Limited-service Hotel Project | 73 Essex St | Chinatown

It's probably because this project is being built in the Chinatown neighborhood. Considering that this project does little to nothing to benefit the neighborhood besides gentrifying it and pushing the remaining residents out, anything higher will receive immense push back from the community and rightfully so.
 
Gentrifying Chinatown is so 2005.

That's like asking Trump if he regrets 50 years of philandering and screwing his creditors.....

Welcome to Boom City!
 
Last time I saw the the plans for this project, they had planned to demolish the current building. Since there is no parking on Essex St and a narrow width on Oxford St, the only way to accommodate valet, deliveries, etc, is to have a ground floor with a pass through for vehicles or some sort of porte cochere. That is not possible with the current building. I know BTD was adamant that there be no impacts to Essex St, including uber/lyft pick up/drop offs. I think this was why they changed the address to 2 Oxford St. The idea being that people would be directed to the side street with the loading zone instead of the congested main road with no place to pull over.
 
sm89 said:
Last time I saw the the plans for this project, they had planned to demolish the current building. Since there is no parking on Essex St and a narrow width on Oxford St, the only way to accommodate valet, deliveries, etc, is to have a ground floor with a pass through for vehicles or some sort of porte cochere. That is not possible with the current building. I know BTD was adamant that there be no impacts to Essex St, including uber/lyft pick up/drop offs. I think this was why they changed the address to 2 Oxford St. The idea being that people would be directed to the side street with the loading zone instead of the congested main road with no place to pull over.
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Yes, but the routing to Oxford Street is a nightmare scenario. Only access is from Kneeland via Hudson to Beach to Oxford. All narrow neighborhood streets. Lots of pedestrians. And the previous plan did not provide any off-street pickup space in the building footprint, just elimination of parking spaces on Oxford for a 'loading zone", like that works in Boston.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Yes, but the routing to Oxford Street is a nightmare scenario. Only access is from Kneeland via Hudson to Beach to Oxford. All narrow neighborhood streets. Lots of pedestrians. And the previous plan did not provide any off-street pickup space in the building footprint, just elimination of parking spaces on Oxford for a 'loading zone", like that works in Boston.
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They insisted that the project could be done without including parking (which is reasonable given its location). To make that possible, they promised the City that everything would take place on Oxford St. Planning for anything on Essex St was a non-starter.
 
sm89 said:
They insisted that the project could be done without including parking (which is reasonable given its location). To make that possible, they promised the City that everything would take place on Oxford St. Planning for anything on Essex St was a non-starter.
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Yes, but no parking does not mean no cars. It really means Ubers, Lyfts and taxis, meaning two trips per passenger (in and out again). Not many people are going to schlep to that location with luggage from the T.
 
JumboBuc said:
I detest height wankery (great term!) as much as anyone else (if not more so) but it's very rare that building height is held back in the core of Boston due to economic reasons. It's practically always regulatory. At the heights we're talking about (where you're already building with steel and concrete) it almost always makes economic sense to keep going higher.
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Despite the high room rates Boston hotels aren't terribly profitable right now. Full service properties are only seeing an average of $15 per night per room in profit. How much can you realistically expect at a limited-service property in what might seem to many to be a marginal neighborhood? And no, I'm not knocking Chinatown, nor do I see it this way but Bob and Marge from Cedar Rapids probably would.

https://www.hospitalitynet.org/performance/4087654.html
 
kmp1284 said:
Despite the high room rates Boston hotels aren't terribly profitable right now. Full service properties are only seeing an average of $15 per night per room in profit. How much can you realistically expect at a limited-service property in what might seem to many to be a marginal neighborhood? And no, I'm not knocking Chinatown, nor do I see it this way but Bob and Marge from Cedar Rapids probably would.

https://www.hospitalitynet.org/performance/4087654.html
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Even taking that as gospel, $14.96 > 0. And Chinatown may be more "marginal" than than the Back Bay, but it's still Downtown. Braintree it is not.

Remember that the average cost of, say, floors 19-25 is way lower than the average cost of floors 1-18.
 
The Essex Street bus lane is the biggest joke in the city. It's never observed by cars.

And even cars that want to follow the law, to turn left onto Chauncy Street you basically have to be in the bus lane, unless you want to risk an accident.
 
Reminds me of hotels around Canal St in Manhattan.
 
tysmith95 said:
The Essex Street bus lane is the biggest joke in the city. It's never observed by cars.

And even cars that want to follow the law, to turn left onto Chauncy Street you basically have to be in the bus lane, unless you want to risk an accident.
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This. Boylston St. is kind of schizophrenic in this regard, from Mass. Ave/Pike overpass to terminus at end of Essex. It could be even be described as "fun" from Mass. Ave to Arlington St.--it's so wide, that (to me at least) it's enjoyable swerving to avoid the double-parkers. But from Arlington St. on, well:

--The island/divider that separates Charles St. from Boylston eastbound is endlessly annoying/confusing. Why the hell isn't it signed to indicate which traffic should align in which lanes?

--Tremont & Boylston is, of course, chaotic with jaywalking pedestrians. And frequently snarled with auto traffic.

--Boylston between Tremont & Washington is, sadly, unpleasant, given the need to swerve the unfortunate homeless/strung-out wandering about to-and-fro from St. Francis House shelter to the head shop across the street and the alley that runs behind Liberty Plaza.

--And Essex St., as described above, from Washington past Chauncy is miserable due to the bus lane and its flaws.
 
Worthy of nomination for 'ugliest curtain wall yet.'
 
There are still empty lots in chinatown why tear down a solid building before building on those?
 
JeffDowntown said:
Yes, but no parking does not mean no cars. It really means Ubers, Lyfts and taxis, meaning two trips per passenger (in and out again). Not many people are going to schlep to that location with luggage from the T.
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Yes, and the City's response was make it work with no impacts to Essex St or the project is a no-go.

tysmith95 said:
The Essex Street bus lane is the biggest joke in the city. It's never observed by cars.

And even cars that want to follow the law, to turn left onto Chauncy Street you basically have to be in the bus lane, unless you want to risk an accident.
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Mayor Walsh announced this week new employees at BTD that will plan and implement bus lanes throughout the City. Monitoring and enforcing the existing ones is part of the scope of the new unit.

I always would take the left from the middle lane when I used to drive on Essex St. It's a shame that the arrows have warn off because they support this maneuver. The bus lane was not designed for buses and turns (though that is probably what they should have designed it for in terms of best practices).
 
coleslaw said:
There are still empty lots in chinatown why tear down a solid building before building on those?
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Most of the larger empty lots in Chinatown are actually multiple parcels, with multiple family trust owners. It is very hard to consolidate those parcels into a workable development plot (each family thinks that they are sitting on the magic gold mine that will be the lynch pin for the consolidation of the parcels, so have very outsized expectation for their parcel's value.).
 
JeffDowntown said:
Yes, but no parking does not mean no cars. It really means Ubers, Lyfts and taxis, meaning two trips per passenger (in and out again). Not many people are going to schlep to that location with luggage from the T.
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And that's why this doesn't seem like a good site for a hotel. The traffic issues are pretty much insurmountable. Even residential would have less traffic impact in this location. For this to happen, a lot of people at the BTD and in the community have to accept pretty compromised traffic.
 
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