MassDOT Pike Parcels 12 - 15 | Boylston St. and Mass. Ave | Back Bay

Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Post it, please. My lips are sealed.
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Banker & Tradesman December 3, 2008
Heavy Hitters Poised To Push For Pike Parcels
By Paul McMorrow
Banker & Tradesman Staff Writer

The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority?s latest offering of developable air-rights space at the intersection of Boylston Street and Massachusetts Avenue in Boston has some familiar faces jockeying for position, Banker & Tradesman has learned.

At stake is 145,540 developable square feet, spread over four parcels spanning the Pike (Turnpike Parcels 12-15). Proposals are due Friday at noon.

Adam Weiner, of Weiner Ventures, confirmed Monday he will be bidding on the parcels, but declined further comment. The Chiofaro Co. also confirmed its intention to bid on Parcels 14 and 15. Trinity Financial said it is a ?likely bidder,? and has been making the rounds of politicians and neighborhood groups, but declined to elaborate.

Weiner?s group may have an inside track on the Pike parcels, thanks to a land acquisition this past spring. In May, ADG Scotia LLC purchased an 11,187-square-foot parcel from the Archdiocese of Boston for $13.85 million. The parcel, a vacant lot formerly belonging to St. Cecilia parish, abuts Parcels 14 and 15 and is seen as a staging ground that might be used to leverage more significant development.

ADG Scotia is a joint venture between John Fish?s Suffolk Ventures and Weiner?s Weiner Ventures. Weiner?s father, Stephen, is the developer behind the Mandarin Oriental complex on Boylston Street, not far from the Turnpike parcels. ADG Scotia?s public filings with the Secretary of State?s office list Stephen Weiner as an officer.

The Weiner-Fish group has an incentive to be an active developer, rather than a group of investors looking to flip their parcel. A clause in the purchase agreement stipulates that if ADG Scotia sells the St. Cecilia parcel within five years of acquiring it, half of the resulting profit will revert back to the Archdiocese.

Chiofaro, the big-ticket developer behind International Place, acquired the Harbor Garage for $155 million last November. Sources said Chiofaro was preparing his bid in conjunction with Prudential Insurance, but those reports could not be confirmed.

Sarah Barnat, a project manager at Trinity Financial, developers of the $150 million Avenir mixed-use project in the Bulfinch Triangle, described her firm as another likely bidder, but gave no further comment.

Trinity has been briefing neighborhood politicians and residents on its plans for a mixed-use project over the Pike for the past month. A source with knowledge of the developer?s proposal described it as ?modest? in height, which could play into Trinity?s hands.

Appropriate size is a hurdle any developer will have to clear, because it is difficult to squeeze profit out of an air rights development that may face serious massing constraints.

The BRA?s 1998 master plan for the area, commissioned in response to Millennium Partners failed 1 million-square-foot proposal for Parcel 12, envisions only one building topping 15 stories, with the rest topping out at 14 floors. Height would be set back, too, with street-front heights only reaching between 50 and 75 feet. The Neighborhood Association of the Back Bay has said it will be evaluating bids based on the parameters outlined in this plan.

State Rep. Marty Walz held up Millennium and Arthur Winn?s Columbus Center as cautionary examples any would-be Pike developers should avoid repeating. Both proposals were ?grossly out of scale,? Walz said.

?Developers would be well advised to propose projects consistent with the neighborhood,? Walz warned. She also said state aid for the decking necessary to bridge the Turnpike may not be forthcoming, especially given the for-profit nature of any proposed development.

Other developers rumored to be considering bids include the Kensington Investment Co., and Clark Construction. Calls to those developers did not yield comments.
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Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Developers are always looking 5, 10 years down the line. The ones bidding on this will also, if they have any brains, have watched the Columbus Center mess very carefully.

It really disgusts me how Menino just sorta gave up on the Mass Pike air rights. This could be the Greenway Part II, and in that sense a way to not make the same mistakes of the first Greenway.
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Yes! Probably another midget tower. Love that Boston high spine.
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

vanshnookenraggen said:
It really disgusts me how Menino just sorta gave up on the Mass Pike air rights. This could be the Greenway Part II, and in that sense a way to not make the same mistakes of the first Greenway.
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Are you suggesting that this be more open space?

And, the only problem that I feel would come up with building over the pike-how is it ensured that all the coverings work together? I mean, different planners, contractors, construction companies are going to do things differently. As more of the developments fill in, what happens when they are adjacent? Would there just be this weird hole in the ground gap? I wish the state/city had money to just build at least a standardized lattice over the whole thing, or had a set of plans developers/contructors must follow, or do they?
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Oh, we like Avenir right? And Int'l Place is the one near Rowes Wharf right?
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

kennedy said:
Are you suggesting that this be more open space?
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I think that some of the space that would cover up the Pike should be used for open space, but I think there needs to be buildings too (I feel the same about the Greenway).
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Okay. I guess my vision would be to have the Greenway as almost entirely open space, and have the Pike covered almost entirely by developments. Maybe, create another westish-eastish street along it, a main boulevard into the city on the surface (but not a highway)-but not plain parkland.
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

To play devil's advocate against the green space argument, given that the Fenway is a block away and the area in front of Fenway Studios is guaranteed to always remain open for northern light to the lofts:

Development of these parcels actually restore buildings to property that once was developed (and then torn down by Masspike when they built the extension).

Parcel 12 was fully developed along Boylston and on the north side of the railroad.

Parcel 13 was a large, long building on the NE corner of Mass Ave/Boylston (and directly above where the railroad ran was the busway overpass into Auditorium T stop).

Finally, I also believe parcel 14/St Cecilia Street had a headhouse or control room tower for the railyards.

The crazy part is that when the extension was built, the steel was only built to support Mass Ave and Boylston ----- not future development. Therefore, years of disruption as everything is torn up and replaced. :(

And don't even wade into the easement issues underneath and around parcels 13 and 15. The lawyers are dreaming of billable hours right now.

Done playing devil's advocate!
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

statler said:
State Rep. Marty Walz held up Millennium and Arthur Winn?s Columbus Center as cautionary examples any would-be Pike developers should avoid repeating. Both proposals were ?grossly out of scale,? Walz said.
Click to expand...

siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh.
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

nimbys...cant live with em, cant live witho- oh wait, you can live without them.
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Four developers file Mass Pike air-rights plans
By Thomas Grillo
Saturday, December 6, 2008 - Updated 3h ago


Four developers are vying to transform the air above the turnpike at Massachusetts Avenue and Boylston Street into a new neighborhood.

Trinity Financial, Carpenter & Co., Weiner Ventures and Chiofaro Co. filed competing plans with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority yesterday. The MTA said development of the four air-rights parcels near the Prudential Center offers opportunities to fill in gaps over the east-west artery.

Carpenter & Co. proposed a 200-room hotel and 405,000-square-foot office tower. The company redeveloped the abandoned Charles Street Jail into the Liberty Hotel. The restored 1851 jailhouse was home to Albert DeSalvo, the alleged Boston Strangler.

The Chiofaro Co., whose plans to redevelop the Boston Harbor Garage into an office tower appear to be stalled, offered to build a 25-story office building with ground-floor retail over the Pike.

?We thought it made sense to do office given the limited quantity in the neighborhood,? said partner Theodore Oatis.

Weiner Ventures pitched a 374,000-square-foot office tower and 112 housing units. On a separate parcel it plans a mix of uses along Boylston Street and Mass. Ave.

Trinity Financial wants to build 546 units of housing in 14-story buildings. The Boston firm has won praise for Avenir in the Bulfinch Triangle. The 10-story, transit-oriented development includes retail and 241 residential units overlooking the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

?We want to develop something that responds to what the Back Bay and Fenway neighborhoods want,? said Sarah Barnat, project manager.

http://bostonherald.com/business/ge...Pike_air-rights_plans/srvc=home&position=also
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Huh?

"The restored jailhouse was home to Albert DeSalvo ..."

And, this is relevant to this story, how?

But, thanks for the information!
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

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from todays globe
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

I would like to see something with this height and density. This is just a rendering and years off so I wont discuss the bland design that seems to be everywhere these days. But I think if you combined this part of the project with the develop, as one of the developers proposed, of the triangle parcel on bordering Dalton (?). I think a development like this would only add to the activity that up and down Newbury and Boylston
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

This whole thing seems like a total pipedream, but it is intriguing. That's definitely an area that could handle some well-designed development to knit the Fenway and Bay Back together a bit. There has always been a big disconnect along Boylston between the BB and Fen.
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Pretty good, but not really ambitious. The parcel closest to the Hynes still will be uncovered, ensuring that a small gap in urbanity remains. Still, the Mass Ave bridge over the turnpike will finally feel like a part of the city, not a spot where the urbanity abruptly disappears.

BTW, it took me a while to figure out the perspective of the render; it's facing north, Mass Ave in the middle, Boylston on the botton, and the parcel closest to the hynes on the bottom right.
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

I like to see the other 3 submitals renderings,this one Imo, no hieght,flat tops and the best buy building walled off and surrounded no thanks!
 
Re: Mandarin developers eye Pike parcels for project

Looks like a decent bookend to the commercial portions of Newbury and Boylston. I never liked how they ended so abruptly with the Pike. Never a chance at any height here or anything flashy. The neighbors were going to want boring, so this is pretty decent.
 
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