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

/snort

Greater good of the city and its residents.....just a few weeks ago we were sitting on the patio of Abe& Louies pondering the atrocity that is the Mandarin. A failed restaurant, another one with no customers and most of the building dark. Both hotel and residential sides. Can't wait.
 
^ Mandarin is a cautionary tale about how to do street-level very wrong (retail and restaurants that don't announce themselves in any distinctive way, a cold repetitive ground-level facade, a narrow dark and uninviting sidewalk, etc) - hopefully a good lesson for these Pike parcels, but I don't see how it's relevant otherwise.
 
Shepard said:
^ Mandarin is a cautionary tale about how to do street-level very wrong (retail and restaurants that don't announce themselves in any distinctive way, a cold repetitive ground-level facade, a narrow dark and uninviting sidewalk, etc) - hopefully a good lesson for these Pike parcels, but I don't see how it's relevant otherwise.
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Invite, engage, ecourage interest. Peeble's Parcel 13 proposal for sidewalk-level pedestrian/building engagement is frighteningly (sp?) similar to the Mandarin, with only the Boylston St. T entrance really disrupting the E-W super-block sensation. The faux-plaza and few extra trees look really swell in plan but don't actually add to anything as a pedestrian except for extra steps. It's gonna be another fucking wall of brown. Shit.

Parcel 15 continues to be changing enough that it's hard to tell what will actually be built. Parcel 12 is another super-block but at least it seems it will be mostly retail at ground level, and perhaps storefront will enliven the streetwall experience via its displays and advertisements.
 
bbfen said:
Invite, engage, ecourage interest. Peeble's Parcel 13 proposal for sidewalk-level pedestrian/building engagement is frighteningly (sp?) similar to the Mandarin, with only the Boylston St. T entrance really disrupting the E-W super-block sensation. The faux-plaza and few extra trees look really swell in plan but don't actually add to anything as a pedestrian except for extra steps. It's gonna be another fucking wall of brown. Shit.
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Don't really agree. Looks like a lot of glass:

2_View-from-the-Intersection-of-Mass-Ave-and-Boylston-Street.jpg
 
Equilibria said:
Don't really agree. Looks like a lot of glass:

2_View-from-the-Intersection-of-Mass-Ave-and-Boylston-Street.jpg
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Sorry, I'm so sorry. I've really tried to rachet back from being "that guy" the last year or so, but if you really look at the Mandarin, almost *all* of it is glass/storefront at street level. And yet, it's still a terrible, alienating building. I just worry so much about Peeble's bring more of the awful.
 
bbfen said:
Sorry, I'm so sorry. I've really tried to rachet back from being "that guy" the last year or so, but if you really look at the Mandarin, almost *all* of it is glass/storefront at street level. And yet, it's still a terrible, alienating building. I just worry so much about Peeble's bring more of the awful.
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Yeah, when I look at this, I can't help but be reminded of a certain brick clad building on the corner of Stuart St and Charles St that shall remain nameless. I will withold judgement until it's on the ground, but the renderings aren't very promising. Hopefully this is just a bad case of ArchBoston syndrome and I'm getting upset over nothing.
 
Across the st will be multiple floors of glass retail, and its covering a hole where nothing exists right now. Im all for it. Its unique, brick or terra cotta, and at least they made the ground level glass. Should be fine.
 
2_View-from-the-Intersection-of-Mass-Ave-and-Boylston-Street.jpg


Every time I look at this proposal, I think that the folks at Handel have been studying Snøhetta and Francine Houben.

I'll say it again, this sort of quiet, thoughtful design, at once contextual and forthrightly modern, is where the bar needs to be set in Boston going forward.

We can't fix the crap in the Bulfinch Triangle and the Seaport, but this level of design could help us move on.
 
Beton, nice links there... wow - Snøhetta googling resulted in some truly awesome pieces. If this building is done right it'll be a great success, very much different than the Transportation building downtown.

Mods, can we split the thread since these are two separate projects now?
 
What if, instead of doing only affordable-unit/linkage taxing, we temporarily deferred a significant % of that for an Air-Rights Development Fund Tax to pay for the complete decking of the i-90 freeway from BU to i-93, create an asston of construction jobs, auction the developed parcels, then return to the normal linkage program??? You'd have the immense tax revenues from the property taxes all the housing built inside the high spine (where people most want to live) would provide..... instead of wasting decades screwing around permitting risky, cost-challenged projects that only end in failure.
 
I think the city should add some parks on the I90 deck along with developments by private developers.
 
PARCEL 15 CAC MEETING TONIGHT:

MassDOT Turnpike Air Rights Parcels 12-15 CAC Meeting #18
Dec 20, 2016 | 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Type:
Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC)

Location:
St. Cecilia Parish - Community Room
18 Belvidere Street
Boston, MA 02115

Description:
Citizens Advisory Committee Meeting on MassDOT Turnpike Air Rights Parcels 12-15 in the Back Bay. The public is encouraged to attend.

Please note that Parcel 15 will be the focus of this session.

http://www.bostonplans.org/news-cal...t?hootPostID=505ab9174a06bfe39ccd5b4455c86105
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What is the reason for meetings - where is this in the development phase? I thought all three parcels had been given the go-ahead?
 
JohnAKeith said:
What is the reason for meetings - where is this in the development phase? I thought all three parcels had been given the go-ahead?
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The current proposal was only presented in October. It has yet to go through the approval stages.
 
Hope to see this approved soon.


This thing is really cool. Fantastic, street level transformation.

Brings so much new life to this island of darkness at the edge of the Pike.

i'll try to get some good pics of the model.
 
JohnAKeith said:
What is the reason for meetings - where is this in the development phase? I thought all three parcels had been given the go-ahead?
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The initial meetings- all the way back in, what, 2010? Were to determine a developer for the parcels. The competing developers presented a project concept to the citizen committee, which chose Weiner and Samuels based on their concept but also because they believed the two were best suited to get the projects done.

These recent meetings are to present an actual proposal by the selected developers that is more grounded in hard data and figures, not a concept to give an idea of a developer might do if chosen.

As an aside, no new information tonight. This meeting was to check in with the community one more time before filing with the BPDA, so expect an LOI/PNF shortly. Community seems to be on the warmer side.
 
Downburst said:
The initial meetings- all the way back in, what, 2010? Were to determine a developer for the parcels. The competing developers presented a project concept to the citizen committee, which chose Weiner and Samuels based on their concept but also because they believed the two were best suited to get the projects done.
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So what you're saying is that it took 6 years to choose a developer and have a public meeting?
 
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