Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown

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I'm also skeptical about street-level activation seeing the Street View snapshots of the MP tower in SF. The whole Hawley street side is going to be goods loading and garage entrance; about 3/4 of the Franklin St side is going to be the two residential lobbies; finally the limited face of Washington St and the corner at Franklin and Washington for street-level retail, which itself will likely be a single, monolithic storefront for a retailer, rather than narrower stalls as seen across Washington St.

I'm having difficulty seeing a difference in our MT designed street activation and presence vs SF's MT. Are we giving them extra credit for the redevelopment of Shopper's Plaza and the Orange Line head house or is this strictly in the design of the podium that I'm just not able to visualise that somehow you guys are seeing?

BosDevelop said:
In fairness, Millennium hasn't delivered much in terms of street activation of Avery Street at the Ritz towers. There has to be thousands and thousands of square feet of empty retail space on the ground floors of the Ritz development that has been empty for a decade now. Obviously the side of the street with the hotel has some activity but the other side of Avery is awful.
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This is what's driving part of my concern about the promise of street activation. I know vacancy has somewhat to do with the neighbourhood still being in transition, but now that we've had so many building renovations in progress or completed, I'm curious as to what's keeping that retail stall empty. As a complete aside what's up with Avery Place anyway? It looks like a late 1920s Hollywood set where the trompe-l'œil backdrop continuation of the street never got painted...

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I gave up hope for an engaging street level on the new tower when they razed the 1905 facade to make room for a carport.
 
DigitalSciGuy said:
I'm also skeptical about street-level activation seeing the Street View snapshots of the MP tower in SF. The whole Hawley street side is going to be goods loading and garage entrance; about 3/4 of the Franklin St side is going to be the two residential lobbies; finally the limited face of Washington St and the corner at Franklin and Washington for street-level retail, which itself will likely be a single, monolithic storefront for a retailer, rather than narrower stalls as seen across Washington St.

I'm having difficulty seeing a difference in our MT designed street activation and presence vs SF's MT. Are we giving them extra credit for the redevelopment of Shopper's Plaza and the Orange Line head house or is this strictly in the design of the podium that I'm just not able to visualise that somehow you guys are seeing?
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That corner at Franklin and Washington will be one retailer, but the floors above should be different retail stores with their own signage/presence.

If you look at http://www.mtbretail.com/ you can see the retail footprint.

There will be at least 3 storefronts across Washington st. (possible for more, the only one locked down is primark. The two levels up on the tower side are either one store or two different stores. The corner ground floor section could be one store but could be divided into two.

In addition, the SF second level is all vent grating, with nothing really attractive above that. Boston MT will have 3 solid levels of retail on that corner that are visible to the outside.

EDIT: to also point out that while the ground floor will be residential lobbies on the franklin st side the two levels above them will be glass with retail behind it. So that corner coming up franklin st should be pretty active looking.
 
Edit Mongo beat me to it.

The other advantage for Boston's is that the glass looks nicer to me and something about the design of the SF one just isn't as engaging and it doesn't stand out in the same way.
 
You can now see the crane and the "construction crown" from Congress Street in Fort Point.
 
Ah! Thanks for articulating. The SF MT looks a lot like the Washington St front of the northern Ritz tower, but there's much more of a retail podium on our MT. I remain skeptical about actual street activation until full build-out and occupancy.

Also didn't know there was a platform-level connection to the garage/retail across Franklin...
 
SF is currently building the 1,070' Transbay (Salesforce) Tower, so don't feel too badly about their blah Millenium.

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This is from last Friday on Dorchester Ave before Andrew Station. Bad pic, but this thing is peeking out on this side of town too.

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And this one from near the Ink Block. This one about a third of the way done we think, correct?

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BosDevelop said:
In fairness, Millennium hasn't delivered much in terms of street activation of Avery Street at the Ritz towers. There has to be thousands and thousands of square feet of empty retail space on the ground floors of the Ritz development that has been empty for a decade now. Obviously the side of the street with the hotel has some activity but the other side of Avery is awful.
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And in fairness, by definition Millennium has zero responsibility for this, as they do not own that building.

It its 80 Mason Place, and it is owned by Schochet Companies:

http://www.schochet.com/Portfolio/tabid/94/agentType/View/PropertyID/34/Mason-Place.aspx

That shot on the website shows the Mason Street side of 80 Mason Place, but it wraps around Avery St. to become that very large vacancy.

Please, try to get your facts straight in the future before making such assertions.
 
bigeman312 said:
I think it's about 50% of its final height.
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59-60%. It's definitely over 400'. I think 33 Arch is 415' to the top of the glass (quoted a few pages ago) and it's pretty much neck and neck with that. 415/685 is just over 60%.
 
617 said:
Wikipedia says 477' for 33 arch 👀
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Check out those glass fins to the right of the Pregnant Building. There's your 62'. Apparently the glass part of 33 Arch is only about 415', then the rest is the silver top and fins.

These are from Hull.



 
Expensive, but not eye-watering. I will definitely go for robatayaki. That is something Boston is sorely lacking.
 
Great news! Always nice to see new culinary teams enter the Boston market.
 
It always saddens me how expensive yakitori/robatayaki is in the states. You can get really good yakitori in Tokyo for like $1/skewer. Maybe $2/skewer for some high end beef.
 
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