Downtown Crossing/Financial District | Discussion

Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

statler said:
"Never" works for me.
Click to expand...

This. Macy*s and the garage should go before there is talk of tearing down intact blocks.
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

whighlander said:
617 -- perhaps you should update your area code

Questionable area

Don't have enough money

have you been living under a large rock or is it the snow cover

Since the Millenium broke ground the Four Seasons was announced, financed and construction began

This is some of the hottest real estate in the US and money is not an object

Whether the boom will continue if the economy tanks again in the next 2 years?
Click to expand...

Update my area code? Maybe from Lexington this seems like a great place to sink $9M, but I think it's crazy. Don't get me wrong I'm pumped about it, great thing for the city, but selling 400+ ultra-luxe condos in this spot was hardly a slam dunk.

Lastly, MT has more in common with skid row than the four seasons tower, not sure why you even brought that up. Back bay/ FS brand combo is as good as it gets.

So ya...still shocked but very happy about the outcome.
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

617 said:
Lastly, MT has more in common with skid row than the four seasons tower, not sure why you even brought that up. Back bay/ FS brand combo is as good as it gets.

So ya...still shocked but very happy about the outcome.
Click to expand...

Sort of a chicken and the egg thing there isn't it?

This block of Washington was as bad as it was/is because one side of the street was a hole in the ground and the other side was empty storefronts.

The block should get much less skid-row like once the tower is complete, and the there is already some activity in the storefronts on the other side of the street.
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

Mongo said:
Sort of a chicken and the egg thing there isn't it?

This block of Washington was as bad as it was/is because one side of the street was a hole in the ground and the other side was empty storefronts.

The block should get much less skid-row like once the tower is complete, and the there is already some activity in the storefronts on the other side of the street.
Click to expand...

No. Downtown crossing has been skid row, famously so, for decades.
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

Skid Row? Seriously? Let's not compare DTX with Field's Corner.
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

Hey now! I live in Fields cor. and I can tell you there's no people at nite living in cardboard boxes in the storefront entrances like u see in DTX!
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

OK, first of all, don't just blithely dump on Fields Corner: it is certainly a nexus for crime, but not anywhere near the level of many other high-crime areas nearby.

Secondly, I was only using the term "Skid Row" because the previous commenter had chosen the term. The term itself is hyperbolic (I assume on the part of the commenter before me) - to clarify, I was responding to the allegation that the hole in the ground was responsible for the tattiness of DTX, which has nothing to do with the the delay in construction but more to do with white flight, shift in the second half of the 20th C. to suburban shopping areas, urban disinvestment and lastly, to the proximity to Scollay and to its replacement, the Combat Zone.

Tremont and Kneeland was loaded with people selling crack right on the corners, and Chinatown still was crawling with streetwalkers, even into the mid 2000s. So calling this area Skid Row isnt that much of a stretch. It's been scuzzy for a long time.

Here are some shots of the theaters, one block down the road, in 1999:
modern.jpg

operahouse.jpg

paramount.jpg
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

Throwback Friday

vIVD2dE.png
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

Delete
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

What's at Bromfield now.

YAnTVhG.jpg


O16FNd9.jpg
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

Ugh. I hate myself so much right now for posting those Gov't Center photos in the wrong thread.
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

A then and now, now edition.

JcFT0Mt.jpg
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

JohnAKeith said:
A then and now, now edition.

JcFT0Mt.jpg
Click to expand...

One can play the "then and now" game with Downtown Crossing nearly infinitely--the BLC's Central Business District archive on Flickr has at least 300+ shots from the 1950s-70s. Combat Zone, Upper Washington, Gov't Ctr/Scollay Sq, Franklin St, Chauncy--voluminous.

Also, this conversation about what's "really" happening in DTC right now seems way too "either/or," black-and-white and not nearly nuanced enough.

It's obvious that the district is revitalizing in the sense that street-level restaurant/retail vacancies are re-tenanting to levels not seen since pre-Combat Zone heyday. That's a reversion to old. At the same time, DTC is gentrifying due to 1,000s of high-priced condos and apartments coming online since the 1990s and especially post-2009. That's a new positive. At the same time, the homelessness situation is clearly intensifying. That's a new negative. Also, the T is falling apart and that phenomenon is particularly felt in the subway convergence zone that is DTC. One could go on...

All these trends are coalescing and interlocking and interplaying with other trends. That's life. So why does everyone always seem to succumb to binary "it's bad"/"it's good" mentalities?
 
Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

DBM said:
One can play the "then and now" game with Downtown Crossing nearly infinitely--the BLC's Central Business District archive on Flickr has at least 300+ shots from the 1950s-70s. Combat Zone, Upper Washington, Gov't Ctr/Scollay Sq, Franklin St, Chauncy--voluminous.

Also, this conversation about what's "really" happening in DTC right now seems way too "either/or," black-and-white and not nearly nuanced enough.

It's obvious that the district is revitalizing in the sense that street-level restaurant/retail vacancies are re-tenanting to levels not seen since pre-Combat Zone heyday. That's a reversion to old. At the same time, DTC is gentrifying due to 1,000s of high-priced condos and apartments coming online since the 1990s and especially post-2009. That's a new positive. At the same time, the homelessness situation is clearly intensifying. That's a new negative. Also, the T is falling apart and that phenomenon is particularly felt in the subway convergence zone that is DTC. One could go on...

All these trends are coalescing and interlocking and interplaying with other trends. That's life. So why does everyone always seem to succumb to binary "it's bad"/"it's good" mentalities?
Click to expand...

Because people tend to be intellectually lazy. Black/white, good/bad are easier than nuance.
 
Re: Moved From: Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

meddlepal said:
Skid Row? Seriously? Let's not compare DTX with Field's Corner.
Click to expand...

Skid Row implies a derelict state through to the core

DTX has had some superficial blight since the Filene's and Barnes & Noble closure

However from Boylston toward Gov't Center DTX was never close to Skid Row even with the Filene's hole and vacant store fronts:

  • Nearly as many people pass through DTX as South Station on a daily basis
  • Macy's in DTX is very profitable
  • Lafayette Corporate Center
  • the top of Macy's is a Major Internet & telecom Hosting Center
  • several new mid-sized towers constructed in past decade
  • Emerson & Suffolk
  • Bolt and the boom in start-ups
  • current flurry of activity in major residential construction

Doesn't much sound like Skid Row despite the presence of a couple of "attractants" to street people
 
Is it me or does it seem like this Godfrey hotel gut job is taking forever. Seems like 20 story buildings have been built from the ground up quicker.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top