Downtown Crossing/Financial District | Discussion

About ten years ago I attended a presentation on downtown crossing by Druker. He said they were disappointedly with the Conner Mall turned out. Time to replace the mall with street front stores only.
 
PaulC said:
About ten years ago I attended a presentation on downtown crossing by Druker. He said they were disappointedly with the Conner Mall turned out. Time to replace the mall with street front stores only.
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His cunningly evil plan to flood the district with BPS thugs, chase away shoppers, and drive competing landlords into ruin is working perfectly. In a few years he'll buy everything up at rock bottom prices and step in as a phony white knight savior.

Block Busting 101 Boston Retail Edition.
 
Lurker said:
His cunningly evil plan to flood the district with BPS thugs, chase away shoppers, and drive competing landlords into ruin is working perfectly. In a few years he'll buy everything up at rock bottom prices and step in as a phony white knight savior.

Block Busting 101 Boston Retail Edition.
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And I thought I was cynical...
 
Lurker said:
His cunningly evil plan to flood the district with BPS thugs, chase away shoppers, and drive competing landlords into ruin is working perfectly. In a few years he'll buy everything up at rock bottom prices and step in as a phony white knight savior.

Block Busting 101 Boston Retail Edition.
Click to expand...

The sick part is the city will end up giving him tax breaks to buy the properties.
 
At this point the Corner Mall is the closest the center of DTX has to an anchor tenant. Macy*s just doesn't cut it.

The fact the Corner Mall exists, or the quality of food never bugged me. But it disrespects a fine intersection with the lack of investment on how it interfaces with the street on two entrances -- crappy signage, etc.. And it closes at 7, contributing to a sudden loss of livelihood.
 
Sicilian said:
At this point the Corner Mall is the closest the center of DTX has to an anchor tenant. Macy*s just doesn't cut it.

The fact the Corner Mall exists, or the quality of food never bugged me. But it disrespects a fine intersection with the lack of investment on how it interfaces with the street on two entrances -- crappy signage, etc.. And it closes at 7, contributing to a sudden loss of livelihood.
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It seems like there's way more ppl in macys consistently than the corner mall
 
Suffolk 83 said:
It seems like there's way more ppl in macys consistently than the corner mall
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I felt the same way after reading that post. To discount Macy*s as DTX's premiere anchor is absurd. It is too bad that they don't do the Jordan Marsh window displays of the past/have a lot of blank windows, and the store looks like crap, but you can't deny that pretty much the only attraction that draws people to DTX is Macy*s.

They've already destroyed that beautiful Jordan Marsh store and ruined its charm so much that they might as well just tear it down and build a new Macy*s with natural light and a better layout. I'm still holding onto my dream of Nordstrom filling the Filene's Memorial Hole too.
 
^ I would not discount H&M as an anchor-ish store. I have alto of friends that head to DTX just for it.
 
found5dollar said:
^ I would not discount H&M as an anchor-ish store. I have alto of friends that head to DTX just for it.
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Yes, definitely, there are still minor anchors in DTX too. H&M is a major draw. TJMaxx and Marshalls are too.
 
Macy*s is not happening. I can't see that store lasting 10 more years.

I don't feel like getting into a defense of the Corner Mall, just not worth it on any measure. But as far as I can tell, the Corner Mall FAR exceeds Macy*s traffic on a per square foot basis, any day of the week and you can include Christmas.

H&M is consistently packed. Lines at all registers all day long.
 
DTX would be a good place for ANF to open a Hollister downtown too. The streetwall of Washington St. would be perfect to support it.

epichollister_midsize.jpg

Hollister EPIC, SoHo

The demand for HCo is so high because there are none in downtown Boston, just one tucked away in CambridgeSide which is confusing to get to for a lot of tourists. If DTX can secure big names that the retail scene of Boston lacks, it will recover, but it will never happen until that hole is filled.
 
There's a photo gallery of old Boston Globe storefronts along Washington Street near Pi Alley. Photos of the 1910's, 1920's, 1940's, and 1960's.

The last two photos from the Globe show it to be in what is now the Bank of America, across the street from the Old South Church, I think. #316 Washington St.

http://goo.gl/maps/8oCr

The earlier photos, I can't tell where they were located. One looks to be 160 Washington St and another might be 238 Washington St. Anyone know off the tops of their heads? From the looks of the buildings, I think they have been torn down, I can't place them there today?

http://beta.boston.com/2011/05/19/boston-globe-storefront-webpage/
 
According to this tweet, Borders is closing at the end of the month --

https://twitter.com/#!/nickdawg/status/78609163244142592

Damn, just found out the Borders in downtown crossing is closing at the end if the month. Not good. #Boston

girl who works there told me today (I'm there a lot during the week). She said there were disputes w/their landlord.
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Does anyone in the area want to confirm?
 
that would be disastrous. It would leave downtown Boston with no new-book store at all.
 
Ron Newman said:
that would be disastrous. It would leave downtown Boston with no new-book store at all.
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How many new-book stores in Boston proper would there be at all? The B&N at the Pru and the BU bookstore, a few other college bookstores. Am I missing others?

If anyone's in the area, it's definitely worth confirming.
 
Ron, this must have been a rough month for you. This would be, what, the fourth closing so far?
 
That's horrible losing the DTX Borders. It's even worse with the one in Copley Square being shuttered. The only bookstore left in the area, aside from the universities, is the Brattle.
 
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