Fan Pier Developments | Seaport

A garage of that size would need multiple entrances. For reference 500 Boylston St has 3 entrances/exits for its garage. This is not inherently a flaw, but it's what they then do with the street design that will make/break the project.

I haven't seen the Fan Pier plans, but separating the garage entrances onto 2 different streets also is not necessarily a problem. The aforementioned 500 Boylston has a garage entrance on Clarendon which is hidden reasonable well between Rebecca's cafe and Skipjacks and it has a well taken care of sidewalk and nice landscaping. Its green and urban at the same time and one doesn't really notice the parking entrance. It's the St James Ave side that is a total loss because it has the other 2 garage entrances plus the loading dock, wiping out most of the length of the street where the project is an epic fail.

Well, that and the architecture is abominable.
 
Can't buid a modern building of any size without a parking garage and a loading dock -- both of those need driveways, ramps and garage doors -- that means you need to make a curb cut somewhare

Remember -- Not all streets are equal some a show and some are utility
Just as the sides, front and back of a suburban house have different levels of decoration and have different functions -- so too do the sides of a large building -- that's why the houses in the BackBay had alleys to back-up against for deliveries and garbage, etc.
 
Whighlander, your "utility streets" sound a lot like alleys. Fan Pier was a blank slate, and if the buildings required alleys they should have laid some out...and in a way that minimized their impact. This is just deliberately bad planning, all in the name of maximizing a buck.

The block-filling nature of these buildings means that at least one full side will be devoted entirely to garage entrances, loading docks and other utility uses -- like the north side of One Marina Park Dr.

Personally, I believe there are no throwaway blocks. Every block matters. Each shitty block in Boston diminishes the city by that much. Accrue enough shitty blocks and you've got a shitty city.
 
briv said:
Whighlander, your "utility streets" sound a lot like alleys. Fan Pier was a blank slate, and if the buildings required alleys they should have laid some out...and in a way that minimized their impact. This is just deliberately bad planning, all in the name of maximizing a buck.

The block-filling nature of these buildings means that at least one full side will be devoted entirely to garage entrances, loading docks and other utility uses -- like the north side of One Marina Park Dr.

Personally, I believe there are no throwaway blocks. Every block matters. Each shitty block in Boston diminishes the city by that much. Accrue enough shitty blocks and you've got a shitty city.
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What buildings do you personally think do this well? (Worldwide examples)

I just think you have very unrealistic (idealistic) expectations.
 
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datadyne007 said:
What buildings do you personally think do this well? (Worldwide examples)

I just think you have very unrealistic (idealistic) expectations.
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You can always burry all of those things underground and at some remote place you can have a big underground street with an entrance to each buiding

for example there could have been an underground exit from I-93/I-90 that fed into the loading docs and such of the BCEC

I once did some work down in Stamford CT where a Sheraton Hotel and some office buildings next to I-95 and the mainline NE Coridor rail ROW were on opposite sides of a "street inside the development" all the buildings shared an underground garage and loading doc level that was dug-into the side of a hill with a driveway off the "real street"

On good days you just strolled across the mostly pedestrian (hotel entrance lobby with valet parking) street to the hotel restaurant or for a room at night

On lousy rainy / snowy days you just ducked into the garage level and you could cross without needing a parka or an umbrella -- it was unheated but dry and not windy
 
briv said:
Whighlander, your "utility streets" sound a lot like alleys. Fan Pier was a blank slate, and if the buildings required alleys they should have laid some out...and in a way that minimized their impact. This is just deliberately bad planning, all in the name of maximizing a buck.

The block-filling nature of these buildings means that at least one full side will be devoted entirely to garage entrances, loading docks and other utility uses -- like the north side of One Marina Park Dr.

Personally, I believe there are no throwaway blocks. Every block matters. Each shitty block in Boston diminishes the city by that much. Accrue enough shitty blocks and you've got a shitty city.
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But the alleys in the Back Bay are not well suited for some of these functions because they are too narrow. Make them wide enough, and they become streets. The proper illustration of this concept is Providence Street behind the Park Square building.

Also, not for nothing, but how is crossing an alley a superior pedestrian experience to crossing a driveway?
 
HenryAlan said:
Also, not for nothing, but how is crossing an alley a superior pedestrian experience to crossing a driveway?
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A pedestrian can cut through an alleyway, whereas a driveway acts the same as a wall.
 
statler said:
A pedestrian can cut through an alleyway, whereas a driveway acts the same as a wall.
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HUH?

The ony aspect a driveway and a wall have in common is when the driveway is occupied by a bus or a truck that you canna see ova

generally driveways act like sidewalks i.e. you just stroll across them

occasionally they act like streets i.e. you stop and wait then cross

I suppose that if you happen upon a driveway at the beginning of rush hour -- well you might have to wait for a minute or two to find a convenient gap
 
If you are walking past an ally and want to get to the other side of the block, you can cut through. Not so with a driveway.
 
statler said:
If you are walking past an ally and want to get to the other side of the block, you can cut through. Not so with a driveway.
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I'm not seeing too much virtue in this line of thought. If you are walking by a parking lot and want to get to the other side of the block, you can cut through. Not so with a building. Are you advocating that alleys are important open or civic space? Because to me, they are really just the backside of the building, often a dangerous or unsavory backside at that. And they no longer effectively serve the original purpose, either, so I don't see why they should be part of a newly built environment.
 
statler said:
If you are walking past an ally and want to get to the other side of the block, you can cut through. Not so with a driveway.
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But that's the building not the driveway -- there you might have a point if in addition to the driveway all that you face is a blank wall.

On the other hand if the building has an open entrance in the wall where the driveway is located then in principle you could cut through the building lobby

My favaorite is the fact that you can walk inside all the way from the DTX platform (well the Park street Platorm if you want to count the link between Park Green Line and DTX Orange Line) to the lobby of the Hyatt Regency -- however while entirely through publicly accessible spaces the route does require a bit of explorer's pluck and luck

I think that with the excetption of the obvious gerbil tubes across Huntington, or the obvious Links between the Logan Terminals that the DTX subteraneon passage is the longest weather protected route in Boston
 
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. To me, alleyways tend to be some of more interesting and useful spaces in a city.
 
The urbanistic benefit of an alley rather than driveways and loading docks off an actual street is that the alley splits the footprint and encourages more varied architecture and likely more varied uses as well, in addition to more street-level entrances. While true that Back Bay alleys might be too narrow for today's loading and parking purposes, who says that driveays and loading docks cannot come off the alley itself? The alley doesn't need to serve those purposes directly, it only needs to channel cars/trucks towards those building features. While not many pedestrians may cut down the alley, the buildings on either side of it are more likely to be different, hence a better pedestrian experience at street level.
 
statler said:
We'll have to agree to disagree on this one. To me, alleyways tend to be some of more interesting and useful spaces in a city.
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I actually do like Alleys, I think they can be very interesting, just pointing out that they aren't necessarily crucial to a successful neighborhood (Manhattan being the most obvious example). And I would miss them if they disappeared from the Back Bay. I just don't see a lot of reason for them in the Seaport, built on a different scale in a different era.

It may not turn out this way, but if the Seaport ends up with buildings that have interesting street features on three sides and service features on the fourth, we'd have something pretty decent.
 
HenryAlan said:
I actually do like Alleys, I think they can be very interesting, just pointing out that they aren't necessarily crucial to a successful neighborhood (Manhattan being the most obvious example). And I would miss them if they disappeared from the Back Bay. I just don't see a lot of reason for them in the Seaport, built on a different scale in a different era.

It may not turn out this way, but if the Seaport ends up with buildings that have interesting street features on three sides and service features on the fourth, we'd have something pretty decent.
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There are suburban developemnts in DFW (e.g. one where my sister-in-law lived in Plano) where all of the houses in the development (order of hundreds of houses) faced a street -- but all of the driveways opened onto an alley where the trash collection occured, mail boxes were located and all delvery / service trucks had to park

so you had [street] -- house -- alley --- house --- [street] -- house -- alley -- house --- [street] repeating as a pattern for several blocks with the crossing streets runnning along the sides of houses (no alleys and no frontage)
 
datadyne007 said:
What buildings do you personally think do this well? (Worldwide examples)

I just think you have very unrealistic (idealistic) expectations.
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Comparable buildings would be all of those built on the north side of Boylston in the last 30 years which utilize the alley between Boylston and Newbury this way.

There's nothing "unrealistic (idealistic)" about this sort of orientation. There are many existing examples like it all over the city.

Also, I think another benefit of alleys over dead streets -- aside from not creating dead streets -- is that alleys preserve the cohesiveness of the neighborhood. Blank walls, garage entrances, curb cuts, etc. -- things that disrupt the unity of the street and do not engage the pedestrian -- are kept out of the pedestrian zone, leaving the edges for pedestrian uses. The Back Bay is probably the perfect local model of this.
 
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briv said:
Comparable buildings would be all of those built on the north side of Boylston in the last 30 years which utilize the alley between Boylston and Newbury this way.

There's nothing "unrealistic (idealistic)" about this sort of orientation. There are many existing examples like it all over the city.

Also, I think another benefit of alleys over dead streets -- aside from not creating dead streets -- is that alleys preserve the cohesiveness of the neighborhood. Blank walls, garage entrances, curb cuts, etc. -- things that disrupt the unity of the street and do not engage the pedestrian -- are kept out of the pedestrian zone, leaving the edges for pedestrian uses. The Back Bay is probably the perfect local model of this.
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And dark alleys are great for walking tours on and around Halloween
 
Construction workers trapped and injured or dead at Vertex site. Rescue going on now.
 
"Response at 1:41 pm to construction site at 50 Northern Ave in South Boston for 3 injured workers below grade at the site."

"Using crane and man-cage to remove injured workers one at a time. EMS treating them. Appear to be leg and arm injuries."

@UniversalHub
 
Two pinned under rebar, 1 pinned on top.

According to WHDH right now.
 
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