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

GW said:
I've got a big problem with what's inside of it, though. There are two (soon to be three) very large hotels just a few blocks away from it, with many more in the surrounding area, and yet it has more than 150 hotel rooms and less than 90 residences. It's a gross reversal of priorities in a city as expensive as Boston. .
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When was the last time you tried to book a mid-level hotel in downtown Boston? The Copley Marriott and Westin routinely get upwards of $350 a night before taxes. The city definitely needs more hotel rooms and the back bay is the most desirable tourist location for hotels downtown. Do we really need another 100 luxury, back bay residences that few can afford? Perhaps, but I'd rather have a mixed hotel/residential component.
 
BosDevelop said:
When was the last time you tried to book a mid-level hotel in downtown Boston? The Copley Marriott and Westin routinely get upwards of $350 a night before taxes. The city definitely needs more hotel rooms and the back bay is the most desirable tourist location for hotels downtown. Do we really need another 100 luxury, back bay residences that few can afford? Perhaps, but I'd rather have a mixed hotel/residential component.
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Last time I tried to book a mid-level hotel in downtown Boston was never. I live in Boston.

No, we don't exactly need another 100 luxury Back Bay residences that few can afford (though I'd take them, and microscopic downward pressure they would exert on the market, over more hotel rooms). One of the proposals here had over 300 residences, and the other had 400 beds for students. I'd sure as hell take any of those over hotel rooms, or a mixed hotel/residential component, or anything having to do in any way with hotels.
 
GW said:
Last time I tried to book a mid-level hotel in downtown Boston was never. I live in Boston.

No, we don't exactly need another 100 luxury Back Bay residences that few can afford (though I'd take them, and microscopic downward pressure they would exert on the market, over more hotel rooms). One of the proposals here had over 300 residences, and the other had 400 beds for students. I'd sure as hell take any of those over hotel rooms, or a mixed hotel/residential component, or anything having to do in any way with hotels.
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GW -- Boston / Cambridge still needs all of the above -- specifically:
  • All the universities and any of the colleges dominated by resident students [e.g. BU, Northeaster, Wentworth, BC, MIT, Harvard, perhaps UMass Boston] should provide on-campus housing for:
    • 60 to 75% of the graduate / professional students;
    • 80 to 90% of the undergraduates
    • 40 to 60% of post docs and young professors
    • 15 to 30% of senior faculty
    • young graduate -- would be entrepreneurs / innovators
  • housing for young singles
  • housing for young families
  • temporary housing / long-stay hotels
 
What is the status of the projects at parcels 12 & 15? Are these projects dead, or are they just mired in the public process? I've heard nothing in over a year about either site, which doesn't really give one faith in Boston's ability to develop air rights parcels.
 
Globe: Housing and hotel plan above Mass Pike goes forward

Boston Globe said:
State transportation officials approved a deal with Miami-based developer Peebles Corp., giving Peebles rights to develop a site at the corner of Massachusetts Ave. and Boylston Streets in exchange for $30.5 million in rent to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and the MBTA.

[...]

So far, Peebles’ project has moved relatively quickly, from initial selection to a contract in ten months. Now the developer will seek permitting, design approvals, and financing, with an aim to start construction in 2019.
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Edit: Just beat me to it, Equilibria...
 
The Viola.

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https://www.buzzbuzzhome.com/the-viola-back-bay/photos/construction/2015_09_02_11_08_21_violabackbay-3.jpg
 
Definitely one of my most anticipated projects. This would be one of the best things to happen to Boylston in a long time.
 
FenwayResident said:
Definitely one of my most anticipated projects. This would be one of the best things to happen to Boylston in a long time.
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And it's gonna take a long time to for this project get finished! 2023 perhaps??
 
This is what is separating Boston from other cities right now. We have the history, but we also have a lot of room for expansion dude to many factors over the years. We are slowly filling in many of those gaps while maintaining most of the fabric of the city and it is really creating something special. Boston has always been a great city, but it has had a lot of disconnect that is finally being sewn back together.
 
stick n move said:
This is what is separating Boston from other cities right now. We have the history, but we also have a lot of room for expansion dude to many factors over the years. We are slowly filling in many of those gaps while maintaining most of the fabric of the city and it is really creating something special. Boston has always been a great city, but it has had a lot of disconnect that is finally being sewn back together.
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Agree with the tenor of the post - but I need to correct something, as you make mention of something s lot of posters on here do. There's the few connections that were actually severed - the highways that were built from nothing - but the back bay grew up around the rail lines and rail yards and the "scar" of the pike has always been there. Ditto for a lot of other things in Boston that when a bridge across the is made by new development, people speak of "reknitting" the fabric but in many cases, it's just knitting...
 
I was talking about Boston as a whole, yes the Back Bay was land filled and turned into train yards, but the pike extension still broke apart some of the fabric of the city.
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Now back on topic, this is going to be a huge net gain for the area.
 
FK4 said:
Agree with the tenor of the post - but I need to correct something, as you make mention of something s lot of posters on here do. There's the few connections that were actually severed - the highways that were built from nothing - but the back bay grew up around the rail lines and rail yards and the "scar" of the pike has always been there. Ditto for a lot of other things in Boston that when a bridge across the is made by new development, people speak of "reknitting" the fabric but in many cases, it's just knitting...
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FK -- very fine post

It's unfortunately rare for the AB to have the proper sense of the constant transformation of Boston over its near 400 years of occupancy -- Rev Blackstone arrived in what was to become Boston in 1622 or 1623

Since Winthrop's bunch arrived in 1630 [aka the "City on the Hill Gang"] the physical fabric of Boston has been flattened, raised, filled, and dug to the extent that there are probably only a handful of house lot sized parcels that would look familiar to the 17th C folks

In particular the Back Bay is entirely the creation of the 19th C developers and geo-engineers -- to the extent that when the filling was underway beginning in September 1857 to reduce the amount of filling that needed to be done they didn't fill the house and church footprints, the streets, nor the rail "cut" :
http://www.nabbonline.com/about_us/back_bay_history
Filling of the Back Bay began-average depth of fill 20 feet; more than 450 acres filled; fill brought from Needham;
streets were filled to grade 17 (17 ft above mean low tide),
lots filled to grade 12, so basements would be below street level
  • 1859 -- The Unitarian congregation...votes to build a new building... at the corner of Arlington and Boylston Streets.
  • 1860 -- 152 Beacon Street built for Isabella Stewart by her father
  • 1860 -- Filling of Back Bay reached Clarendon Street
  • 1861 -- State granted a block of Back Bay (Boylston and Berkeley) to the Boston Society of Natural History and MIT
  • 1861 -- The Unitarians' new church, now known as Arlington Street Church, is completed. It is the first public building in the Back Bay.
  • 1862 -- Emmanuel Church (15 Newbury Street), the first building constructed on Newbury Street, is consecrated.
  • 1863 -- MIT located on Boylston-current site of New England Life building
  • 1864 -- Society of Natural History building completed (Berkeley between Boylston and Newbury)
  • 1865 -- First statue erected on the Commonwealth Avenue Mall
  • 1867 -- Central Congregational Church completed (Newbury Street and Berkeley)
  • 1868 -- First Church of 1630 (Unitarian) moved from Chauncy Place to newly completed church designed by Ware and Van Brunt (Berkeley and Marlborough)
  • 1869 -- Temporary coliseum built in Copley Square. It held the National Peace Jubilee that year, which was attended by President Ulysses Grant
  • 1870 -- Filling of Back Bay reached Exeter Street
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Back Bay in 1869 is shown partially filled in. Arlington Street Church is at left.
by Boston Public Library, on Flickr
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Arlington St runs L-R through the Center of the photo
Boylston heads west toward the Peace Jubilee Coliseum -- the largest capacity arena ever built in the Boston Area -- located near the left edge

Commonwealth Ave heads west from the Public Garden near the right edge -- water is seen at the edge of the filling near to the upper right
 
^ A temporary arena to catalyze investment & development of a new district, what a fantastic idea....

[/snark]

That's an awesome photo. What a perfect reminder that this city is really built on a little archipelago, in a shallow basin ringed by modest hills. And what's emerging in this remarkable period of development is not just a still-more-complete fabric, but also a 'polycentric boston', still reflecting the contours of that original archipelago.
 
Great photo of Arlington St. Thanks!!

The three joined houses running northward from the corner of Newbury and Arlington were designed in 1859 by Richard Morris Hunt.

"A case in point is the group of three houses that Richard Morris Hunt [very famous architect, brother of famous painter William Morris Hunt] designed in 1859, within four years of his return from Paris. Erected at 13, 14, and 15 Arlington Street, the site now occupied by the Ritz Hotel, this group is conceived as a free-standing block consisting of a central element three windows wide, flanked by projecting pavilions of two bays' width. Four stories tall, it was constructed of brownstone and topped by the customary mansard roof. Despite the unity of the composition, it would never be taken for a Parisian residence. Its vertical organization as a series of row houses rather than as flats and its isolation as a detached building mark it as more Anglo-Saxon than Gallic. Yet the designer was surely conversant with current Parisian architectural styles and practices, for he had recently received a diploma from the Ecole des Beaux Arts and had worked in Parisian architectural offices.“
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^^^ Can't remember the source.

No chance in the world (particularly given the architect) if those were there today that they would come down. I think, but I could be wrong, that these were the only three buildings Hunt ever did in Boston.
 
How does securing permits and financing take 4 years?
 
type001 said:
How does securing permits and financing take 4 years?
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They probably didn't start detailed drawings or engineering until they were selected. I wouldn't be surprised if their plan is a brochure with renderings at the moment.

All that engineering and construction planning will need to be approved by MassDOT since they're over the Turnpike, not to mention your typical BRA process.
 
type001 said:
How does securing permits and financing take 4 years?
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It's Boston and it's an air rights deal. Four years is optimistic. If they secure permits and financing and are actually under construction four years from now, it will represent an extremely rare success story for a MassPike air rights deal. Actually, it'd be the first since ... when, all you Bostonians who've been here longer than me? Am I right in saying no one's pulled one off since the Pru Center / Copley Square stuff?

So, what I'm saying is, the big question isn't "why so long?", it's "can they really pull this one off at all?

This proposal looks just great all around. I'm crossing fingers and toes.
 
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