Downtown Crossing/Financial District | Discussion

Sicilian said:
Walking down Temple Street last night I was astonished at the number of empty storefronts.

Riffing on the "Broken Windows" theory, I do think even a modicum of sidewalk repair (instead of tar patches) and streetlight improvements might make the area more welcoming and possibly raise the prospects of folks taking leases.

The retail potential is STAGGERING and if I didn't have a business now I'd consider hanging a shingle out myself, leasing for a few years and making/selling some type of goods or another.
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I think the same thing everytime I stumble out of stoddards. It seems like such an amazing/unique oppurtunity.
 
For what is supposedly highly valuable real estate downtown I find it incredible that the city finds asphalt sidewalks, and in some cases curbs, perfectly acceptable. Bromfield Street is even worse! Who wants to walk down a street to shop when all the buildings look run down and the sidewalk is in worse condition than many back alleys?
 
Real Estate Editor - Boston Business Journal
Downtown Crossing is about to lose its only record store, making it the second high-profile shop to shutter in the shopping district this year.

F.Y.E. at 411 Washington St. is planning to close at the end of January, according to a store employee. With the loss of its only Boston store, the Albany, N.Y., national chain will have eight Bay State stores, including shops in Natick and Burlington.

Rosemarie Sansone, president of the Downtown Boston Business Improvement District, said F.Y.E. had been talking about closing for a while. “Perhaps the record business is not what it used to be,” she said.

John Sullivan, CFO of Trans World Entertainment .Trans World Entertainment Latest from The Business Journals Music store's closing brings more woe to Dowtown CrossingTrans World names new CFOTrans World names new CFO Follow this company ., F.Y.E.’s parent company, could not be reached for comment. The store’s landlord, David Pogorelc, chairman of Core Investments .Core Investments Latest from The Business Journals Music store's closing brings more woe to Dowtown CrossingAround the Region: April 26, 2011Duke City drawing apartment investor interest nationwide Follow this company .was unavailable for comment. The Boston firm bought the seven-story property in June for $2.95 million from the Adam Levy Trust established by the late Morris Levy, former president of Roulette Records, one of the nation’s largest independent music companies.

Last summer, the 40-year-old Borders chain, which was sunk by crushing debt, the explosion of e-commerce and e-books, and declining DVD and CD sales, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and closed its store at Washington and School streets. At the time, Borders said was losing $2 million a day at the stores it planned to close. Michael Murphy, executive director of The Clarendon Group which manages the former Borders site, said he expects a deal to be signed for the 40,000-square-foot-space by next fall with one tenant on each floor. He said there has been lots of interest from potential tenants such as restaurants and other retailers. “We don’t have a deal yet, but we expect to have that space filled by the third quarter fof 2012,” he said.

In 2006, Barnes & Noble .Barnes & Noble Latest from The Business Journals Music store's closing brings more woe to Dowtown CrossingAuto dealer leading push to revitalize Nashville's Hickory Hollow areaReport: Google plans to sell mobile tablet Follow this company .abandoned Downtown Crossing. That still-empty storefront sits across Washington Street from the hole in the ground where the Filene’s redevelopment project has been stalled since 2008.
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Not that it matters............

http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/real_estate/2011/12/downtown-record-store-to-close.html
 
It certainly doesn't help FYE and the industry in general that they are referring to it as a "record store."
 
What is the alternative to asphalt sidewalks? No, I'm serious. Concrete? Granite?
 
Concrete seems to be the utilitarian ideal, I'd say. But the city has a fascination for brick. But neither work good when the city doesn't maintain them right, nor force utilities to properly patch them after work is done. Concrete needs to have a good bed under it, as does brick. Any work done to it seems to always result in the hole being improperly filled, leading to caving in and even crappy asphalt patching. Time and time again I see bricks ripped out for work, then they're literally just thrown back into place with asphalt, WTF?
 
http://gizmodo.com/5688971/the-ingenious-machine-that-can-print-cobblestone-roads

This for streets intended for limited vehicular access. Bring cars back to Downtown Crossing, but limit their speeds with this surface and alert pedestrians to their presence with the low rumble. (I'd also suggest this for Newbury & Hanover Streets). Of course use dressed granite setts instead of ye olde fake tumbled cobble which routinely kills people at Quincy Market.

&

Install a modular Bluestone sidewalk laid on top of a bed of crushed structural stone. Any utility work on the sidewalks simply pops the stone out and snaps it back in. Street work involves paying to have the cobble printer come back out at the end of the season.
 
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ughh....Suffolk in this location would be horrible...downtown needs more retail and that is a money location though it's size is pretty burdensome for anyone one company...that building needs to be turned into like a multi open-retail space
 
Bubbybu said:
ughh....Suffolk in this location would be horrible...downtown needs more retail and that is a money location though it's size is pretty burdensome for anyone one company...that building needs to be turned into like a multi open-retail space
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Bub -- au contraire -- I'm not sure that Suffolk might not be a real good fit -- Suffolk is an expanding urban university which today lacks a physical presence which is readily identifiable

if Suffolk sold their Beacon Hill presence and re/new developed an "Urban Campus" in the DTX it would revitalize that area into a mini Fenway / Ave des Artes with the theaters, Suffolk and Emerson

It has the potential to be very positive -- of course it could flop
 
yea there could be benefits, economically it makes sense since a university could handle such a space but I'm just trying to think what else could bloom around it that's not already there? Chipotle just opened, got your basic essentials, CVS, Starbucks, 711, Dunkin all there...you do have like 4 or 5 empty retail spaces though
 
^^^

I'm not sure if Suffolk University could even do this financially unless a very generous donation comes across their table. I think the school has some serious DEBT issues with all the new buildings they bought and rebuilt.

I don't see Suffolk buying Filenes from Vornado.

Borders maybe but not Filenes
 
There's also the aspect of a prime spot in Downtown Crossing being taken off the tax books. Do we really want to have a tax-exempt institution developing the old Filene's site?
 
MBTAddict said:
There's also the aspect of a prime spot in Downtown Crossing being taken off the tax books. Do we really want to have a tax-exempt institution developing the old Filene's site?
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Taddict -- You need to account for the 4 large buildings on Beacon Hill just behind the StateHouse -- these would be sold and presumably back on the tax rolls
 
TheRifleman said:
^^^

I'm not sure if Suffolk University could even do this financially unless a very generous donation comes across their table. I think the school has some serious DEBT issues with all the new buildings they bought and rebuilt.

I don't see Suffolk buying Filenes from Vornado.

Borders maybe but not Filenes
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Riff -you need to think of the move which Emerson made from the Back Bay to the corner of Boylston and Tremont

nearly everyone thinks that the Emerson move was a major step forward both for Emerson and Boston
 
whighlander said:
Taddict -- You need to account for the 4 large buildings on Beacon Hill just behind the StateHouse -- these would be sold and presumably back on the tax rolls
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True, and I'll admit I didn't consider that point. I guess I would just prefer to see something else on the site. About 50% of Boston is owned by tax-exempt institutions (From the Municipal Research Bureau http://www.bmrb.org/content/upload/TE08.pdf and http://www.bmrb.org/content/upload/TE309.pdf ) so I think when a spot has such high potential, we should try and maximize it, or if it goes to Suffolk then at least negotiate better PILOT payments.
 
Just throwing this out there, but I think universities (students) should pay taxes for all of their on-campus residence halls. As long as the building fulfills non-academic or non-institutional uses, even if it's owned by a university, there shouldn't be any objection for the residents to pay their fair share of taxes. I'm confident demand is high enough to attend these institutions that the schools wouldn't have to fear a decline in enrollment.
 
Beyond getting some free press and reminding people they're still around I'm not sure why Suffolk keeps cutting checks they can't cash so to speak. They don't have the wherewithal for something of this magnitude. Their alumni base is small and comparatively poor, their endowment is practically in negatives and their bond rating is extremely low.
 
In San Francisco the Academy of Art University (AAU) is literally on every block downtown...they have dorms, apartment buildings, admin buildings, school buildings etc...this is a for-profit college and it doesn't seem like their diplomas would be worth much but it's a cash cow because of all the rich internationals who can send their kids here on a student visa and because of government loans...

To have something so pervasive in the middle of a major urban area is a bit of a turnoff to me...I really don't like the idea of schools gobbling up random tracts of real estate to buff their portfolio like Starbucks...I can understand some organic outgrowth more like with BU along Comm Ave. Boston doesn't have an AAU, thankfully.

Old but interesting articles....


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2004/09/14/carollloyd.DTL&ao=all


http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/2010/01/academy_of_art_lawsuit.php


While, in the past, the Academy has claimed it didn't know it wasn't legal to, say, buy an SRO hotel or apartment, boot everyone out, begin stuffing four students in a room, and then start counting the money, the planning department claimed the Academy knows exactly what it's doing. Last year, city planner Scott Sanchez told SF Weekly that the Academy was hit with a bevy of violations in 2006, yet continued obtaining properties and converting them without permits in 2007. That "blows their alibi about being ignorant out of the water," he said at the time. City planners we talked to on Monday reiterated that the Academy was "well aware" of what the legal requirements it blew off when obtaining and occupying subsequent properties.

Going back several decades, the Academy has at least 14 pending conditional use permits on file -- meaning they occupied that many structures and converted them to academic or residential uses without going through legal channels. In other words, the Academy's current situation -- which may finally get it sued by the city -- is almost as old as Perry Mason.
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