News ONLY Columbus Center Thread

[ablarc]

^ This is NEWS ... right ?



(The art isn't even very good.)

 

[PlanBoston]

In real CC news, there has been some activity on the Clarendon / Stanhope site this week. Some of the steel coming out of the ground was cut off below grade, and a new fence is being installed close to the Pike. Hopefully the perimeter fence will come down.
If we're really lucky, we'll get a nice suburban patch of grass. </sarcasm>

 

[Ned Flaherty]

[size=+2]New Developers may start from scratch[/size]

 

[Ned Flaherty]

[size=+2]Notice of Default[/size]

This Default Notice, issued by Massachusetts Department of Transportation to California on 9 February 2010, details 4 facts which I began posting as far back as March 2008, but which many forum members refused to believe:

(1) California bought the project [in 2006].
(2) California failed to fund it.
(3) California?s local East Coast managers failed to obtain approvals, and gave up trying.
(4) Neither tunnel construction nor building construction ever started.

Effective 9 February, access to Turnpike property by California and its affiliates is prohibited.

 

[PlanBoston]

It's official - R.I.P.

Columbus Center mega-project officially over

By Casey Ross, Globe Staff - March 10, 2010 05:14 PM
After 13 tortured years, the massive Columbus Center construction project in Boston is officially dead.

The complex's main backer, the California state pension fund, told state officials Wednesday the $800 million development is no longer financially feasible, and that it is winding down its involvement. The announcement comes one month after Massachusetts officials told Calpers and its development partner that their failure to resume construction put them in default of their lease of the state land on which it would be built.

While Columbus Center had been moribund for several years while Calpers and its local developer, the WinnCompanies, struggled to find financing for the ever-more expensive construction, yesterday's disclosure amounts to an official death notice.

"With the deterioration in markets, the project is not viable today nor is it likely to be viable in the near future," Calpers real estate manager, Stockbridge Bridge Capital Group, said in a statement.

link: http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2010/03/columbus_center.html

At least this hole in the middle of the city has a highway going through it.