Omni Hotel @ BCEC | Summer St | Seaport

This looks good (enough) to me! It's a convention center hotel; it was always going to be bland and boring. Besides, Boston has a long and strong tradition of bland and boring convention center hotels. This is way better architecture than some of our incumbent ones. And this will be proper steel and concrete, not 5-over-1 like some other new BCEC hotels.

I fully expect that the silly details (like the misaligned canopies) will be worked out in the process. I also have a really hard time seeing light retail work along WTC Ave.

What matters is that this will activate the street(s) significantly and add over 1,000 rooms. With each successive project along D, Summer, and the south side of Congress we're tying the BCEC into the city. Let's keep it up.
 
The general shape, with the 2-3 story glass podium reminds me of the Omni in Ft. Worth, TX.

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JumboBuc said:
I also have a really hard time seeing light retail work along WTC Ave.
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Agreed, but there will be the inevitable hotel restaurant and Starbucks that would help activate the street to some degree if they put them on the ground level with entrances from the sidewalk.

Edit: Just noted there is a Starbucks in one of the renders on the D Street side. And they put in an actual "separated bike lane" along the front of the building!
 
elemenoh said:
Agreed, but there will be the inevitable hotel restaurant and Starbucks that would help activate the street to some degree if they put them on the ground level with entrances from the sidewalk.

Edit: Just noted there is a Starbucks in one of the renders on the D Street side. And they put in an actual "separated bike lane" along the front of the building!
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Retail in the ground floor of the hotel is absolutely appropriate. It'll activate those streets and be used by guests and convention-goers. I'm skeptical about retail further up WTC Ave, over the Haul Rd and towards the garage and Waterside Place (as proposed by CSTH). I have a hard time seeing retail there--removed from the hotel--being successful.
 
Guys, WTC ave is how you walk from the silver line & several hotels to the convention center. You're skeptical of retail working on that pathway?
 
datadyne007 said:
Good stuff.

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According to Curbed apparently this is the final design vs the other few iterations that had been floating around. I think its a pretty solid design, great street level, ties into surrounding neighborhood well and brings a substantial amount of rooms directly across the BCEC. Seems like a huge win for the neighborhood. It also mentions it going to contain Boston biggest ball room which I had not known before. So this ballroom, the multiple new court yards, the theater in seaport sq pt2, grocery store, pharmacy at watermark, the memorial, ice rink in ssq part 2 in the winter, movie theater at seaport square, we already have the blue hills pavilion, much improved harbor walk. At this time it is rounding into pretty nice new and real neighborhood and its good to see.

People were casting judgement way too soon while it was still a huge construction site with a couple glass office towers. Were just getting started, from 2018 on is when the seaport rounds into form and people are going to be pleasantly surprised. No historic neighborhood was demolished to build this and its coming out great. Its going to be able to stand on its own as a change of pace in Boston where you can go here for a waterfront shopping/dining destination with a very nice public realm rounding in to form. The key here is nothing was lost and we are gaining a lot. I think people are really going to like it here and with all of the ground level retail on multiple floors off the ground its going to be like a modern day newbury st on the water.
 
Also of note in the 1st pic (aerial) sausage parcel and parcel K are filled in.
 
I wonder if they left a provision for a future dmu station at the back of the building.
 
stick n move said:
Also of note in the 1st pic (aerial) sausage parcel and parcel K are filled in.
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It also depicts the Waterside 1B project and the eastern edge of the Echelon project (M1-M2).
 
Also shows how important that weird circular lot next to WTC ave + TWT ramp is for completing the streetwall
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Such a stupefyingly bland and ugly building.
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:confused: ??

It's fine. Call me weird cuz i liked Columbus Ctr too. Hotels: like bro, the more affordable our hotels -- the better it is for everyone, business, etc..... build baby build.
 
Shit design is shit design. They could have had one side with multiple slants (mimicking sails on a boat) but nope, let's go with a box. If it wasn't because Boston constantly hires this amateur company, Elkus Manfredi would have been out of business. And if you wondering what I meant by slants, look at the Millennium Tower.

Literally this generation's Sheraton hotels.

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Yeah....usually I'm telling people to ease off on the Seaport but that seems like the minimal amount of effort put into the design.
 
Elkus Manfredi pumping out a design that looks like 0 effort has been put into it? Shocked, I am shocked!
 
It's too bad we can't get an real architects like Zaha Hadid to design buildings here
 
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KentXie said:
It's too bad we can't get an real architects like Zaha Hadid to design buildings here:
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I got so excited for a second that this was a new proposal, and then I got instantly sad.
 
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