Fan Pier Developments | Seaport

[whighlander]

State St and Fidelity are the only two companies that I consider big, and headquartered in Boston. Even after it moves, Vertex would need to dramatically increase its revenue to qualify as 'big'.

Liberty Mutual is bigger than John Hancock as an insurance company

Partners is one of the largest and most prestiguous hospital groups in the world

as for vertex -- try this
http://bostonherald.com/business/te...ot_to_screw_it_up/srvc=business&position=also
Vertex CEO trying not ‘to screw it up’
By Brendan Lynch
Thursday, October 20, 2011 - Added 20 hours ago
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Vertex Pharmaceuticals CEO Matthew Emmens said this morning the company would be “very proud,” of third quarter sales of its hepatitis C drug Incivek, which will be detailed in its earnings report next week.

Emmens told a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce audience at the Four Seasons that things are going well for Vertex. The company broke ground on a new headquarters in Fan Pier earlier this year. Incivek won Food and Drug Administration approval in May and did $75 million in second-quarter sales. This week, it submitted its cystic fibrosis drug Kalydeco to the FDA.

Remember that the margins on these drugs are very high -- so if Vertex does a $1B in sales on these in a couple of years -- they will be clearing many Hundreds of Millions $ to the bottom line

 

[whighlander]

Answer this question: How do you give projects tax subsidies but then create additional taxes on areas that are suffering from vacancy around 20%?


But the city is giving tax breaks to Liberty Mutual to expand?

You can't have it both ways.........
These are FACTS!

Riff -- you've got to clean the barrel sometimes there's a lot of fouling in there ---

Building a home for a major Bio/Pharma is not quite the same as puting up some sheetrock for a back office of a financial management company -- the internal infrastructure is massive -- take a look at the top of the newly renovated (600 something) Mem Drive (former FoMoCo model T factoy) -- there are aux power, aux cooling and lots of venting that has been added in a huge penthouse

such buildings also need more water, sewer and electrical service than a comparable sq ft office building -- they also need more loading docks

So you can't take a partially empty office block and convert it to a lab without buying out the office leases and investing heavily in the building -- often including structural reinforcements

The same is true with the conversion of unneeded offcice space to telecom or computing farms -- these require either extensive reconstruction (e.g. 185 Franklin -- Verizon) or preferably a clean-sheet design on an open prking lot (SPID) or brownfield (East Cambridge) or you move out to the suburbs and plow up some farm land or cut down some trees (e.g. Waltham, Hudson, Marlboro)

 

[TheRifleman]

With $50M, Fan Pier becomes second I-Cubed grant recipient
By Kyle Cheney / State House News Service
Saturday, October 22, 2011 - Added 11 hours ago



Fan Pier, a 21-acre development on the Boston waterfront that the Patrick administration estimates will lead to 2,000 construction jobs and 1,800 permanent jobs, will get a $50 million lift from the state, officials announced Wednesday.

Lt. Gov. Tim Murray on Wednesday used a speech before the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, to announce the investment, which will support improvements to streets, sidewalks and public parks along the waterfront and aid construction of two office towers, one of which will house the new global headquarters of Vertex Pharmaceuticals.

The funding was approved through a program known as the Innovation Infrastructure Investment program, or I-Cubed. The program is intended to divide risk among the state, project developers and local communities, all of which seek to benefit from the completion of major developments. The grant means $60 million has been allocated under the program, which has a $250 million authorization.

Projects approved for I-Cubed funding receive up to $50 million in bond finance provided by the state. Under a bond agreement, revenue generated as a result of the project would fully fund the state’s debt liability. However, if the revenue falls short, the municipality in which the project resides would make up the difference.

The administration said Vertex’s headquarters – estimated at 1.1 million square feet - would become the largest commercial lease in the history of Boston, and the Fallon Company’s Fan Pier project would be the largest private-sector construction project in the country.

Fan Pier includes 21 acres along the Boston Harbor waterfront with 3 million square feet of planned redevelopment that will include mixed-use housing and commercial space, including a five-star hotel, condominiums, offices, retail and restaurants.

Since its inception, I-Cubed funding has only been approved for one project other than Fan Pier: a $10 million investment for Assembly Square in Somerville. An application for I-Cubed funding for a movie studio in Plymouth was rejected, and backers of I-Cubed funding for Westwood Station withdrew their application. Administration officials said other projects have applied and are under review.

Critics of the I-Cubed program have argued that it is designed to support Boston-based projects, rather than to benefit the entire state. In 2008, before any projects had been approved for I-Cubed funding, Sen. Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford) pointed to Fan Pier as an example of a Boston-based project that might seek to obtain program funding, along with the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center and a Somerville development.

“It’s pretty clear where most of the resources go,” he said at the time, suggesting that the fund would be steered toward projects whose backers have “friends in the building.”

Montigny did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday.

Murray told the News Service after Wednesday’s speech that I-Cubed is simply an “outgrowth” of district improvement financing programs, called DIFs, available to communities around Massachusetts.

“It’s something that I think, as more communities use it, there’s a higher comfort level for other communities to use it,” he said. “As we look at projects across the state, I think both the DIF and I-Cubed can be a future tool. There’s a pretty rigorous analysis that takes place and if that analysis shows that the projected revenues are going to be there, after due diligence, I don’t see any limitation on how we can use it ... At the end of the day, it’s got to pay for itself so there’s a high threshold there.”

In a statement, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino praised the investment. “This grant shows that not only does Boston continue to drive the state’s economic engine but that we are truly still growing despite these tough economic times,” he said.

House Speaker Robert DeLeo (D-Winthrop), Sen. Jack Hart (D-South Boston), Rep. Nick Collins (D-South Boston) and Rep. Jeffrey Sanchez (D-Jamaica Plain) also issued statements supporting the grant award.

(0) Comments | Post / Read Comments

http://www.bostonherald.com/busines...d_grant_recipient/srvc=business&position=also

In a statement, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino praised the investment. “This grant shows that not only does Boston continue to drive the state’s economic engine but that we are truly still growing despite these tough economic times,” he said.

Does this clown understand that they used taxpayers money to relocate Vertex from Cambridge? Or does Menino actually believe his own BS

This is nothing more than extorting money from the taxpayers and making private investors & developers rich on the backs of the middle class & poor.

 

[Bos77]

<snooze> We get it. We get it... Everyone is corrupt, and we're all going to hell.
I feel like the thread has turned into Ned Flaherty vs. the world.

 

[found5dollar]

^ agreed... we are startign to fall into the same pattern as all those other threads i stopped reading becasue people were just complaining ad nauseum about "ultra fine particulates!" and "nimbys want nothing to pass!". Time to add "Fan Pier consturction is corrupt!" to this list.

 

[itchy]

^ Disagree. Ned's posts were another animal entirely, and any comparison of them to this thread is disingenuous. Ned nitpicked every last argument made by anyone to systematically, psychopathically try to shoot them down. Any post made about Columbus Center would receive a Tolstoyan answer from Ned in short order. He also actively organized against Columbus Center, and it is possible that he may have helped to derail it, while it's clear that nobody in this forum is organizing against Fan Pier, nor would Tommy allow them to be successful in doing so were they to attempt it.

Unlike Ned, Rifleman has a beef that you can certainly argue is well-founded: one can absolutely make the case that Fan Pier is shaping up to be a mess of superblocks and cruddy architecture, resembling an office park both in its planning and in its architecture. For an area that has such incredible potential and could have been zoned to encourage any type of development (in accordance with FAA rules), one can argue that Fan Pier as it is sells the city short.

Moreover, calling attention to the city's eagerness to help Fallon realize this project while simultaneously doing whatever it can to stifle, e.g., Chiofaro, is necessary: The amount of arbitrary decisionmaking and the ability to exploit that grey area of zoning law to reward favorites and (probably) extract promises to "scratch Menino's back" in some other circumstance are disturbing and indications of a degree of corruption that may or may not even be legal. That is worrying -- not to mention incredibly brash in how publicly it all plays out -- in a way that "ultra-fine particulates," or whatever Ned crowed about, were not.

 

[TheRifleman]

^ agreed... we are startign to fall into the same pattern as all those other threads i stopped reading becasue people were just complaining ad nauseum about "ultra fine particulates!" and "nimbys want nothing to pass!". Time to add "Fan Pier consturction is corrupt!" to this list.

This is a message board about the Fan Pier Project. I'm just blogging my opinion with some facts to back up the project.

My opinion with some facts:
The architecture looks awful and the project is shaping into suburban office park funded by almost 100 Million of taxpayers funds.

For this development site the sky should have been the limit.

If you don't like my blogs I believe archboston has a ignore feature.

 

[Justin7]

For some reason I did not think this forum had an ignore feature. I apologize for adding to the noise by responding with more noise.

 

[Sicilian]

^Itchy

Well put. You hit the nail on the head that Fan Pier can be argued in that it "sells the city short."

If the outcome on Fan Pier was mindblowing -- as it could have been, it's less like I'd be constantly bringing up my peeves about the upzoning-for-profit marketplace and the endless stream of publicly funded sweeteners.

 

[TheRifleman]

Itchy,

Thanks for putting my thoughts in a more educated tone.

Great post.

I know I can get carried away. I get frustrated to see how things are playing out which is not in the favor of the taxpayers and the citizens of Boston.

 

[SeamusMcFly]

Riff -- you've got to clean the barrel sometimes there's a lot of fouling in there ---

Building a home for a major Bio/Pharma is not quite the same as puting up some sheetrock for a back office of a financial management company -- the internal infrastructure is massive -- take a look at the top of the newly renovated (600 something) Mem Drive (former FoMoCo model T factoy) -- there are aux power, aux cooling and lots of venting that has been added in a huge penthouse

such buildings also need more water, sewer and electrical service than a comparable sq ft office building -- they also need more loading docks Agree with 1,2, & 3 but the need for more loading docks is not really the case. They actually don't use as much water as you think unless there is major glasswashing facilities or any production. Researchers typically use very little water. Also, a bit more water needed for cooling, and some make-up water for additional chilled water loops, but those are closed systems so no real use of water.

So you can't take a partially empty office block and convert it to a lab without buying out the office leases and investing heavily in the building -- often including structural reinforcements Possibly true, but not relevant here as this is the intended use of this building. We're not retrofitting a lab into an existing office building. Which is a bitch when you do that.

The same is true with the conversion of unneeded offcice space to telecom or computing farms -- these require either extensive reconstruction (e.g. 185 Franklin -- Verizon) or preferably a clean-sheet design on an open prking lot (SPID) or brownfield (East Cambridge) or you move out to the suburbs and plow up some farm land or cut down some trees (e.g. Waltham, Hudson, Marlboro)

Just a few points of clarity.

 

[TheRifleman]

More fuel to add to the fire.....Taken from the Boston Herald
With $50M, Fan Pier becomes second I-Cubed grant recipientArticle

shirleykressel ? 0 0
Mayor Menino and Gov. Patrick have teamed up to defraud the taxpayers of the city and the state. This project doesn't even qualify for an I-cubed deal. It's not a blighted area; it's also getting a TIF which is not allowed; and most of all -- it's not hiring anywhere near the number of people needed to support a $50 million bond with their state income taxes (as if that's even a good thing to do). The number of new hires is likely to be about 200, with a vague mumble about another 300; it is not 1,800. So the state Office of Corporate Welfare is letting Vertex count all 1240 of the existing employees being moved to Boston from Cambridge as "retained jobs" to make their income taxes available for this boondoggle. The money to pay off this bond, which will actually total about $100 million after its 30 years of service, will be taxes diverted from the general fund, where they should be going like yours and mine, to pay for schools and transit and human services, and poured into developer (and Friend of Tom Menino) Joe Fallon's pockets. He can certainly afford to pay for it himself, especially in view of the tax waivers he's gotten for all his other seaport projects.

Fallon is also getting $12 million in that City of Boston TIF, and Vertex is getting $10 million from Patrick's Life Sciences fund. That's $120 million tax dollars, for one project. Hooray for free market capitalism!

On top of it, we taxpayers, city and state, will in fact be paying for Fallon's "infrastructure" -- public spaces that are "community benefits" promised in return for permission to build on public tidelands. A quadruple dip.

Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick can somehow afford this "investment" in "economic development" even as they cry poor and slash public services to the needy.

And it's only the tip of the corporate-welfare iceberg. See Liberty Mutual, JPMorganChase, Jurys Hotel, all the seaport buildings, all the city 121A's, Fidelity, Raytheon, $2.2 billion in state tax expenditures for businesses, etc.

There is plenty of money available, but NOT FOR YOU. Democrats, Republicans -- it's exactly the same

http://www.bostonherald.com/busines...rticleid=1375280&format=comments#CommentsArea

In the end Joe Fallon beat the taxpayers of Masschusetts for 120 Million dollars.

 

[Lurker]

^ agreed... we are startign to fall into the same pattern as all those other threads i stopped reading becasue people were just complaining ad nauseum about "ultra fine particulates!" and "nimbys want nothing to pass!". Time to add "Fan Pier consturction is corrupt!" to this list.

Unfortunately, because of the way city government is organized, any project which has the attention of the mayor is driven by politics and not economics, urban design, or architectural considerations. If one looks at development relatively off the mayor's radar, the development process, and evolution of the designs proposed, evolve far more normally.

 

[stellarfun]

What do you suppose Ms. Kressel had to say about her native city and state financing a football stadium for a professional sports franchise?

But I digress.

There's a big problem when the City Commissioner says there's no recourse for citizens when the government "monopoly" (!) does a bad job. He should not be working for the City if that's the way he runs his Department. If he needs Dan Biederman to give him "pioneering innovative management techniques" like overseeing his parks, he should be replaced by a civil servant who understand how to run a public department.

Does no one see anything wrong with handing over our public spaces to corporations? Do you really think the only purpose for the public realm is to provide entertainment and caramel latte shops? Do you not see that when corporations and wealthy real estate investors buy us our public realm, they will decide who is worthy to use it and how it may be used? The plutocracy controlling Central Park has blocked civic events because -- it's bad for the grass! (Although music concerts, apparently, are not bad for the grass.

Bryant Park is now a commercial mall, a rent-a-park, where a private group of businessmen generate huge amounts of money, and pay themselves handsomely to do so. If Benepe wanted to turn the park into a commercial venue and just make money, he could do it too -- and then the taxpayers who own the land would get the profits.

Public-private partnerships do not make the parks more public; they don't do anything the City can't do by itself -- except exclude people -- the "undesirables" (which could someday be -- yes, YOU), finding ways to do it without appearing to violate their civil rights.

We replace our arenas for democratic social space and civic activity with sanitized, privately policed zones at our peril. When we need to exercise our right to protest against our government, we'll have to do it in the streets, so as not to disturb the corporate sponsors, or the abutters' brunch. No, wait -- the streets will all be part of Beiderman-oid Business Improvement Districts, which will pay for the right to do to the streets what is being done to the parks. Maybe...we'll have to go to poor neighborhoods where no one cares what happens in the public realm, and hold our rallies in the midst of the trash and decay, where no one is listening.

 

[whighlander]

What do you suppose Ms. Kressel had to say about her native city and state financing a football stadium for a professional sports franchise?

But I digress.

stel -- Problem is that the publc doesn't seem to agree about what is public vs privatee anymore

You quoted

" Bryant Park is now a commercial mall, a rent-a-park, where a private group of businessmen generate huge amounts of money, and pay themselves handsomely to do so. If Benepe wanted to turn the park into a commercial venue and just make money, he could do it too -- and then the taxpayers who own the land would get the profits.

Public-private partnerships do not make the parks more public; they don't do anything the City can't do by itself -- except exclude people -- the "undesirables" (which could someday be -- yes, YOU), finding ways to do it without appearing to violate their civil rights. "

Today, we have occupyers squatiing in a privately funded and maintained park in NYC, while in Boston the ACLU is prepared to represent squatters whose tents are being searched by the Boston Police after heroin was found to be for sale on public property occupied without any permission.

Unfortunately, the acceppted distinction between public and private -- and the overall societal responsibility for preserving both has been shattered by the occupyers and the failure of our civic leaders to respond to the challenge

 

[Sicilian]

I think there's a time warp here.

I'm old enough to remember setting up chairs in a public park and the group playing acoustic music with a dozen musicians. You can't do that in any public/private park in Boston without a permit.

For 10 years, I set up a movie screen and showed movies to neighbors and friends. Try doing that in any private/public park without approval of the corporate overseer. It's so much trouble, and so over-curated, it's not worth doing. Some neighborhoods have figured out you either have to show family-friendly films (i.e. not Jaws) or you have to find a spot that is off the radar.

If you have your own group event approved, you'll need to spend $400 on an insurance certificate unless the private property owner decides to be generous.

You folks don't know what you're missing. Or what you're losing.

 

[TheRifleman]

Innovation, International Business
The Talent Zone: Vertex, The Innovation District and Boston
Print Posted by Devin Cole October 26, 2011 11:45 AM 2

By Cheryl Meyerson, Principal, New City Inc

The Innovation District in Boston is new and growing. Mayor Menino has supported its development to add to the world class medical and technology culture already prevalent in the Boston area. The arts, non-profits, green technology, restaurants, residential and start-ups are also calling the waterfront their home.

It is exciting to know that companies in Boston are thriving, retaining talent, tapping into our diverse college and university pool and expanding to budding neighborhoods like the Innovation District.

Lisa Anderson, Senior Director of Strategy Staffing for Vertex Pharmaceuticals and I recently talked about the changes in expansion and relocation the corporate headquarters is going through.

How many new candidates will you be hiring and where are you looking?

We have this past year, hired our first sales force and launched our first drug approved this past May. It’s been an exciting time here at Vertex. We have over 100 openings currently on our website and we have over 1300 employees in MA alone. Boston is a diverse, exciting place to live and work, with lots of different neighborhoods and cultures. With a large number of colleges and universities in a small area, we are able to find local talent with Bachelors and Master degrees on up to PhD and MD degrees. Although we are a scientifically based company we also hire folks with accounting, finance, IS/IT, marketing and market research, legal and HR backgrounds. Over the last 18 months, we have relocated 110 people to Vertex from all around the US and overseas. The majority of these relocating employees (62%) came from NJ, PA, CA, NY and CT.
Why does the Boston area stand apart as a place to work?

Boston is a smaller city, rich with history, and bursting with innovative ideas. There are a large number of start-ups formed from seed money from investors who fund an innovative scientific idea and build a company from it. That’s how Vertex started back in 1989. If you’re looking for cutting-edge scientific research, this area is a great place to start your career, advance your career and even finish out your career. Scientific companies are always hiring in this area.
Why should people want to move here?

•The amount of scientific knowledge in the Cambridge and Boston area – the number of different start-up biotech/pharma/biopharma companies
•Great state schools with scientific degree programs (UMass system)
•Communities with some fantastic school systems
•Historical significance of Boston as part of the birth and development of the US
•Cultural diversity and acceptance of same
•Close to the ocean, to Cape Cod, the mountains in Western Mass and ski country up north, the big cities (NYC) – all within a few hours driving distance
•Cambridge and Boston are becoming more and more ‘green’
Employees want to be able to make a move that is seamless, so that they can focus on the new job. We try to help make that transition as easy as possible.


When and why are you moving to the Innovation District?

Our new headquarters in the Innovation District is just now being built and we hope to start moving our employees there at the end of 2013. We needed to find space where we could house all of our employees in one area and we chose this area as an up and coming part of Boston with close proximity to highways, public transport and the airport.
Lisa exudes positive energy while talking about the culture of Vertex, its new direction, success and growth. Thank you Lisa, for sharing your thoughts on where Vertex is headed in Boston and around the world. Innovation and opportunity abound in the bean!

http://www.boston.com/business/blogs/global-business-hub/2011/10/the_inside_stor.html

 

[jass]

So, uh, how about construction pictures?

 

[Boston02124]

^today

 

[Boston02124]

some more dif. day