GrandMarc Residence Hall (YMCA) @ Northeastern U | 291 St. Botolph Street | Fenway

Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

^ ooooooh... agreed.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

Why do posters insist that the ENTIRE YMCA complex is to be demolished despite repeated postings that it is only the rear gym section? The rest of the complex will be preserved. It is not even going to be a facadectomy.

Maybe Northeastern is just a convenient demon.

Don't let ever let facts get in the way of the narrative.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

Ablarc, again ONLY THE GYM is being torn down. and the "back alley" there is far from a grand boulevard.
I knew that, for goodness' sake. I was replying to porter's question, which seemed to be asking what was the value of the Huntington side.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

Why do posters insist that the ENTIRE YMCA complex is to be demolished despite repeated postings that it is only the rear gym section?

Who's saying that here? Certainly not me. All I've said is that since over 1/3 of the YMCA's members object to the current plan, it needs to be reworked before it proceeds.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

Who's saying that here? Certainly not me. All I've said is that since over 1/3 of the YMCA's members object to the current plan, it needs to be reworked before it proceeds.

One third is not a majority. So two thirds of Y members support the Northeastern plan or don't care.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

Who's saying that here? Certainly not me. All I've said is that since over 1/3 of the YMCA's members object to the current plan, it needs to be reworked before it proceeds.

First of all, is it even possible for it to be reworked? Let's look at the fact here:

The YMCA is out of money so they had to sell part of the building.

The gym members do not spend enough to keep and maintain the gym.

Seeing how the Y doesn't even have enough money to save its current gym, what are the chances that they can even construct a new replacement gym for the members?

The only other option would be that NEU construct a new gym somewhere else for them but why would they? They are not the one responsible for building a replacement gym for the Y especially when they can't pay to buy the whole wing themselves and are planning to pay off Phoenix in the coming years. If the Y wanted to go with a plan like this, they should have gave the gym for free and then NEU spends the money saved on building a new gym. But the Y needs money so that doesn't work.

Conclusion: It's not re-workable.

I also apologize to ablarc for mis reading your post.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

Here's an idea. Tear the gym down and open up time for YMCA members to use the nearby Cabot or Marino Centers, a chance for Northeastern to give back to the community. The gym is in no way worth keeping, and would do no harm to the neighborhood if it were removed since it is located on a back street and has no facade. If it is true that only 1/3 of members oppose its demolition, then it should very well be demolished. Hundreds of students would benefit from the tower being built as opposed to only a few dozen who would be harmed from it. As for the front facade of the YMCA being damaged by a highrise looming over it, I don't think that it would cause as much of a problem as it is made out. All the things that ablarc described would remain untouched for the building.

And yes, I would highly relish Zaha Hadid gracing Boston with her talent.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

a chance for Northeastern to give back to the community

Northeastern owes the community nothing. If anything they have made the area safer and the community owes them.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

I didn't mean to imply they did lol, but it's good PR to be able to say that you give back to the community.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

"Giving back" is a Marxist slogan to imply that all riches were stolen somehow from the poor.

It's the ultimate in smug entitlement shakedown looter & moocher phrase:
"They need to give back to the community!" The same community which never contributed anything except a welfare tab and never had anything worth taking in the first place.

Zaha Hadid's work is awful and no one will remember her in 20 years, when all her stuff has aged badly and continued to function abysmally as spaces.

I also doubt a university's gym facilities could absorb an extra 2,700 users on a whim. Although in this case it's the YMCA's decision to not provide temporary facilities to its members, despite plans to sell the Huntington location for years, makes the whole situation the Y's problem and not NEU's.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

"Giving back" is a Marxist slogan to imply that all riches were stolen somehow from the poor.

You must be fun during the holidays.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

I didn't mean to imply they did lol, but it's good PR to be able to say that you give back to the community.

Northeastern is already trying to create good PR, by fulfilling the promise of moving more students on campus and giving the neighborhood back to the community. Of course, there's no such thing as enough for these folks.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

You must be fun during the holidays.

Don't knock me until you've tried my eggnog!

Actually the roughly translated phrase probably goes back to Pyotr Lavrov's writings. Since serfs actually did all the labor in the Russian Empire at the time, any profit really did come from the efforts of the poor. (Though poor is an understatement as the serfs were still slaves at that point.) So while there may be a historical context for such a statement as being factual, it hardly makes any sense in a modern nation; particularly when it's made by a population not contributing to the tax base while collecting welfare.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

There is literally no winning on this issue

To put more students on campus and out of off campus housing is to create more room for them. To create more room for them is either to (a) expand outward (boo - that was my gym) and/or (b) to expand upward (boo - now there's a shadow on my window every sunny June 19th at 7:48pm).

As has already been mentioned, not very long ago this area was crime ridden. When I entered my freshman year at NU in 2004, I was told by an NU alum and uncle to watch out for myself because he personally witnessed two gang-related shootings on campus - one of which he was forced to hide underneath a car and was too scared to leave for fear of his life until morning. I felt very safe on campus my entire time there - perhaps thanks to the BPD headquarters, perhaps thanks to NUPD, or likely a combination of the two - but I still had an acquaintance shot to death on Mission Hill (she was good friends with some of my groomsmen at my wedding - I was only at large group dinners with her).

Anywho, I'm way off topic now. I need to get back to work :)
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

We should acknowledge that we are not necessarily talking about hypocrisy among residents, but the fact that each of the two banners ("Loosen Students' Stranglehold Over Our Neighborhood" and "Shadows...ARGHH") are lofted by different groups of residents. In fact, the anti-shadow contingent may not even be resident in Fenway but part of a vast light-wing conspiracy that circulates throughout Boston, confronting shade wherever they find it. I'm a resident and participate in various local groups and no one I know is talking about the proposed dorm being too tall. I'm sure there are a vocal few, but the bulk of resistance does not seem to be home-grown ('home' meaning 'neighborhood').
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

Things I've learned from this thread:

1) Jesus was a Marxist
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

Things I've learned from this thread:

1) Jesus was a Marxist

Actually no, but the radical intelligentsia used that argument in order to try to influence highly devout peasants into a revolution.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

.....a vast light-wing conspiracy that circulates throughout Boston, confronting shade wherever they find it.

LOVE IT!!!!
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

So while there may be a historical context for such a statement as being factual, it hardly makes any sense in a modern nation;

The problem is that you misinterpret the Marxist statement "profits are explained by the exploitation of labor under capitalism" as "profits are explained by the fact that the rich steal from the poor".

The former doesn't imply the latter in any meaningful sense. "Exploit" is a technical term that depends on the labor theory of value (courtesy of Adam Smith). It just means that a worker can purchase less goods (considered as embodied labor) with his wage than the amount of labor he expended to earn that wage. By itself, exploitation doesn't carry any normative force, so it's unfair to characterize the Marxist position as a complaint about the rich "stealing" from the poor.
 
Re: YMCA/ Northeastern Dorm (formerly GrandMarc at St. Botolph)

Lavrov wasn't quoting Marx.

There were a lot of writers in the mid 1800s commenting on the use of poor laborers or outright slaves, i.e. serfs, which weren't benefiting in any way from their labor while others were. Property rights are a big deal, especially to allowing the poor to actually generate capital to become rich. The increasing realization of that in Europe during that time period led to various theories on how society could best benefit from the allocation or property and the the division of labor.

The Labor Theory of Value has lots of issues which I don't want to spend hours writing a lengthy screed about.
 

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