Downtown Crossing/Financial District | Discussion

^ Weren't you the one supporting graffiti in another thread as free expression and quality urban grittiness?

Perhaps you think DTX needs more graffiti?
 
I was supporting graffiti in the appropriate places - i.e. alleys, highway trenches, certain public domains. I'm mostly speaking of DTX inability (and the city,) to present a clear identity or not even that. I just don't understand what is going on down there. I'm all for urban 'gritty-ness' etc. It's just such a polyglot of stores and a mish mash of everything else. I have to examine further why I don't really like it down there...Perhaps I will examine it further today.
 
Vacant storefronts are the cause of all other problems there. Fill them and everything else will take care of itself.
 
Well still, all I see are CVS x 3, Verizon Wireless, Starbucks, CVS, CVS, Starbucks, H&M, CVS, CVS, ATT Wireless, CVS, CVS. I have seen their 'branding' attempt. It is admirable but renderings are renderings.
 
To be fair, they did consolidate two CVS' into one, so I think they are down to about 6 in the general area (including the ones on Tremont and Center Plaza)
 
haha, well still. I hate to be such a debby downer. Boston is an admirable city and pessimism isn't always the right approach. There have just been so many missed opportunities and things move at such a slow pace and get changed erratically. Why doesn't the city employ more progressive students into the planning office - such as myself (blast, its so hard to get a job there even with good references and school,) design charettes, etc.....they should have more meetings with the college students studying these things who are going to be shaping the future cities of this country. They should have a 150 year master plan like harvard...haha. Isnt that ridiculous?!
 
I'm actually really excited about the supermarket that will be part of One Franklin. That will without a doubt generate more activity in the area. Residents will have a place to go, and daytime workers will be able to grab a few groceries or a quick lunch.

But yes, filling in the vacant storefronts would also be a big help.
 
Mayor Menino squandered hundreds of thousands of dollars to have an ad agency come up with the "where ___ meets ____" branding campaign and plaster empty storefronts with sayings like "Where wine meets glass" and "where shoes meet bags" - I'm not making this up.

Seriously. A hundred thousands dollars that makes nobody more interested in DTX.

At all.

We are urban people, we love the city - does anybody here on this board actually visit and use this $75,000+ web site: http://www.downtowncrossing.org/ ??? For anything at all? It was subsidized by your tax money.

The government has piles and piles of money just sitting around to burn and waste. And when you you ask them how much you should give, the only answer is more, more, more.

I would think suffocating the state of our income taxes would help with the situation. With a stripped down and gutted BRA, the community process would also have to be streamlined, and One Franklin would have been built years ago. There would be a lively mixed-use property instead of thousands of dollars worth of "where theatre meets dancing" posters.

Serious people who design cities would end up designing cities instead of government workers who couldn't hack it at serious business enterprises.

Sorry... my bitter anti-government rants probably need to be toned down, but these DTX posters are just such a laughable waste of money - all that money squandered so Menino can stand at a press conference and shore up the DTX constituent support - without any follow up about results or ROI.
 
thank you, i couldnt agree more or said it better myself......minus the income tax repeal.
 
pelhamhall said:
- does anybody here on this board actually visit and use this $75,000+ web site: http://www.downtowncrossing.org/ ??? For anything at all? It was subsidized by your tax money.
Click to expand...

Think the DTX branding initiative is a waste of money? Well, you'll love this.

pelhamhall said:
Sorry...my bitter anti-government rants probably need to be toned down, but these DTX posters are just such a laughable waste of money - all that money squandered so Menino can stand at a press conference and shore up the DTX constituent support - without any follow up about results or ROI.
Click to expand...

There's never a need to apologize when you're right.
 
Last edited:
City pushes regulations for signs at Downtown Crossing
By Donna Goodison | Wednesday, October 22, 2008 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Business & Markets

New regulations would rein in the mishmash of business signs in Boston’s Downtown Crossing.

The proposed changes would set maximum sizes for new signs and their lettering, and would ban several sign types and all flags except for the U.S. flag. All new signs would be subject to review by the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

The goal is to improve the struggling shopping district’s appearance and better showcase its architecture as part of an economic improvement initiative. “There’s no more one-upping of each other, and there’s no more carte blanche,” said Andrew Grace, a BRA project manager.

Current zoning makes city management of the signs a bit cumbersome, Grace said. The BRA oversees only a small portion of the signs, the majority of which are under the Inspectional Services Department’s purview.

Existing signs would not be affected by the regulations, save for freestanding and in-ground ones, which would be banned. New plastic waterfall awnings also would be prohibited. And businesses that close would be required to remove their signs within 30 days.

“There are some interesting fragments of history up there, but it could really be disorienting if you’re looking for a business and it doesn’t exist,” Grace said.

The city started approaching business owners four years ago about the need for sign approvals, and it heightened enforcement. The city has been working with a dozen small retailers in the last six months, giving them $2,500 grants for new signs and free design assistance.

“The intention behind the regulations is good, which is to clean up the area and make it look better,” said Alexander Leventhal, managing partner of Advisors Capital, which is buying the building at 467-469 Washington St.

The firm, which plans to lease space to the Sleepy’s mattress chain, is working with the BRA on plans to remove an awning and signage behind it and retrofit an old blade marquee from the former Rogers Jewelry, which closed in 1996 after 89 years.

Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1127034
 
City's retail vision requires changing a youth hangout

By Milton J. Valencia
Globe Staff / October 22, 2008

The buses and trains seem to arrive simultaneously, unleashing a mob of teenagers onto the streets of Downtown Crossing at the close of the school day. Some shop. Most loiter on corners or outside sneaker stores and cellular phone shops. A few look for trouble.

Like the Roxbury gang members spotted by police one day last week. Or the 100-plus youths who descended on the area earlier this month and engaged in scattered fights up and down Washington Street. Those episodes came just days after a young man opened fire Oct. 3 on a rival crowd, and two men were stabbed, prompting city officials to provide a strong police presence since then in the afternoons.

This should not be happening at Downtown Crossing, "Boston's Meeting Place," as officials now call it, a neighborhood that is seeing $4 billion in investments to develop new office buildings, restaurants, high-rise condominiums, and high-end lofts that officials hope will restore the area to its glory days of the 1960s as Boston's center of shopping and leisure.

But as the city and developers have been planning the revitalization with million-dollar homes at 45 Province and the construction of a 38-story tower above the old Filene's, Downtown Crossing is dealing with the type of urban nuisances typical of a neighborhood in transition. For now, according to residents and business owners, the area is short of the world-class shopping destination the city has long envisioned.

"I think it's disappointing," said Alana Menitoff, who manages a handbag vending cart on Washington Street.

Said 37-year-old Anne Murphy, who recently bought a Washington Street loft: "There's shady stuff going on. That's kind of always been the case down here. I don't think it will ever be what they thought it would be when they first started."

Vacant storefronts dot Washington Street, the main thoroughfare. Homeless men sleep in the crevices of T stations and ATM vestibules. And Filene's, the focus of huge plans, is for now an enormous, gaping construction site.

Of particular concern are the hundreds of youths who converge on the scene in the afternoon, taking over street corners, yelling, fighting, and, in some cases, intimidating shoppers and tourists.

"The kids that don't belong stick out," police Lieutenant Sean Feeney said recently, during a tour of the neighborhood. Since the shooting, police commanders have sent extra teams of officers to patrol Downtown Crossing, from West Street toward the State Street T stop, beginning around 2:30 p.m. Boston police teamed with MBTA police, court officials, and school workers who can help identify problem students.

Downtown Crossing station, where riders can catch the Red Line or Orange Line or make a short walk to the Green Line, serves as the crossroads of the city's transit system, and is the T's busiest. Deputy Chief Joseph O'Connor of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority police said the station has its share of crime, but much of it centers on teenagers stealing iPods and cellphones from each other. Police statistics related specifically to Downtown Crossing were not immediately available.

"When you get large groups of adolescents going into stations, sometimes it creates fear for riders, even if they're not committing crimes," O'Connor said.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said the increased patrols are to ensure that shoppers feel comfortable in Downtown Crossing and diminish any sense of disorder that the large youth presence might cause. The mayor is planning elaborate decorations for the holiday season, just as FAO Schwarz is to open a new store in the basement of Macy's. By then, Menino hopes, cold weather will push the youths to congregate elsewhere.

"It's a nuisance to us, not a crisis," said Menino, an inveterate shopper who ventures through Downtown Crossing nearly every day. "But you have to behave yourself. There are other people down there, and we want you to behave yourself to make it a thriving shopping district."

The police effort has triggered a mixed reaction among students. Teenagers from several high schools said in interviews in the area that they understand the need for the police presence because of the recent violence and tendencies of people their age to fight for mundane reasons. But they also said they, too, are trying to enjoy the area as "Boston's Meeting Place."

"We come down here to enjoy ourselves," said Shauntell Thomas, 16, a sophomore at West Roxbury High School. "Where else are we going to go?"

Justin Crespo, a 15-year-old at the John D. O'Bryant School in Roxbury, said the area is a meeting place for students from high schools throughout the city. He realizes police are trying to disperse crowds, but believes students should not have to feel they are being harassed or targeted.

Students are known to move from one corner to the next. The management company that runs the Food Court on Washington Street has resorted to blasting classical music to annoy and eventually repel teenagers who like more modern music. Other businesses simply ask teenagers to move, and they welcome the police presence.

"If this was just another neighborhood, Dorchester or Roxbury, you wouldn't have this much police," said Frank Chaparro, who runs a T-shirt vending cart. "But here, you need to crack down. It's Downtown Crossing."

Some 230,000 people walk through the neighborhood each day. An estimated 6,000 people live in the area, including students from nearby colleges.

Rosemarie Sansone, president of the Downtown Crossing Partnership, said residents and business owners are working with police to revitalize the neighborhood and are more engaged than ever.

"It's personal now," Sansone said. "It's personal to them because it's their family name" on the business. "It's . . . where they live."

She and others see promise in projects like the continued $650 million investment in the former Filene's property, where developers envision replacing the storied department store with retail shops, condominiums, a hotel, and offices, with a 38-story tower next door. The project could be completed by July 2011.

Down Washington Street, Suffolk University is renovating the former Modern Theatre into a residence hall and theater, and Emerson College is embarking on an $80 million renovation and addition to the Paramount Theater.

In the meantime, neighborhood businesses and residents have worked to clean up their properties. Macy's, the department store, helped spotlight Summer Street by setting up display windows, and planted pots now dot the area, serving as accessories for the neighborhood.

Through it all, Downtown Crossing still serves as a tourist destination for some.

Maureen White, a 61-year-old from Connecticut, recently returned to the area where her mother worked on Summer Street decades ago, but the businesses she recalled were no longer there. She thought of heading to the corner were she used to buy muffins, but a friend advised her not to stray from the main road. "Hold your pocketbook like this, walk fast, and turn your rings around," the friend told her.

White sees the potential in the neighborhood, but the police patrols made her nervous.

"This has a village feeling here, like I remember," she said, "but I don't feel the warm, fuzzy side at all."

Link
 
Re: Signs

Meanwhile, the mandarin oriental is using different signs as a selling points to make the building more vibrant and seem less like one building
 
I agree with removing obsolete signs. I walked into a store once and asked where Rogers Jewelers was, only to find that it didn't exist.

But banning flags? Why? Flags and banners add color and life to a commercial district. Plus, I doubt you can legally allow a US flag and ban a Canadian or French or South African one.
 
Hope they allow the big, vertical signs that once jutted out to characterize this narrow street. The Paramount sign is a surviving example.
 
Ron Newman said:
But banning flags? Why? Flags and banners add color and life to a commercial district. Plus, I doubt you can legally allow a US flag and ban a Canadian or French or South African one.
Click to expand...

My only beef with some of the flags in DTX is that once they succumb to the elements, become faded, torn, frayed, etc., the retailer the flag belongs to will rarely replace it with a new one, and it ends up looking pretty trashy. Other than that, I'm in agreement with you on this.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top