Fenway Corners (Red Sox) | 1 Jersey Street | Fenway

I really want the height of this building lowered. I know people will think I am just being a nostalgic NIMBY, but I really worry that Fenway Sports Group is losing sight of what makes the ballpark and surroundings unique. I personally don't even like the way the top of the music hall stretches over the top of the right field bleachers. Fenway was always cool because it was small and intimate, but also grand--not really being able to see other buildings in the immediate vicinity, but seeing the larger buildings in the distance. Having the ballpark dwarfed by larger buildings around it, especially newer ones in Boston that for the most part leave me personally unimpressed, reminds me of my visit to Wrigley Field a few years ago when I felt the Cubs’ new development made the park seem much more gimmicky and inauthentic. I know I’ll get roasted here, but I just wanted to share.
 
bagel4boston said:
I really want the height of this building lowered. I know people will think I am just being a nostalgic NIMBY, but I really worry that Fenway Sports Group is losing sight of what makes the ballpark and surroundings unique. I personally don't even like the way the top of the music hall stretches over the top of the right field bleachers. Fenway was always cool because it was small and intimate, but also grand--not really being able to see other buildings in the immediate vicinity, but seeing the larger buildings in the distance. Having the ballpark dwarfed by larger buildings around it, especially newer ones in Boston that for the most part leave me personally unimpressed, reminds me of my visit to Wrigley Field a few years ago when I felt the Cubs’ new development made the park seem much more gimmicky and inauthentic. I know I’ll get roasted here, but I just wanted to share.
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Exactly. The relative openness of Fenway is essential to its identity. Any towering structure looming over the wall, regardless of quality, will make people in the ballpark feel like they are sitting in a pit.
 
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NHMaples said:
Exactly. The relative openness of Fenway is essential to its identity. Any towering structure looming over the wall, regardless of quality, will make people in the ballpark feel like they are sitting in a pit.
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In this specific case, I'd say the new building is their prerogative. They own the ballpark and they're proposing the new building. Would be different if some other party was trying make the change. The entire existence and experience of the park is within the their control. Many aspects could change at any time, including just getting rid of the green monster if they wanted to. Understand that we all have opinions, but this seems different from the circumstances of other proposals. It's likely they'll only care about whether the new building will cost them revenue from the park, which is probably very unlikely, even if some feel the park is smaller.
 
NHMaples said:
The relative openness of Fenway is essential to its identity. Any towering structure looming over the wall, regardless of quality, will make people in the ballpark feel like they are sitting in a pit.
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It's not open at all. Fenway is one of the most enclosed parks in baseball, and it is part of why it feels so intimate. This new building won't change that at all. Now maybe there is an argument to be made about how it will make the monster look and feel, but I'm pretty sure it will still seem like the really high wall that it is, and remain just as unique a feature.
 
HenryAlan said:
It's not open at all. Fenway is one of the most enclosed parks in baseball, and it is part of why it feels so intimate. This new building won't change that at all. Now maybe there is an argument to be made about how it will make the monster look and feel, but I'm pretty sure it will still seem like the really high wall that it is, and remain just as unique a feature.
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I agree the park has a very cozy feeling, but consider what the view beyond left field provides. Lets say I divided two pieces of paper into four squares. On the first piece I colored the upper right portion in with a dark colored chalk and on the second piece I colored the same upper portion with a light blue chalk. Which piece would be more relaxing to look at? Let's say I visit an intimate little pub with a picture window providing the patrons with a view of the ocean, and later I visit a similar bar with the same sized picture window revealing another building beyond the alley. Both places can be intimate, but the first is likely too feel less confining and more open.

Currently, above the wall and seating, there is negative space, devoid of any prominent object. The new building is going to change the feeling. Architecture doesn't sit in space; it creates it. In my opinion, the addition of a building that does anything more than humbly peak over the wall will not be a plus for the park.
 
sm89 said:
In this specific case, I'd say the new building is their prerogative. They own the ballpark and they're proposing the new building. Would be different if some other party was trying make the change. The entire existence and experience of the park is within the their control. Many aspects could change at any time, including just getting rid of the green monster if they wanted to. Understand that we all have opinions, but this seems different from the circumstances of other proposals. It's likely they'll only care about whether the new building will cost them revenue from the park, which is probably very unlikely, even if some feel the park is smaller.
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I'm not sure how I fell about the building either way, but this attitude sucks. FSG, like every other ownership group in Red Sox history, will be gone soon. The Red Sox -- and the fans who make the team what it is -- will not. Moreover, baseball teams are essentially quasi-public institutions, particularly when you consider the fact that the entire industry is effectively publicly subsidized in the form of tax-payer funded ballparks and the federally-granted anti-trust exemption. "These people are richer than us so they get to do what they want to an institution that millions of people care about and will outlive their memory" is an absolutely garbage take.
 
NHMaples said:
Currently, above the wall and seating, there is negative space, devoid of any prominent object. The new building is going to change the feeling. Architecture doesn't sit in space; it creates it. In my opinion, the addition of a building that does anything more than humbly peak over the wall will not be a plus for the park.
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I appreciate this point of view, and I think your illustration with the two sheets of paper is a useful way to think about it. But I don't see what is above the wall as void space at all, because you can see some of the buildings in Kenmore Square. And if we take a more expansive view, beyond that of somebody sitting in the right field bleachers, I see this building as serving a much larger purpose, in helping to repair the damage done to Landsdowne by the Pike. I think of Fenway as a piece of a larger neighborhood, and the proposed building improves the larger neighborhood. Even if it does in some small way detract from the baseball experience (which I don't think it will), if it makes the neighborhood better, that's a win.
 
BronsonShore said:
I'm not sure how I fell about the building either way, but this attitude sucks. FSG, like every other ownership group in Red Sox history, will be gone soon. The Red Sox -- and the fans who make the team what it is -- will not. Moreover, baseball teams are essentially quasi-public institutions, particularly when you consider the fact that the entire industry is effectively publicly subsidized in the form of tax-payer funded ballparks and the federally-granted anti-trust exemption. "These people are richer than us so they get to do what they want to an institution that millions of people care about and will outlive their memory" is an absolutely garbage take.
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Quasi-public institution and property are completely separate things. Your conflation of them here is, in my estimation, also a garbage take. Also, what proof do you have that FSG "will be gone soon"? For that matter, what proof do you have that The Red Sox "will not"? There is no guarantee that any business stays permanently popular and competitive enough to survive, even with the notable advantage that comes with the anti-trust exemption. Baseball is as subject to the same brutal market forces that have rendered innumerable other industries superfluous and obsolete.
 
DBM said:
Also, what proof do you have that FSG "will be gone soon"? For that matter, what proof do you have that The Red Sox "will not"?
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I have the evidence of common freaking sense: John Henry is a 75-year-old human being, and human beings die ; The Red Sox are a 124-year-old institution who do not have to worry about things like heart disease.
 
Nobody had a problem with the B&O Warehouse looming over the new Camden Yards (1992) in Baltimore. In fact, it was celebrated.
(Photo from Wikipedia)
 

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Are there any renders of what this will look like from inside the park? That seems to be missing here. I can't really get much of a sense from what I have seen yet.

I agree with those expressing concern that hemming in Fenway visually is very likely to make it feel cramped. It may technically be "a pit" now, but that says nothing about the overall spatial impact on the person inside, whose vantage at present is largely unobstructed when looking over the top of the park in most directions.

In any case, it is a treasure of the city (and I dont even care much about baseball), so there is certainly no question that decisions impacting the feel of the park ought to proceed thoughtfully. Maybe slightly more thoughtfully than the brain trust that led to the destruction of those beautiful old buildings in Kenmore and replaced them with that hideous WHOOP that you unfortunately can't avoid from Fenway now.
 
FK4 said:
Maybe slightly more thoughtfully than the brain trust that led to the destruction of those beautiful old buildings in Kenmore and replaced them with that hideous WHOOP that you unfortunately can't avoid from Fenway now.
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I'm waiting for a home run baseball from Fenway to go crashing through a WHOOP building window.
 
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SirNirch said:
Same, I don't understand the love for a giant sign with an oil company logo on it.
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Is it that hard to understand? It's distinctive and the LED animations are really cool. People all over New England grow up seeing it in the background of Sox games, and then when they go to Fenway for the first time, it's like WOW we're actually here. It's a placemaker. The fact that it's an oil company is entirely tangential. If the sign had said "WOMBO" since 1965 it'd be just as nostalgic.

Only speaking for myself now, I grew up seeing that sign on TV, and I love to see it in person when I go to games or flashing in the distance. If they removed the CITGO part and kept the animated triangle I'd be just as happy. But if they took it down entirely it'd feel like a huge loss.
 
kdmc said:
Is it that hard to understand? It's distinctive and the LED animations are really cool. People all over New England grow up seeing it in the background of Sox games, and then when they go to Fenway for the first time, it's like WOW we're actually here. It's a placemaker. The fact that it's an oil company is entirely tangential. If the sign had said "WOMBO" since 1965 it'd be just as nostalgic.

Only speaking for myself now, I grew up seeing that sign on TV, and I love to see it in person when I go to games or flashing in the distance. If they removed the CITGO part and kept the animated triangle I'd be just as happy. But if they took it down entirely it'd feel like a huge loss.
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I just don't have a huge love for symbols and logos, but I get what you're saying about it. I did think about that, but we're all different and have different opinions on things.
 
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kdmc said:
The fact that it's an oil company is entirely tangential.
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Alright, I'm going to bite, given how so far I don't think anyone has pointed out the blindly obvious here: It's bad enough it's an oil company, in terms of the tens of millions of deaths the industry will have on its hands due to fossil fuel-driven climate change. But it's not just any oil company; it's the oil company that, for the past two decades, has propped-up one of the most brutal governments on earth.

From a moral standpoint, I'd argue the ongoing display of the Citgo sign is quite reprehensible, and only just slightly less repugnant than if, say, in 1942, a giant billboard advertising Krupp stood over Fenway. But, hey, "tradition" and "iconic," right?
 
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