Omni Hotel @ BCEC | Summer St | Seaport

Who remembers what was supposed to go here, over the pike, and in place of waterside place? It was a long time ago now but they had plans for a huge mall here with glass towers all around it. I think it got scrapped around the recession but there were plans here before almost any of these other parcels built or proposed. I think it may still have been called waterside place and it was massive and would have covered the whole area and put street walls on all 4 roads. Ill try to find the renders it’s been a long time though and I believe I had renders on my old computer back when I used to save them because they weren’t so easy to find as today.
 
Arborway said:
I understand what you're saying, but when every middling design can be dismissed with some variant on "it's only an infill building", then it concedes that is the best Boston can hope for.

Compelling design doesn't demand attention-seeking starchitect buildings. It can be something as modest as this.
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+1. I don't know why some of y'all are so quick to provide architects excuses instead of holding them to some standards.
 
You’d rather have the garage and the hail road?
 
Got it. My view is tht if it’s like the pru - internal pedestrian streets embedded in an active block..then that’s good.If it’s like south shore plaza then that’s bad.

I’ll agree that the d street rendering of waterside place was pretty bad.

I also really don’t like what’s emerging between the bcec and congresss st. And actually we pretty nearly have the original waterside place concept anyway, but without the haul road air rights...
 
I think the renderings actually do a decent job of bandaging over the real issue, which is the plan. It's a mall and a super-megablock rivaling the convention center, and that's just not great urbanism. Sure there are a few that remain successful but even in the best case, when that thing shut down at night anyone trying to move through the area would be forced to go around it. Think of the human-scale city blocks that could have gone in instead.

What we're getting isn't that much better tbh
 
I like the first rendering the best because I can look at it and see exactly where and when my dreams for a mixed-use, 30% residential neighborhood died.

stick n move said:
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.
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I guess I pose the question back to you all - who should approve said designs for architectural audacity? What should those standards be? And how much of that do we need vs, infill.

I work in the middle of Midtown Manhattan and when you are 20, 30, 40+ floors up, you see the reality of what makes up the skyline. I can see the BofA tower to my south and 30 Rock to my north, but all around me (my building included) is a lot of "meh", but it all adds to the sauce.

The waterfront is loaded with "meh" but how much of that needs to be iconic? Brickell in Miami is full of starchitect towers, but it still feels sterile at street level, especially at night.

I guess I will admit that I more concerned with bringing more office space, more hotel rooms and more housing online and improving the economics of Boston vs. the design element.
 
I know this is a dated render, the new ones I posted further up this page, but I found a render view that everybody including myself has been wondering about. How this is going to look from and how convenient is this to the BCEC. Although dated it still gives you a good enough idea of what you can expect looking the other way down Summer st. towards this development. You can see the ghost outlines of the garage and waterside place phase 1B as well which although superimposed I don't think those have been shown from this angle before either. Now I hope they'll show the other direction towards the city with the two parcels of seaport square on the right that have the steps between them to congress st. and there have also been a few proposals for a hotel across the street from that so maybe a ghost placeholder for that across the street too if necessary to show the density. Either way its cool to see how its going to look in a general sense from street level.

SeaportComp-3d-visualization-05.jpg



Just swap that view with this and you get the just of what were getting here:

Kjza2Aw.png
 
The long-discussed commuter rail shuttle station should be built from precisely where that truck is sitting on back to the curve at the overpass.

Instead:

Boston: "Let's build it on the far side of the convention center near the channel, within sight of South Station and offering pedestrian access to nothing, lmao"
 
Arborway said:
The long-discussed commuter rail shuttle station should be built from precisely where that truck is sitting on back to the curve at the overpass.

Instead:

Boston: "Let's build it on the far side of the convention center near the channel, within sight of South Station and offering pedestrian access to nothing, lmao"
Click to expand...

Interesting. I thought this plan was nixed. Any ETA on this?
 
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