Hurley Building Redevelopment | 19 Staniford St | West End

#bancars said:
Somehow this thread turned into a Toronto-bashing festival?
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Wait? There’s a Toronto-bashing festival? Why am I being told about this now?

Toronto Likes: Rush, Q107

Toronto Dislikes: Leafs, Jays, Raptors, and their brand of gentrification
 
I personally think a taller building could work fine at this location. The problem on Cambridge St. is that you have Beacon Hill on one side of a street that is too wide, and West End urban renewal garbage on the other. There is already a clash of styles, so why not add a tower to the mix?
 
HenryAlan said:
I personally think a taller building could work fine at this location. The problem on Cambridge St. is that you have Beacon Hill on one side of a street that is too wide, and West End urban renewal garbage on the other. There is already a clash of styles, so why not add a tower to the mix?
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I agree, especially if you gradually scale building heights up as you move away from Cambridge St. (which is actually the smallest street frontage on the site). Height here isn't entirely unprecedented. The Hurley Building meets the Lindemann almost directly across Staniford St. from one of the Longfellow Place twins (nearly 400ft). That's nearly 600 feet from the lot's Cambridge St. frontage. One Congress is also rising a stones throw away from this site as well. Additionally, this sits diagonally across the street from 100 Cambridge and the nearby 400 ft. McCormack Building is much closer and connected to the existing historic urban fabric of Beacon Hill. If the plan broke this super block into Boston-sized blocks, a taller building built a block or two off of Cambridge would feel even further removed from Beacon Hill.
 
I think a lot of folks have forgotten the neighborhood already fought this war and won wrt to the Congress Street garage. The original plans were chopped down to their current heights. The new State Street tower is the pinnacle, everything else is a stepping stone towards that height. So 400ft here makes a ton of sense from a practical point of view of getting this through planning without starting a small war.
 
meddlepal said:
I think a lot of folks have forgotten the neighborhood already fought this war and won wrt to the Congress Street garage. The original plans were chopped down to their current heights. The new State Street tower is the pinnacle, everything else is a stepping stone towards that height. So 400ft here makes a ton of sense from a practical point of view of getting this through planning without starting a small war.
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Thankfully, starting a small war is what Bostonians do best!

More seriously, units on Beacon Hill are only 34% owner-occupied. I wonder how many of the people living in the neighborhood during the planning for One Congress are still living there? The dissenters must also be limited to North Slope residents, as I can't imagine someone living on Lime Street would care about a skyscraper on Cambridge.
 
Blackbird said:
can't imagine someone living on Lime Street would care about a skyscraper on Cambridge.
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Neighborhoods tend to have unity... you never know when your side is going to be going up against some existential threat.
 
No demolishing the Hurley.

As state officials move to redevelop the Hurley site at the edge of the West End and Government Center, they are making it clear that total demolition is unlikely.
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But because of its architectural significance, the Massachusetts Historical Commission has told the Baker administration that the Hurley building should be retained as the site gets redeveloped.

It’s not as if Governor Charlie Baker’s Division of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance started out certain that the place should be bulldozed, even if it seemed that way to some. However, a full demolition was once viewed as a more tenable option by the administration than it is today. The commercial real estate market, currently in a bit of an upheaval due to the pandemic, will have much to say about what the site looks like. DCAMM officials now say they no longer believe full demolition is a likely option. In its draft proposal, DCAMM emphasizes pursuing an “adaptive reuse approach that respects the significance of the site while allowing for much-needed improvements.”
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www.bostonglobe.com

State officials make it clear: Redevelopment shouldn’t lead to total demolition of Hurley building - The Boston Globe

Love it or hate it, Boston City Hall has been saved from the wrecking ball. Now, its younger concrete cousin, the Charles F. Hurley Building, is poised for a similar rescue.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
 
stellarfun said:
No demolishing the Hurley.


www.bostonglobe.com

State officials make it clear: Redevelopment shouldn’t lead to total demolition of Hurley building - The Boston Globe

Love it or hate it, Boston City Hall has been saved from the wrecking ball. Now, its younger concrete cousin, the Charles F. Hurley Building, is poised for a similar rescue.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com
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The language is a little vague - “adaptive reuse approach that respects the significance of the site while allowing for much-needed improvements.” Between the Lindeman, the Brooke, and the section of the plaza that's not part of the development plan, there's not much open space to build on. The appeal to developers will likely hinge on just how much they can "adapt" the existing building, and that's not clear. In order for this to be a fruitful endeavor for a developer, I'd worry that the "adaptive reuse" of the Hurley would result in some sort of Frankenstein's monster.
 
RFP's go out Q1 2021, and a developer will be selected by the end of next year.

A $225 million+ sunk cost before you can even start your own new construction is quite a hefty price tag to attract any developer, especially now.

Also notes this site is zoned for 8.0 to 10.0 FAR and is currently 2.2
 
Here's the dilemma: This whole block should never have been urban renewaled to begin with. What was built does have architectural merit from a pure artistic standpoint, but from a "makes the city better" standpoint, the entire thing is a giant fail. The question then is do you preserve something that shouldn't really exist, even if it has architectural merit? Do we really have to lock in mistakes from the past just because we don't want to forget them?
 
CSTH said:
Just build the tower from the original plan
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Unfortunately, they built the Brooke Courthouse at the site of the original tower. Now any building would need to be smooshed into the site, not to mention that the Blue Line turn-around tunnel is right in that area.
 
Suffolk 83 said:
Well of course theyre going to say that. Doesnt mean the state/city needs to listen right?
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cden4 nailed what makes this particularly perverse. The site was cleared of its urban fabric and Rudolph's site plan was explicitly anti-urban. A brutalist building can't be part of the urban fabric any more than a cat can compete in a dog show.
 
cden4 said:
Here's the dilemma: This whole block should never have been urban renewaled to begin with. What was built does have architectural merit from a pure artistic standpoint, but from a "makes the city better" standpoint, the entire thing is a giant fail. The question then is do you preserve something that shouldn't really exist, even if it has architectural merit? Do we really have to lock in mistakes from the past just because we don't want to forget them?
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No, and really, City Hall is basically the same colossal monument to the mistakes of the past and is literally a block away. The brutalism fetishists really need to be told to choose one and let the city move on.
 
Equilibria said:
cden4 nailed what makes this particularly perverse. The site was cleared of its urban fabric and Rudolph's site plan was explicitly anti-urban. A brutalist building can't be part of the urban fabric any more than a cat can compete in a dog show.
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What is explicitly anti-urban about it?
 
stefal said:
A $225 million+ sunk cost before you can even start your own new construction
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This humongous sunk cost signals that we will either get something pretty sizable here or nothing at all. Gonna take a lot of new square footage to pay for renovating/incorporating this.
 
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