Fan Pier Developments | Seaport

Also of note, I doubt Fallon or any developer had anything to do with the design of Phoenix AZ like width of seaport blvd. or new northern ave (not sure what the official name is). I am assuming the city transportation dept along with the BRA laid the foundation for the width of the street.
 
^^That's a fair point.

Though it wouldn't surprise me to find out they consulted with various developers to get a feel for how it should be laid out.

But the BRA, et al deserve a fair share of blame in this mess.
 
^^Chill.

Sure it was a bit rambly and slightly off-topic. But I don't think it needed a full on ad-hominem rebuttal.

We are having a nice conversation here. :)
 
el raval said:
The initial critique that prompted my statement that 'the problem is that the street was only thought of in terms of cars and not public realm' was about the desolate and lifeless streetscape in this photo.

The conversation has spiralled a bit (which is good in a forum), but I'm sorry pelhamhall, the initial point is still valid. There is zero design in the streetscape relative to the public realm, or what might make a reasonable (or dare we dream?) a good urban street. The image above might as well be on Rt. 9 in Framingham, not in the middle of the city.
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You are right - I was playing devil's advocate, as I often do. I just feel like nobody speaks up for automobiles in today's society, even though they are a completely integral part of our human life in 2009.

The Seaport District is incomplete. It will be ten years until we can even get a sense of what this area feels like. Right now it doesn't feel like much of anything.

I for one am glad the Seaport is laid out for very, very easy auto access. The highway system is right there, the ramps are wide, the arteries are flat and wide... it's a very accessible neighborhood for commuters from all over Greater Boston.

As it builds and becomes dense over the next two decades, the auto-based design of the neighborhood is going to help it really flourish. But right now, when it's not dense at all, this auto-based neighborhood design makes it feel deader than it really is.
 
As it builds and becomes dense over the next two decades, the auto-based design of the neighborhood is going to help it really flourish.
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This is exactly what they said about the West End in the 1960's.

See also: Square, Kendall

Those who don't learn from their mistakes are bound to repeat them, as Boston will discover over the next decade or so.
 
One silver lining to such wide streets is that they are more flexible with how they can be used. The narrow streets of the North End are very pretty but you aren't going to be able to fit parking, bike lanes, bus lanes, and travel lanes in them. Not that you would want to have all that on a residential street, but on a major road like Seaport Blvd you should leave the options there.

In fact I would even argue that it is a problem that more avenues in Boston aren't built like Seaport Blvd. By this I mean we just don't have the space in the roads for more types of vehicles.

Re Pelhamhall: I would normally argue with your pro-car outlook but given the location of the SBW, cars really are the only way to go, even with better public transportation. The Silver Line in this area is probably all we really need until the population increases to the point where light rail would make more sense. Being located between South Station, the Financial District, and Logan, and having 2 highways near by, it only makes sense that this area is so full of cars. Ablarc likes to say that anything is better than a parking lot but there was a good economic reason why this area was only parking lots for so long. Better there than in downtown like so many other American cities have.
 
statler said:
This is exactly what they said about the West End in the 1960's.
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Again, a little devil's advocate here... but do you think Equity would consider the West End a failure?

The new building, a little glass stump on Storrow Drive broke the record for the highest PSF rent ever attained in the city of Boston. Is that a failure or an incredible success? Is the fact that this anti-urban campus is so easy for a commuter to hop right onto the highway and right into their parking space really such a failure if there is such a high, crushing demand for it?

In my mind, a real estate development that opens 90%+ pre-leased at huge rents is a great, whopping success!

What I am saying is that the Seaport District someday may break rental records of its own. Because it incorporates what's great and desirable about the West End, but fuses it with new urban design techniques like street-level retail, cultural institutions, tons of restaurants and outdoor cafes, and multi-transit options.

In other words, Statler (to address your specific post) it is the West End, only it's learned from its historical mistakes.

Maybe. Or maybe the little devil on my shoulder wrote this post.
 
I work in the West End now. If this is success, give me failure any day of the week.

The problem we always seem to clash on is that you are comfortable using quantitative metrics (in this case PSF rent prices) to measure qualitative ideas.
(See also the Walmart discussion)
I have lots of friends who do the same thing. They can't convince me it a valid way of judging things and I can't convince them it's not. We just agree to disagree.
Cheers. :)
 
To me, the crux of the matter has always been population. Boston simply needs more residents and if you ever expect Fan Pier to be a vibrant neighborhood you can't expect it to be done on the shoulders of luxury residental, hotel and office space. All of which seem to be greatly overextended at the present moment.

If the entirety of Fallon's plan is ever built; we can expect a part of the city that does not resemble 'traditional Boston'. It's going to be nice but sparse and sleepy and probably still disconnected from downtown.

Charles River Park has these characteristics but it works because it's in the middle of the city and has a niche market as it serves as home for the MGH docs, foreign transplants, urban old folks, professors etc etc. It's a nice little oasis within the city and is still going strong after 45+ years.

The CRP model is obviously no longer practical though. Boston, today, must shed it's reputation for being an expensive cost of living city. It's essential that we draw in 100,00-250,000 more people in the coming years and what is required is to build volume, not quality.

Boston does of course work at 500,000-600,000 population but growth will be limited if that number persists in tandem with the current high dollar rents.

After all, if you can't fully occupy a new development at the same time you have a fairly stagant rate of population increase; something is wrong.
 
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Bubbybu said:
To me, the crux of the matter has always been population. Boston simply needs more residents and if you ever expect Fan Pier to be a vibrant neighborhood you can't expect it to be done on the shoulders of luxury residental, hotel and office space. All of which seem to be greatly overextended at the present moment.

If the entirety of Fallon's plan is ever built; we can expect a part of the city that does not resemble 'traditional Boston'. It's going to be nice but sparse and sleepy and probably still disconnected from downtown.

Charles River Park has these characteristics but it works because it's in the middle of the city and has a niche market as it serves as home for the MGH docs, foreign transplants, urban old folks, professors etc etc. It's a nice little oasis within the city and is still going strong after 45+ years.

The CRP model is obviously no longer practical though. Boston, today, must shed it's reputation for being an expensive cost of living city. It's essential that we draw in 100,00-250,000 more people in the coming years and what is required is to build volume, not quality.

Boston does of course work at 500,000-600,000 population but growth will be limited if that number persists in tandem with the current high dollar rents.

After all, if you can't fully occupy a new development at the same time you have a fairly stagant rate of population increase; something is wrong.
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Boston is land-constrained, I don't know where you could build 30,000 - 70,000 new housing units. If the Boston public school system was really top-notch, you might draw a lot more families into living in the city, and an increase in average household size would result, leading to population growth. This would reduce the number of new housing units you'd need to grow the population by 100,000 - 250,000.
 
stellarfun said:
Boston is land-constrained, I don't know where you could build 30,000 - 70,000 new housing units.
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Roxbury, Dorchester. There are enough vacant lots and underdeveloped areas to easily support that number of housing... supposing people don't mind apartment buildings everywhere. But at that point they wouldn't be able to stop the market.
 
Boston's size isn't its biggest problem. Boston was the 20th most populous metropolis in the U.S. as of the 2000 census. But Boston is the 8th largest DMA in the country. And more tellingly, Boston was the FOURTH most densely populated "major" city in the country in 2000 (I'm excluding places like Jersey City or Somerville which are small, but denser).

I agree that Boston could benefit from more people, and I agree that the Seaport District is a smart place for those people considering access to transit and proximity to the CBD. But, given the city's existing density, what are your options for adding 200,000 people? Annex Cambridge? Quincy? Newton? Or would you make all of Boston as dense as Manhattan?

I'm all for improving Boston, but let's recognize that we've got one of the densest, most historic, most culturally-endowed, most enjoyable, most walkable, most transit accessable, etc . . . major cities in the U.S.

Sorry . . . I'm a total homer . . . :)
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
Boston's size isn't its biggest problem. Boston was the 20th most populous metropolis in the U.S. as of the 2000 census. But Boston is the 8th largest DMA in the country. And more tellingly, Boston was the FOURTH most densely populated "major" city in the country in 2000 (I'm excluding places like Jersey City or Somerville which are small, but denser).
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20th? Where are you getting that from? Boston is the 7th largest metro area, with 5,819,100. That right from the census website. http://www.census.gov/population/www/cen2000/briefs/phc-t3/index.html

The 20th largest is Tampa/St. Pete and Pittsburgh.
 
We should consider the fact that in 1950 Boston did, in fact, have 200,000 more people than it has today. Of course, families were larger at that time, however, restoring the city's population to prior levels should be a major goal. The increased density could only improve the quality of life for everyone.....and I wouldn't exclude the possibility of annexation.

By the way, Boston has the fifth largest CSA in the country at the present time.
 
Here's a pdf showing Boston's population growth and decline since it's inception. Of interest is that all the sub areas and annexations are tabulated as well. This can be used to back up Van's comment of how much room there is in Dorchester and Roxbury, both of which are at population levels less than half of what they once were.

http://www.bpl.org/research/govdocs/bospop.pdf

Courtesy of the Boston Public Library.
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
Or would you make all of Boston as dense as Manhattan?
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Not Manhattan, but parts of Brooklyn or the Bronx maybe. There are plenty of nice areas with just apartment buildings. If it were planned correctly there could even be plenty of small parks left over.
 
You guys need to keep in mind how small of a land area boston is. Boston is only what, 90 sq miles, and only half of that is land.
Los Angeles, the second largest city in america, is 500 sq miles, of which 470 is land! You could fit the usable land in boston inside the usable land of LA 11 times. If you were to multiply bostons 600,000 11 times your looking at a city with 6 million people [that was a really quick guess, too lazy to do that one out].

Now, I went into google earth and mapped out a box of 500 sq miles and put a side a bit off the coast of boston to show kind of what it would look like if boston had the land area of LA. Here are some of the towns that fit in that box:

Acton
Westford
Chelmsford
Wellesley
Dedham
Needham
Wayland
Framingham

you get my point?
Lowell would have been just outside city limits. And that area i figured out is somewhere between metro boston and greater boston. I know metro boston is about 4 million, does anyone know how big greater boston is? Is greater boston the CSA [which would be 10 million?].

Btw, I have no life for figuring this out.
 
Keep in mind that Metro Boston has a population of some 4 million. That isn't chum change. We just don't think of it because there are only 600,000 (or just shy) within the city limits.
 
http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/twps0027/twps0027.html#tabA

Quick link which includes land area and density for the 20 largest cities in America. It shows Boston as #20 on the population chart, but 4th on the density chart behind only NY, Chicago, & SF. Philly is right behind Boston.

Boston is by no means a small town in regards to density and hustle bustle, just in land area. As has been stated above, if you took the land area of NY and superimposed it over the greater Boston area, you would probably have a few million in that area.
 
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