MXD Residential Tower | 121 Broadway | Kendall Square

Justbuildit said:
What would a new Class A office/lab building serving as the HQ for a large pharma company be without prodigious underground parking?! Cross section from the filing. Not sure how the construction is getting done, with the vault area needing to be massively excavated.
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Thanks for the rendering. (Couldn't find mine quick enough). Confirms up/down construction here. Build the slurry walls and sink footings. Then steel can go up while you simultaneously dig out the dirt and build the garage downward, with the slurry walls and footings supporting the steel structure. The Akamai building was put up the same way.
 
johnmcboston said:
Thanks for the rendering. (Couldn't find mine quick enough). Confirms up/down construction here. Build the slurry walls and sink footings. Then steel can go up while you simultaneously dig out the dirt and build the garage downward, with the slurry walls and footings supporting the steel structure. The Akamai building was put up the same way.
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Its twin likely won't be built for a while, since that 2-story building has an outstanding lease. I think that's why the cross-section drawing shows the solid vertical foundation wall in the middle of the below-grade parking between the two.
johnmcboston said:
Geez, you weren't kidding about steel going up fast. Is there going to be parking under that building (up/down construction there?) Amazing what a signed lease will do. But also funny that building is going up like lightning, but the existing 2 story building, there it's twin will be, seems to have no activity...
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This project has been operating at a pace that seems to be extraordinary in terms of overall construction schedule: consider that there was a almost-block-long 5-story concrete parking garage that got demo'd almost instantaneously (Jan - Apr 2023, per photos upthread), meanwhile a site-wide deep slurry foundation has been installed, and now you've got three stories of steel on one end of the site. An insane pace.
 
From yesterday (8/31).

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Seeing these photos and wishing I was involved in this project:
  • Intense and unique infrastructure
  • Commercial high rise
  • Public space
  • Highly constrained site
Seems like a really fun challenge to be a part of.
 
Seeing the rapid progress on this site makes the slow-walking of so many other developments in Cambridge (e.g. the affordable housing on Mass Ave at Darul Kebab) just that much more frustrating.
 
OK, what are the sheet piles for? They've already got an 11 story slurry wall that I thought went to the property line. They need to dig an extra hole?
 
I think the slurry wall is just enclosing the substation. The residential tower has a distinct foundation.
 
Not sure exactly where to post this, but when looking for something else, I found this page to be fairly recently updated, detailing the design and infrastructure for the new underground electrical substation on this site (adjacent to this tower):

Greater Cambridge Energy Program | Eversource

Eversource proposes the GCEP to construct a new underground substation in Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, along with five new 115-kilovot (kV) underground transmission lines interconnecting to existing substations in the surrounding area.
www.eversource.com www.eversource.com

There's an informative overview video and some renderings. The complexity of all of this is staggering (to me anyway):
greater-cambridge-energy-project-graphic.jpg

^From: https://www.eversource.com/content/...tts-projects/greater-cambridge-energy-project
 
Surprised no one has posted. Starting this weekend, this project is taking another lane of traffic away. Broadway will be Eastbound only for the next year (inbound to Boston). No westbound at all. North side sidewalk and bike lanes moved. Peds have to cross the street. Bike lanes are being moved.

More in this flier.
 
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