Millennium Tower (Filene's) | 426 Washington Street | Downtown
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Re: Filene's
I'd have two questions about that. The first is, colleges/dorms are generally no-frills deals (with Suffolk's Modern project being an exception but also a much smaller project than Filene's). Would any college be willing to invest (or justify investing) the additional money that would probably be required to build out the standing facade in DTX, versus building from scratch in a less-central neighborhood?
On a somewhat deeper level, is there a point where Boston becomes too dependent on colleges and students? One of the biggest complaints/reactions I hear from people not from here is that nobody but college students lives in Boston. Of course, higher ed is a large part of Boston's identity, and that's not a bad thing. But at the end of the day, students are fairly transient figures and a city needs permanent residents to forge a stronger -- and more diverse -- identity. On a more practical level, when you fill up with students your tax revenues take a hit. Anyway, such are my reservations about turning Filene's into a glorified dorm...
I'd have two questions about that. The first is, colleges/dorms are generally no-frills deals (with Suffolk's Modern project being an exception but also a much smaller project than Filene's). Would any college be willing to invest (or justify investing) the additional money that would probably be required to build out the standing facade in DTX, versus building from scratch in a less-central neighborhood?
On a somewhat deeper level, is there a point where Boston becomes too dependent on colleges and students? One of the biggest complaints/reactions I hear from people not from here is that nobody but college students lives in Boston. Of course, higher ed is a large part of Boston's identity, and that's not a bad thing. But at the end of the day, students are fairly transient figures and a city needs permanent residents to forge a stronger -- and more diverse -- identity. On a more practical level, when you fill up with students your tax revenues take a hit. Anyway, such are my reservations about turning Filene's into a glorified dorm...
AmericanFolkLegend
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Re: Filene's
Selling to Suffolk probably doesn't get something built any faster. Unless Menino steps in they'll be stuck in a whole redesign/approval process and the "neighbors" will bitch about student housing.
Selling to Suffolk probably doesn't get something built any faster. Unless Menino steps in they'll be stuck in a whole redesign/approval process and the "neighbors" will bitch about student housing.
Re: Filene's
Just bear in mind that Vornado and Gale shelled out $100 million for this site. Student housing and co-housing aren't going to pull them out of a hole that deep. I think this would be an incredible student housing location, but it would only be viable if the current owners were willing to unload the property for $20 million or so...and don't forget that most universities just lost 30-40% of their endowment values. They don't have vaults of cash to toss at a big project.
Just bear in mind that Vornado and Gale shelled out $100 million for this site. Student housing and co-housing aren't going to pull them out of a hole that deep. I think this would be an incredible student housing location, but it would only be viable if the current owners were willing to unload the property for $20 million or so...and don't forget that most universities just lost 30-40% of their endowment values. They don't have vaults of cash to toss at a big project.
TheRifleman
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Re: Filene's
Why do you think Mayor Menino continues to get elected. They moved out all the working class. Their are 3 criteria Boston Voters
#1 Poor people who listen to their churches and people like Chuck Turner.
#2 Working Class most of them work for the city who the Mayor could fire at anytime.
#3 Educated people that are mostly visting the city for a time period who could careless about voting.
That is why this city is stuck in the mud.
Why do you think Mayor Menino continues to get elected. They moved out all the working class. Their are 3 criteria Boston Voters
#1 Poor people who listen to their churches and people like Chuck Turner.
#2 Working Class most of them work for the city who the Mayor could fire at anytime.
#3 Educated people that are mostly visting the city for a time period who could careless about voting.
That is why this city is stuck in the mud.
statler
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Re: Filene's
When were the 'working class' moved out? The old West End? The people who lived there most likely fell into the category of your 'poor people'.
Everyone else left screaming for the suburbs on their own accord, forced only by their fears and prejudices.
When were the 'working class' moved out? The old West End? The people who lived there most likely fell into the category of your 'poor people'.
Everyone else left screaming for the suburbs on their own accord, forced only by their fears and prejudices.
tobyjug
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Re: Filene's
The only positive action that the city could take would be to build a new city hall on the site. By the time the work was done, it could sell the current city hall in what will be a strong market.
If that isn't in the cards, make sure the shells are kept stabilized and then just stay out. You've done enough already, thank you very much.
The only positive action that the city could take would be to build a new city hall on the site. By the time the work was done, it could sell the current city hall in what will be a strong market.
If that isn't in the cards, make sure the shells are kept stabilized and then just stay out. You've done enough already, thank you very much.
TheRifleman
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Re: Filene's
The only solution for this site is a new developer to purchase the site off the banks. They paid too much and overtime the numbers just don't make any sense. The colleges are beginning to own too much of this town Tax free and it is probably a burden to city hall to maintain the infrastructure of the city with all these buildings not paying any taxes.
The bailout to the bankers is just buying them time to see if they get the economy jump started. All this is smoke & mirrors over the next couple of years this project will be sold to the highest bidder after they declare bankruptcy on this site unless they get sometype of federal or state handouts. Anything is possible especially if they gave money to Menino Campaign. Bad timing for Hynes and the gang. Bottom line: They need funding from the taxpayers to get this deal done. Or sell it cheaper and take a loss.
The only solution for this site is a new developer to purchase the site off the banks. They paid too much and overtime the numbers just don't make any sense. The colleges are beginning to own too much of this town Tax free and it is probably a burden to city hall to maintain the infrastructure of the city with all these buildings not paying any taxes.
The bailout to the bankers is just buying them time to see if they get the economy jump started. All this is smoke & mirrors over the next couple of years this project will be sold to the highest bidder after they declare bankruptcy on this site unless they get sometype of federal or state handouts. Anything is possible especially if they gave money to Menino Campaign. Bad timing for Hynes and the gang. Bottom line: They need funding from the taxpayers to get this deal done. Or sell it cheaper and take a loss.
statler
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Re: Filene's
Ideal Solution:
Vornado, Gale, et al sell enough holdings (even at depressed prices) to quickly raise money to finance this project with cash. Construction could start as soon as the ink was dry on the last sale. This would be done on the age-old principle of "You break a window, you pay to fix a window."
Since that will never, ever happen, the next best option is czsz's idea to put in a temp store a la Puma in the space until something permanent can be built. If all the dire predictions on the time line are correct, the rent FB would end up paying would more than cover the fit out.
Ideal Solution:
Vornado, Gale, et al sell enough holdings (even at depressed prices) to quickly raise money to finance this project with cash. Construction could start as soon as the ink was dry on the last sale. This would be done on the age-old principle of "You break a window, you pay to fix a window."
Since that will never, ever happen, the next best option is czsz's idea to put in a temp store a la Puma in the space until something permanent can be built. If all the dire predictions on the time line are correct, the rent FB would end up paying would more than cover the fit out.
eaalkaline
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Re: Filene's
From boston.com:
Boston?s brewing battle for student housing
By Lawrence Harmon
February 17, 2010
IT?S TEMPTING to poke fun at parents who would pay a 50-60 percent premium to house their sons and daughters in the new suite-style college dormitories that are cropping up on campuses across the United States. Wood-fired pizza ovens in the dorm aren?t exactly character builders. But city and university officials in Boston who are serious about attracting and retaining well-educated young people need to maintain a steady supply of all manners of housing.
Though obviously overstating a point, Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone compares the competition for young people to a war between the states. And if Boston wants to be on the winning side of this war, it will need to ensure an adequate and attractive supply of housing for college students - especially graduate students - says Bluestone. Otherwise, the region faces ?domestic net out-migration,?? the modern equivalent of typhoid during the real Civil War.
The Boston-area exodus got underway in earnest in the 2002-2004 period, when the population of young people in the 20-to-24 age range declined by 2.3 percent while rising nationally by 3.9 percent. The hemorrhaging has slowed down in the past few years due to a nationwide economic downturn. But Bluestone says Greater Boston will be ?in the soup again?? if housing prices spike.
A key battle was lost last year in Boston with the collapse of an effort to build a high-rise private dormitory behind the Huntington Avenue YMCA complex. The developer - Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. - specializes in building commodious private dorms for students near major campuses, including the state universities in Maryland and Virginia. Similar dorms ring the University of Texas in Austin. Surely there should be room for one or two such dorms in Boston, home to 155,000 college students.
Last week, during an Urban Land Institute forum on student housing, John Cappellano of Lincoln Property Co. analyzed his company?s two-and-a-half year dorm misadventure in Boston. Some of the blame rests with the company?s out-sized effort to create a 34-story dormitory with 1,140 bedrooms to accommodate students attending Northeastern University, Berklee College of Music, Massachusetts College of Art, and other nearby colleges. But even after the company offered to reduce the project by 10 stories and 350 bedrooms, suspicious Fenway neighbors and city officials blocked the project.
Northeastern University officials also put up fierce resistance. They worried that the private dorm would upset their own plans to build a new 600-bed dorm on the same street. But Northeastern later abandoned its dorm plan, leaving the student housing market underserved. That?s how it happens too often in Boston: Kill the other guy?s project and then provide nothing in its stead.
Bluestone, who issues an annual housing report card for Greater Boston, says the city needs a ?multi-university graduate village?? to house upwards of 1,200 graduate students. Graduate student housing is a rare commodity across metropolitan Boston, despite the presence of about 95,000 grad students. Given such demand, construction loans for such housing should be easier to secure than financing for commercial office space.
?A graduate facility built by a private company should do well,?? said Peter Cusato, who has overseen the construction of 2,000 new dorm beds for undergraduates in recent years at Boston University. ?We?d recommend it to our students.??
Bluestone sees Downtown Crossing, with its extensive public transit connections, as the perfect site for such housing. The stalled redevelopment project on the Filene?s block comes readily to Bluestone?s mind. As it turns out, the same idea has been on the mind of developer John B. Hynes III, who controls the controversial site.
?We?re open to it,?? says Hynes, who is under enormous public and political pressure to make something happen on the demolished block in the heart of the city?s business district. Hynes says he already has consulted with two unnamed companies that specialize in private dormitories. It might be feasible, he says, if he could secure long-term master leases from two or three local universities. The idea, he says, could also dovetail with the Menino administration?s effort to create a new district on the South Boston waterfront linking housing designs with industry clusters attractive to the city?s cadre of young researchers.
In his fifth and likely final term, this is a chance for Mayor Menino to look forward for creative housing solutions instead of over his shoulder for signs of neighborhood resistance.
If Bluestone?s civil war analogy really holds, Boston needs to get busy on reconstruction.
Lawrence Harmon can be reached at harmon@globe.com.
? Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
From boston.com:
Boston?s brewing battle for student housing
By Lawrence Harmon
February 17, 2010
IT?S TEMPTING to poke fun at parents who would pay a 50-60 percent premium to house their sons and daughters in the new suite-style college dormitories that are cropping up on campuses across the United States. Wood-fired pizza ovens in the dorm aren?t exactly character builders. But city and university officials in Boston who are serious about attracting and retaining well-educated young people need to maintain a steady supply of all manners of housing.
Though obviously overstating a point, Northeastern University economist Barry Bluestone compares the competition for young people to a war between the states. And if Boston wants to be on the winning side of this war, it will need to ensure an adequate and attractive supply of housing for college students - especially graduate students - says Bluestone. Otherwise, the region faces ?domestic net out-migration,?? the modern equivalent of typhoid during the real Civil War.
The Boston-area exodus got underway in earnest in the 2002-2004 period, when the population of young people in the 20-to-24 age range declined by 2.3 percent while rising nationally by 3.9 percent. The hemorrhaging has slowed down in the past few years due to a nationwide economic downturn. But Bluestone says Greater Boston will be ?in the soup again?? if housing prices spike.
A key battle was lost last year in Boston with the collapse of an effort to build a high-rise private dormitory behind the Huntington Avenue YMCA complex. The developer - Dallas-based Lincoln Property Co. - specializes in building commodious private dorms for students near major campuses, including the state universities in Maryland and Virginia. Similar dorms ring the University of Texas in Austin. Surely there should be room for one or two such dorms in Boston, home to 155,000 college students.
Last week, during an Urban Land Institute forum on student housing, John Cappellano of Lincoln Property Co. analyzed his company?s two-and-a-half year dorm misadventure in Boston. Some of the blame rests with the company?s out-sized effort to create a 34-story dormitory with 1,140 bedrooms to accommodate students attending Northeastern University, Berklee College of Music, Massachusetts College of Art, and other nearby colleges. But even after the company offered to reduce the project by 10 stories and 350 bedrooms, suspicious Fenway neighbors and city officials blocked the project.
Northeastern University officials also put up fierce resistance. They worried that the private dorm would upset their own plans to build a new 600-bed dorm on the same street. But Northeastern later abandoned its dorm plan, leaving the student housing market underserved. That?s how it happens too often in Boston: Kill the other guy?s project and then provide nothing in its stead.
Bluestone, who issues an annual housing report card for Greater Boston, says the city needs a ?multi-university graduate village?? to house upwards of 1,200 graduate students. Graduate student housing is a rare commodity across metropolitan Boston, despite the presence of about 95,000 grad students. Given such demand, construction loans for such housing should be easier to secure than financing for commercial office space.
?A graduate facility built by a private company should do well,?? said Peter Cusato, who has overseen the construction of 2,000 new dorm beds for undergraduates in recent years at Boston University. ?We?d recommend it to our students.??
Bluestone sees Downtown Crossing, with its extensive public transit connections, as the perfect site for such housing. The stalled redevelopment project on the Filene?s block comes readily to Bluestone?s mind. As it turns out, the same idea has been on the mind of developer John B. Hynes III, who controls the controversial site.
?We?re open to it,?? says Hynes, who is under enormous public and political pressure to make something happen on the demolished block in the heart of the city?s business district. Hynes says he already has consulted with two unnamed companies that specialize in private dormitories. It might be feasible, he says, if he could secure long-term master leases from two or three local universities. The idea, he says, could also dovetail with the Menino administration?s effort to create a new district on the South Boston waterfront linking housing designs with industry clusters attractive to the city?s cadre of young researchers.
In his fifth and likely final term, this is a chance for Mayor Menino to look forward for creative housing solutions instead of over his shoulder for signs of neighborhood resistance.
If Bluestone?s civil war analogy really holds, Boston needs to get busy on reconstruction.
Lawrence Harmon can be reached at harmon@globe.com.
? Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
kennedy
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Re: Filene's
Graduate students would be a good fit for Downtown Crossing, in my opinion. Not too rambunctious, as undergrads would be, and certainly quite educated. Probably wouldn't turn into NIMBYs, and I don't think there are many NIMBYs on Washington St. to opposed a bunch of students when they're faced with the alternative hole in the ground.
Graduate students would be a good fit for Downtown Crossing, in my opinion. Not too rambunctious, as undergrads would be, and certainly quite educated. Probably wouldn't turn into NIMBYs, and I don't think there are many NIMBYs on Washington St. to opposed a bunch of students when they're faced with the alternative hole in the ground.
czsz
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Re: Filene's
^ Agree. Although as a graduate student myself, I have to say that grad student housing needs to not be substandard in order to seriously address the shortage. Harvard has graduate apts that might have worked for college freshmen but aren't so great for 30something doctoral candidates with young children.
Sick.
^ Agree. Although as a graduate student myself, I have to say that grad student housing needs to not be substandard in order to seriously address the shortage. Harvard has graduate apts that might have worked for college freshmen but aren't so great for 30something doctoral candidates with young children.
Sick.
Ron Newman
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Re: Filene's
Downtown Crossing would be an excellent location for student housing, especially as Suffolk and Emerson have already colonized nearby blocks.
Downtown Crossing would be an excellent location for student housing, especially as Suffolk and Emerson have already colonized nearby blocks.
JohnAKeith
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Re: Filene's
Barry Bluestone says the same thing year after year after year. There's never been a reason to believe what he says and I fail to see one, now.
Barry Bluestone says the same thing year after year after year. There's never been a reason to believe what he says and I fail to see one, now.
Ron Newman
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Re: Filene's
Why do you think he is wrong about this idea?
Why do you think he is wrong about this idea?
Re: Filene's
It's a grerat idea, it's desperately needed, and it's a profit opportunity. Too bad that in today's economic times, a rare bankable idea is killed by NIMBYs.
Few things can be worse for everyone than widespread unemployment.
It's a grerat idea, it's desperately needed, and it's a profit opportunity. Too bad that in today's economic times, a rare bankable idea is killed by NIMBYs.
Few things can be worse for everyone than widespread unemployment.
TheRifleman
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Re: Filene's
So basically the only development projects that get built these days is student housing. Real Estate Tax's are pushing business's out of Boston. Colleges have pushed Real Estate to sky high prices because they do not pay any taxes. Boston is truly transforming into one industry. COLLEGE CITY.
This is not that positive to be focused on one industry.
So basically the only development projects that get built these days is student housing. Real Estate Tax's are pushing business's out of Boston. Colleges have pushed Real Estate to sky high prices because they do not pay any taxes. Boston is truly transforming into one industry. COLLEGE CITY.
This is not that positive to be focused on one industry.
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