The Constellation Center lot is still a wasteland in that rendering. Hilarious.
let's at least make it into a park if nothing is ever going to get built there.
There is already more than enough open space in Kendall Square. Volpe has been designed as yet another superblocks in a park, not a single continuous street wall anywhere and no 2 buildings connect. One of the most valuable neighborhoods in the country and 25% of if is mandatory grass! WTF? The buffer zone around the new transpo center with one additional small park would have been plenty of open space. 2 more high rise towers (preferably residential) could easily be fit in. In spite of a 500 footer (maybe) this is another North Point density failure.
I think this approval is an interesting example of both the good and the bad when it comes to City bureaucracy.
On the one hand: way too much open space. I agree, there should be more residential buildings.
On the other hand: holding out approval for more pot-sweetening got them more affordable housing, which MIT could plainly afford to give.
^^Capitalism has a way of fixing stuff.
Capitalism is why it's a gravel lot. The owner has sat on the land for twenty years and not done anything with it besides talk.
The site returns to the tax rolls as of Jan. 1; an assessment in spring will attach a price tag for the valuable Kendall Square property for the first time since the 1990s.
Land Taxes, particularly near transit to pay for transit would be a great way to discourage capitalists from keeping prime land idle (see also the back lots of Central Square)Capitalism is why it's a gravel lot. The owner has sat on the land for twenty years and not done anything with it besides talk.
Yes, it's a 380' tower with a 120' spire. You gotta start somewhere, i guess.
(i guess).
i very much doubt an occupied floor rises much higher than 380' in my lifetime. There probably should have been something ungraciously tall in Cambridge 10 years ago.
Cambridge is going to wake up some day and be rich and powerful. It would follow that ordinary land owners having felt they've hit the lottery will cash out, for endless more 260~280' highrises.
For a sense of scale, the JHT look-a-like is the 400 ft MXD residential tower. It is a weird angle, but I would bet this render depicts the big one at 500 feet to the roof. It looks much more than 100 feet taller than the Broad.
Now that the City Council has approved the zoning for the site, the next step for the Volpe project will be formulation of a planned unit development, or PUD, for the parcel. The PUD will further define the buildings, uses, and spaces for the overall proposal.
This sounds reasonable but I think the tower falls in the 500' FAA zone. I'm not sure what kind of leeway there is for a spire.
Unfortunately, the 1 parcel that could go up to 1000' (and the only one that can break the 500' barrier) appears to be slated for a park. (the upper left part of the site in the aerial)
^ I don't think we're there yet. The city approved all of the zoning changes MIT requested. They've committed to square footages for specific uses (see article above), and they state they plan for a 500' residential tower to be among the buildings...but the renders we're seeing are just the massing study in support of the zoning change request.
The article states:
So I think you're going to have to stay tuned...
http://www.cambridgeday.com/2017/10...ted-council-oks-zoning-for-mits-volpe-center/
Just to clairfy the time frame here, Volpe construction must happen first and is currently scheduled for 2019-2021. So everything else would logically be after that, although conceivably construction could begin on other buildings that don't occupy the current tower's footprint...
As old Volpe will not be closing while new Volpe is being constructed, parking for Volpe employees would need to be maintained.
It'll never cease to amaze and frustrate me that we plan cities based on the preferences of suburbanites around here. So much housing and jobs aren't created because of this car centric nonsense.