Master Planning Roxbury Crossing: WIT Senior Studio Summer 2012

datadyne007

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Traditionally, the final studio of the undergraduate program at Wentworth is the Community Design studio. In the past years, communities have included the vacant plots in Allston/Brighton, Roxbury, the Seaport, among others. This year, the selected area was Roxbury Crossing, a community destroyed by a highway proposal/failed 60s urban planning and steps from our Wentworth campus.

Our studio of 12 was first split into 2 groups of 6 to analyze the area for a little over a week. Because we worked so cohesively in the teams of 6, we remained in the original teams for the next phase. Last monday in studio, we did a classical Ecole des Beaux-Arts style charrette lasting for 4 hours in which we created a proposal for an urban intervention along the SW Corridor between Tremont and Melnea Cass. Our concept focused on adding urban density to the Tremont corridor with mixed-use developments featuring ground level retail in all buildings. The result of that charrette can be seen below:

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Our professor then encouraged us to look at solutions for improving the Alice Taylor Apartments (the weird zig zag buildings) and the under-densified Mission Main development. Our solution for these was small infill developments. You can also see our masses and ideas of paths start to evolve. Our next iteration of the site plan can be seen here:

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We then went back and rethought some of our building masses along Tremont St, our key corridor that we wanted to densify. We also selected some precedents for each building. Even though this was not the final crit, we produced presentation-quality results and treated the pin-up as a crit, which was extremely well received and attracted numerous professors from the department. Here is an overview of the spread:

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Here is a close-up of the site plan:

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And finally, here is what we presented today at the final crit:

Overview:
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Plan/perspectives:
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Urban Sections:
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The Model (note, it shows the other group's area too):
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Diagrams explaining concepts and uses:
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And finally... our team!
Manuel Delgado's studio - WIT Summer Studio 2012
Team (L to R): Tim L (yours truly), Nicole H, Stephen A, Jeff N, Eric P

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The next and final phase is individual where we select our building to develop. I will be developing the Residential tower and the start-up oriented office building behind it. More updates will be posted.

If anyone wants to talk to us or see this in person, let me know via PM and I (and possibly others) will be happy to show and talk to you! We're excited for this and the impact it could have on the future community development. All of our proposals along Tremont are at the scale of Parcel 25's design. The critics were so impressed that they told us we should go into business together. This is definitely a fantastic way for us to end our undergrad at WIT.

Bonus:
This happened during our planning on friday...

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Sexy Party Allee ended up becoming the area outside the hotel, which was geared towards day and nightlife for pedestrians.
 
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Interesting stuff. It's a little hard to visualize from these pictures. It seems like you're creating towers-in-the-park though. Am I just totally misreading the diagrams?
 
Interesting stuff. It's a little hard to visualize from these pictures. It seems like you're creating towers-in-the-park though. Am I just totally misreading the diagrams?

There really are no towers in a park in our proposal. Our new Tremont St has a consistent, dense streetwall. Behind them, a street grid is established. They are not free-standing superblocks. I just realized it's not showing well in the pictures. The SW Corridor park also gets realigned so that it is more of a corridor, similar to the situation of the Corridor near the South End.

Also note that the Alice Taylor apartments (the yellow zigzags) were not originally planned by us. Those originally are "towers" in a park. We are simply doing damage cleanup and creating some infill to densify it and better rework the public and private space (instead of all semi-public as it is now).
 
I just spotted a lot of "green" marker swaddling all the buildings and got concerned.

Anyway, this is Tremont Street now looking towards town:
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And what appears to be "parcel #25":
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Sweet plan, datadyne007! A few things:

A) I know a lot of Roxbury community members didn't make it to your presentation as expected. Do you have any plans to present to them at another time? I'd be interested in hearing their reactions.

B) I'm glad your team decided to shift the actual SW Corridor park over the rail tracks as oppose to adjacent to them... you've gotta wonder who'll pay for that, though.

C) In the Reggie Lewis Track Center, are those little squares proposals for retail shops along Tremont Street? I hope so! :)

D) With regards to the Tremont Crossing proposal we've all read about, how does that impact your overall master plan? In essence, would the creation of a 1,700-car parking garage and 500,000 sq. ft. of retail concentrated at P-9 have a positive, negative, or neutral effect on your plans?

E) How would you align Prentiss Street to continue Longwood Ave/McGreevy Way? Also, traffic light at Parker Street intersection, correct?

F) The pedestrian spine you propose adjacent to the buildings lining Tremont Ave to the South, do you intend on that being exclusively pedestrian, shared-mode (a la Downtown Crossing), or a vehicular thoroughfare? What kind of retail atmosphere do you suspect will do well there? [Nordstrom Rack, Market Basket, and American Eagle Outlets if I had to guess... lol]

That's all for now. I, like you, hope more people chime in about your project.

Well done.
 
Sweet plan, datadyne007! A few things:

A) I know a lot of Roxbury community members didn't make it to your presentation as expected. Do you have any plans to present to them at another time? I'd be interested in hearing their reactions.

No plans as of yet. Maybe the final final crit will have some community involvement? We are going to see what the possibilities are.

B) I'm glad your team decided to shift the actual SW Corridor park over the rail tracks as oppose to adjacent to them... you've gotta wonder who'll pay for that, though.

This is a grand, and I mean, GRAND, master plan, so cost really wasn't an issue. Realigning the corridor is crucial to the continuity from the South End and also having it behind buildings creates a natural noise-buffer in the park from the streets. We have SW corridor condition diagrams pinned up as well from the initial analysis phase. Anyone can clearly see that the "corridor" completely falls apart in this area.

C) In the Reggie Lewis Track Center, are those little squares proposals for retail shops along Tremont Street? I hope so! :)

Bingo! We identified the Reggie Lewis streetwall as detrimental to the pedestrian experience and urban environment. We proposed to create an arcade (like the police station) and raising the Reggie Lewis bleachers up over the retail. The new Reggie Lewis is actually in the model. I built it! =)

D) With regards to the Tremont Crossing proposal we've all read about, how does that impact your overall master plan? In essence, would the creation of a 1,700-car parking garage and 500,000 sq. ft. of retail concentrated at P-9 have a positive, negative, or neutral effect on your plans?

I brought up Tremont Crossing with the group. The current proposal for Tremont Crossing has the parking garage abutting the rear of the High School, which is an unpleasant area. We had proposed some improvements to the back area as well as a vendor area during outdoor sporting events on the nearby track and field. The main issue with Tremont Crossing is that it is a super(duper)block. Our proposal breaks down the blocks.

E) How would you align Prentiss Street to continue Longwood Ave/McGreevy Way? Also, traffic light at Parker Street intersection, correct?
Yeah, I forgot to mention earlier that we decided to bring Longwood Ave all the way to Tremont St. We proposed Wentworth's biomed school and dorms to be on those Longwood plots because Wentworth owns all of those parcels. The really interesting part about bringing Longwood Ave straight into Roxbury Crossing is that Whittier is DIRECTLY at the other end creating a solid Medical<>Medical link! To answer your question, Prentiss St goes bye-bye. It is too awkward. That road has been there, misaligned since the 1800s!

F) The pedestrian spine you propose adjacent to the buildings lining Tremont Ave to the South, do you intend on that being exclusively pedestrian, shared-mode (a la Downtown Crossing), or a vehicular thoroughfare? What kind of retail atmosphere do you suspect will do well there? [Nordstrom Rack, Market Basket, and American Eagle Outlets if I had to guess... lol]

We had discussed pedestrian only vs shared. I and my friend (who worked for Millennium) discussed DTX extensively when we were talking about the pedestrian only street. As of now, it is only pedestrian. We didn't get deeply into traffic planning. I'd say pedestrian day, open road night...? About the type of retail, we anticipate chains like Starbucks and Panera and maybe some select retail brands. Before people start crying about local business, we have a proposal to put bakeries and local tradesmans shops on the corner of Tremont and Tremont.

Well done.
Danke. I really appreciate all the questions and comments. It's hard because no one on this board can hear our presentation. The images have to speak for themselves...

Also Matthew -
Thanks for the existing condition photos.
 
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