Mandarin Oriental | 776 Boylston St | Back Bay

I dunno if you have ever been to the flagships in NYC, but they are just packed!
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...yeah, but they're mostly packed with people playing with things or using the tech support people, not necessarily making purchases.
 
czsz said:
This doesn't help stem the trend toward midmarket chains on Newbury (Borders, Filene's Basement, Best Buy...)
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I understand what you're saying, but you picked the wrong tenants -- Borders and Filene's Basement are on the Boylston side of that building (the Newbry/Met Life). But you could say that the actual Newbury St.-side tenants aren't any better, them being H & M and Victoria's Secret.
 
I've entered both Borders and Filene's from the Newbury side. The stores have entries on both streets (reducing, you could say, the individuality of each in turn...)
 
Oh I didn't know that. Well I guess that means you have not just two, but four stores of middling quality there. Eithey way I think Newbury will be fine, and given all the destination places on Boylston, it doesn't surprise me a bit to see that street go the way of Newbury and Copley Place.
 
Sure I'd rather have a locally-owned bookstore, but if we can't have that, a Borders is still a pretty good thing for the neighborhood.
 
speaking of locally owned bookstores, is Glad Day still there on Boylston?
 
Wow, shows you how out of touch I've been!!! Thanks Ron, for the update.
 
8/11

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East ring Road is closed down again to finish work on the overpass, and the mall corridor's exterior is about 80% done

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Can''t wait for the scaffolding to come down. The glass walkways look sweet.
 
Mandarin Oriental

Shame to see a street wasted by another gerbil tube. The city has a mixed record on this kind of streetscape blight. It failed on Comm Ave in the 60's with the dreadful Muddy River overpass, but redeemed itself by not connecting City Hall Plaza with Fanueil Hall with a hideous brick pedestrian walkway in the 70's. The last 20 or so years haven't been very good, as this and Copley Place will attest. Pity they couldn't at least disguise it as if it were a glassy Trajan's Arch!
 
I'd argue that the Copley Place bridges work very well, but that is only because the streetscape below fails so miserably with it being a highway and what not. I tried walking around down there and it is dangerous as there are few sidewalks and the cars coming off the Pike don't need to slow down. This is a perfect place for a skybridge.
 
Shame to see a street wasted by another gerbil tube.
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Agreed that it doesn't really belong there...but was there much to "waste" on East Ring Road?
 
czsz said:
Agreed that it doesn't really belong there...but was there much to "waste" on East Ring Road?
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Hear hear!
 
Mandarin Oriental

All interesting viewpoints. It has always seemed that these sky ways are the lazy (read inexpensive) way of avoiding solutions to the street scape problems that lie below.
 
I find the Copley tubes to be very useful - look at the huge numbers of people using them, especially during inclement weather and also during the holiday shopping season.

Would you really want all those pedestrians trying to get across Huntington Ave? I would say the tubes at Copley help both pedestrian and automobile traffic flow more smoothly.
 
I don't strongly object to these skyways, but if the street intersections with the Turnpike ramps were squared off to become 90-degree turns, it would be much more pleasant to walk around there.
 
It has always seemed that these sky ways are the lazy (read inexpensive) way of avoiding solutions to the street scape problems that lie below.
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If the skyways were serving as stand-ins for streets and sidewalks, this might be the case. But here (and in the case of the Huntington Ave. tube), they're merely saving people the trouble of running across a trafficked street in the rain or snow. Eliminating them might incentivize a nicer crosswalk, but not more substantial improvements along the length of the street itself. Yet, such improvements can still (and hopefully will) be made; the skywalks don't necessarily discourage them.
 
It may help to remember that Copley Place was shoehorned onto the defined footprint of the Pike exits. The pedestrian bridges may not be an adequate streetscape, but the activity on the first and second floors above ground level make up for it.

In fact, the rumors of removing the Copley/Pru connector a few years back went away damn quick when businessmen working in the area heard about it.

I guess my point is that the streetscape around mayn't be ideal?but, it's functioning, and by far not the worst trouble-spot in Boston.
 
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