal. Same for these parcels, you can’t just lard on all the lease payments you need to build a deck and have regular tax levels and just say it’s great location; the extra payments will damage the value of the location.

….. But it is also valuable land. …… So it is valuable (but perhaps not enough to pay for the deck).

Precisely my point – it is a lot of deck to pay for, but I don’t perceive the land to THAT much more valuable. Paying regular RE taxes AND enough lease payments to cover amortized cost of that deck plus deck maintenance? I don’t even feel like I need to put pencil to back of envelope to see that as too much burden for that land to carry. (Yes, I’m also being lazy, admittedly.)

Also, I think you would be surprised how few utilities ruin down either Herald or Marginal. These are not part of the historic street grid, they are recent urban renewal constructs. Building feeds seem to come in from the historical cross street: Tremont, Shawmut, Washington and Harrison.

OK, that’s news to me and interesting too; thanks.

Historically I would have said this was true. But the Walsh administration is working a lot better with MassDOT and Baker. I've been up close and personal to the process for MassDOT Parcels 25, 26 and 27 and it gives me reason to believe that the Walsh and Baker teams could actually pull something like this off…..

If by “something like this” you mean getting parcels 25, 26, and 27 to work, that’s awesome news, I hope you’re right. And if they got those pulled off, why would they want to reinvent the wheel on other parcels? If I were on one of the Walsh / Baker teams and we got success on 25 – 27, I’d just take whatever new way of interacting we came up with and get cranking right down the pike on the standing plans for other parcels. If by “something like this” you mean the boulevard idea, I’d very much like to see them actually get 25, 26, and 27 built – not approved and announced to great fanfare, but BUILT – before they go down some totally different tangent over in the Clarenden to Albany stretch.

 

[whighlander]

JeffDownTown -- what you are in effect proposing is to bring back the entity that moved Needham to the Back Bay

That worked because the Commonwealth invested in the first block and used the sale [not lease] of the land to developers and individual householders to fund the next block -- that's why it took as long as it did -- it was pay as you go

Your version of the Back Bay would be to fill everything from Arlington St. to at least Mass Ave. and then try to lease the lots. Two immediate problems:
1) the developers get to pick and chose what to bid on and so the overall value will be lower -- as there are definitely some "klunker properties"
2) the major problem is access -- the Pike Extension was built to bring people from Newton and west to downtown Boston and then take them home -- no one envisioned the need for the complementary exists and entrances

Why not see how the latest quasi-air rights proposals which already have developers and some level of designs, go before embarking full-tilt on this one scheme

 

[JeffDowntown]

JeffDownTown -- what you are in effect proposing is to bring back the entity that moved Needham to the Back Bay

That worked because the Commonwealth invested in the first block and used the sale [not lease] of the land to developers and individual householders to fund the next block -- that's why it took as long as it did -- it was pay as you go

Your version of the Back Bay would be to fill everything from Arlington St. to at least Mass Ave. and then try to lease the lots. Two immediate problems:
1) the developers get to pick and chose what to bid on and so the overall value will be lower -- as there are definitely some "klunker properties"
2) the major problem is access -- the Pike Extension was built to bring people from Newton and west to downtown Boston and then take them home -- no one envisioned the need for the complementary exists and entrances

Why not see how the latest quasi-air rights proposals which already have developers and some level of designs, go before embarking full-tilt on this one scheme

I have to admit, this is a lot like a major landfill operation.

I also agree that I don't think this works financially. You only generate about 4 acres of buildable land. That land is most valuable to the direct abutters (in many cases it upgrades their holdings to a PDA potential lot size). Even so, at max I see $100 million in land value recaptured (based on recent land transactions in the area.) Not enough to pay for a deck.

Fun to envision, but almost certainly not possible to pull off.

 

[West]

Fun to envision, but almost certainly not possible to pull off.

These things are fun to envision. Even when I disagree with them or don't see them as feasible (the case here), thinking through exactly why I don't see them as feasible helps me get to a better understanding of what's going on.

I reiterate that I hope you're right about the parcels where Walsh / Baker are playing nicer. I also hope Baker isn't just making it work by doing a fire sale and using proceeds to paper over his unwillingness to face harsh reality on MBTA's budget, but that's a whole different conversation for another thread. If parcels 25 and 26 get to a good place and get developed, that'd not be nothing. (27 looks so awkward I'm not holding my breath, no matter how much they're playing nice.) Some momentum on parcels 12 - 15 would be great, too.

 

[JeffDowntown]

These things are fun to envision. Even when I disagree with them or don't see them as feasible (the case here), thinking through exactly why I don't see them as feasible helps me get to a better understanding of what's going on.

I reiterate that I hope you're right about the parcels where Walsh / Baker are playing nicer. I also hope Baker isn't just making it work by doing a fire sale and using proceeds to paper over his unwillingness to face harsh reality on MBTA's budget, but that's a whole different conversation for another thread. If parcels 25 and 26 get to a good place and get developed, that'd not be nothing. (27 looks so awkward I'm not holding my breath, no matter how much they're playing nice.) Some momentum on parcels 12 - 15 would be great, too.

Agreed. I think parcels 25 and 26 are really in play. You are correct that 27 is a real stretch.

Also, the State has been very clear they won't and cannot accept a fire sale for parcels 25 and 26. Proposal will need to pay real money for the parcels. But development potential allowed in the RFP is pretty significant, and has been pretty well pre-negotiated and somewhat community vetted with the BPDA (BRA).