I just heard the news and came here expecting a chorus of lamentations, only to see that the vast majority of posters want to see it nuked into orbit. Interesting...
Having taken a moment to digest all this, I'll just say I fully recognize that this thing is 1) NOT everyone's cup of tea, 2) was birthed out of an era with horribly misguided notions of tEh fUTuRe, and 3) the best bit of it won't be going away just yet, so I can tell my heart to stop beating so damn fast.
But what I find myself lamenting first and foremost is that the thing(s) that will replace it, while almost certainly being better urbanistically, will have a 99.9999999% chance of being total architectural garbage. It'd be one thing if this were the 1980s or the Starchitect era and there was at least the POTENTIAL for something that actually tried to do well, a la Rowes Wharf, but the current development scene dictates that actual design merit is worth nothing to the bottom line and thus is completely irrelevant. Rowes Wharf may not be for everyone, but I think it's clear that someone somewhere gave at least half a damn.
Secondly, I think any discussions of redeveloping this site should include reconsidering the roads around it as a prerequisite. FK4, who apparently is the only member of this board that interacts with it on any regular basis, said this which I think bears repeating:
....the horrible experience of the roads themselves, all being many lanes too wide. And to here people arguing that replacing this one building, with what I absolutely know is going to be another thoughtless, architectural turd, is actually going to make that much difference — or that there are not actual alternatives to that one single plan that could make an equivalent, if not superior, difference — I do find that to be narrowminded.
Many years ago, I was a bike messenger zipping every which way through the city, and within the downtown area this zone in particular always stood out as a hostile shitshow to navigate. If we're going to discuss how this building is an abomination of urban planning and that it's time for it to go, then we need to be discussing these renewal-era roadways as well. Bowdoin, Staniford, New Chardon -- I'm looking squarely at you. At the very least, some traffic calming measures should be a part of the package deal.
Now having said that, I know the State is running the show and will probably bungle the process with the most hamfisted maneuvering possible, and that good architecture or road design will only get the lip service treatment at best, and it's for this exact reason that I have a lot of reluctance to seeing this news break. I personally love how this building looks (and I'm not even that gaga over brutalism as a whole), so to imagine some Seaport-style glass boxes standing on some Seaport Boulevard-style roads is a really hard pill to swallow. This area needs a holistic rethinking that I just know won't be met by this RFP.
Edit: I'm a bit confused over what heights and FAR is allowed here, in which case I'm not trying to set up a straw man by saying Seaport glass boxes are the only options here.
