Re: Filene's
One Charles is amazingly awkward both top and bottom. Bad as the streetscape is, the huge blank brick gymnasium wall at the top, visible as you drive down Stuart Street toward South Station, must be one of the most clumsy elements of any recent building in the city.
Honestly, it makes you wonder what keeps bringing Handel more opportunities. Maybe ... just maybe, you could give them a mulligan for the Ritz, which is a tough retail setting. But over at One Charles, they managed to mush together a combination of driveways, blank walls, loading docks, and goofy window planes that seem intended to create a buffer zone rather than street engagement ... you can hardly see into the restaurant, for example.
Of course Kairos Shen and his minions will be ready with the usual excuses about the need for modern loading docks and the inevitability of cars, etcetera ... but the funny thing is, the Motor Mart Garage across the street from One Charles, whose entire PURPOSE is to house automobiles, is one thousand percent more successful at street level.