One Mystic | 1 Mystic Avenue | Charlestown

Equilibria said:
And how many people do you really think are going to look to spend an active retirement next to the Charlestown bus yard, hemmed in my railroad tracks and parking lots? This is a commuter building.
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As the energy plant closes and the Wynn complex extends along the north shore of the mystic, the market rate units will be snapped up.
Look how much that area along the mystic has changed in the last five years.
Sure, the T station is run down, the traffic is a mess and the bus yard is not attractive
but that sounds like someone looking at the Assembly proposal and saying who wants to live in a superfund site hemmed in by 28, 93 and railroads.
By the time anything like this opens, retirees who like casinos won't give covid a second thought.
And the view of the Tobin would be cool :)
 
The Globe comment section for this development gave me a headache. I wish the article had said something about the fact that there's a roughly 1:3 parking ratio for this building (1 space for every 3 units) per the LOI. While a bigger-than-usual project than we're use to in these parts, it's completely consistent with the development happening in that area. Assembly Row, Hood, and Cambridge Crossing will make for a nice daisy chain of mid-rises and high rises stretching north of Downtown that One Mystic will blend in among... perhaps standout if it does in fact get the architectural pizazz that the developers are selling in their LOI. I also think an unintended benefit of One Mystic is that it could normalize the 'short cut' of using Arlington Ave and Dorrance Streets to avoid Sullivan Square (a recent discovery that has transformed my journey to Assembly Row from Everett)--as it looks now, Arlington Ave feels like a private driveway for the MBTA bus yard--it's not.
 
Wow, sure is large... almost comically large... The least I can say about the design is that it just appears like a first pass from a first year archi student on this.


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~Welcome to~ CHARLESTOWN

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..... needs some work....
 
At 334', the scale is bold and good for the area. However, the design needs a major overhaul. Out of all the 300'+ towers recently constructed, u/c, and proposed out in the neighborhoods, this one is the worst.
 
theSil said:
The buildings added to the righthand side of this image, are those based on any actual projects? I don't know of any proposals that large over there.
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I think that's their attempt to show the build out of Hood Park, which has an approved master plan PDA and I think a few buildings have also received approval.

The renderings are bad, the design is meh, those balconies are going to be VEed which honestly might help. I am all for the scale here. Id love to see Sullivan be a less office park version of Kendall.
 
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theSil said:
The buildings added to the righthand side of this image, are those based on any actual projects? I don't know of any proposals that large over there.
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Hood Business Park | 480-570 Rutherford Avenue | Charlestown

Blackbird said:
In the no-man's-land between Sullivan in Charlestown and Assembly in Somerville? No, this is exactly what the doctor ordered.

Also I'm usually against random facades, but this is "random" in a predictable way. I really like it.
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The grey and glass caps on each of the tower portions are too separated from the rest of the building to me, and the balcony placement looks like someone lost control of their copy command. I'm also sick of this general facade style by now...

I do like how it seems to set up a new neighborhood of similar sized buildings parallel to Dorrance Street. Maybe it can convince a developer in an MBTA pipe dream of a new PPP bus garage that they keep mentioning in reports - a massive bus garage takes the first two floors, and there's a few hundred units of residential placed above. A nightmare if you need some new equipment installed or substantial maintenance, but hopefully you can design for that. Some of the other facilities at Charlestown can't really get the same treatment, but if demand for this area rises, maybe some creative proposals will start coming in.
 
Its not the style I would pick, but its definitely not the worst of whats going up, and this is the perfect location for that much denisty. At least its not several different facades. Also 695 units is awesome!!! Horay high rises that actually achieve some density in stead of empty sky pallaces for the mega rich.
 
Some highlights:
  • 1 Mystic is replacing a low-density light industrial property, surface lot, and auto salvage yard
  • Net housing stock increase: 695 units
    • Mix of Studios, 1-beds, and 2-beds
    • 604 market rate units, 91 affordable units
  • Public Benefit(s):
    • Improved bike/ped circulation
    • New 'Passeo' (officially paseo) to break up the 1-acre block
    • Activated ground floor with 13,000 square feet of retail
  • On-Site Parking: below ground garage for up to 243 vehicles (1:3 ratio :)) and up to 842 bicycles! :love:
  • Transit-Oriented Development: literally a 3-minute walk from entrance of 1 Mystic to Sullivan Square's entrance, including orange line and more than a dozen MBTA bus routes
  • Resident amenities are consistent with newer large-scale multi-families in the area, including gym(s), swimming pool, game areas, and activated roof decks.

This is a winner. Plain and simple. BCDC can fuss about the design minutiae, but in terms of massing, programming, and use, this needs to happen.
 
I love what they're aiming for here on the first pass. This corner is as far from any Charlestown or Somerville traditional NIMBY resident as you can get. It's almost on top of Sullivan station, so a very low parking ratio is appropriate.

Still don't understand the inclusion of a market. Who are their customers?

Also - the private courtyard is going to be overlooking highways, truck routes, and very active rail lines. That seems incredibly noisy. Same with the bulk of those balconies. Seems like on the protected side of the building makes more sense.
 
Vagabond said:
I love what they're aiming for here on the first pass. This corner is as far from any Charlestown or Somerville traditional NIMBY resident as you can get. It's almost on top of Sullivan station, so a very low parking ratio is appropriate.

Still don't understand the inclusion of a market. Who are their customers?

Also - the private courtyard is going to be overlooking highways, truck routes, and very active rail lines. That seems incredibly noisy. Same with the bulk of those balconies. Seems like on the protected side of the building makes more sense.
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market will be for the ~1,000 residents plus maybe some others in the immediate area.

I agree with the noise but can’t be much worse than cars.com park over the pike, or even where the Bobby Orr statue is.

Lastly, balconys facing the highway etc will have city view vs. encore/wind turbine/powerpl
 
How difficult/expensive would it be to deck over the tracks to connect this area to Assembly? Without the decking, these areas will always be isolated enclaves instead of integrated neighborhoods.
 
This reminds me of what I've seen in Jersey City (which has seriously affordable market-rate "luxury" units by NYC standards) and honestly it's just what Boston needs. Just dump apartment density on an outlying formerly light industrial no-man's land with very few close residential neighbors and let it turn into a semi-desirable area for practical workforce housing. You don't need a multi-phase master plan or a central developer and you certainly don't want to micromanage it; just give some small/midscale developers with the right idea enough regulatory leeway to let them work the market. It's not beautiful or fancy but it gets the job done.

I'd also love to see this happen along Mystic Ave through Medford on the S side of the Mystic River. That entire mile-long stretch could easily look like Boylston St through the Fenway if Medford let the market steer things.
 
I should note I fully support this project. My earlier comments on it being comically large were on first pass - with time, it'll hopefully bring equally sized developments across all the open parking lots and industrial office space directly adjacent to this. There's absolutely no reason Sullivan Square can't become a new major development epicenter. There are about a dozen open lots adequately sized for hundreds of residential units just steps from the T, and hopefully this project opens some eyes for developers. Little risk - no NIMBYs, easy site development, easily marketable/sellable.

BronsonShore said:
How difficult/expensive would it be to deck over the tracks to connect this area to Assembly? Without the decking, these areas will always be isolated enclaves instead of integrated neighborhoods.
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It'd surely be nice, and surely be expensive. It'd also be a while before that happens. There's no incentive currently with all the open/redevelop-able lots both around Assembly and here. I imagine as both mature, though, that a pedestrian overpass might be included in some larger scale planning. Again, that's years out. Hood Park to Assembly is currently a dull, grey, and heavily auto-centric trip. It'd be nice to someday see that connection come to fruition. Maybe it could even pass Hood Park over to Community College and the parks along the Charles.

Hopefully the MBTA can get smart here in their public private partnerships over the next decade. They're there to stay, but their land value is likely going to go up a pretty penny if this development and subsequent ones succeed. That will come at a time when most of the buildings here will be coming to their absolute end of lifecycle needing full replacement or substantial renovation, add-on, and/or repair.
 
BronsonShore said:
How difficult/expensive would it be to deck over the tracks to connect this area to Assembly? Without the decking, these areas will always be isolated enclaves instead of integrated neighborhoods.
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Even if you did this, it's still a bit far from Assembly to become integrated in to it. It's a bit of a dead space behind home depot and even the Partners building. I'd imagine this has a better chance of integrating with what ever else gets developed around Sullivan st. and then with east broadway (Somerville).
 
I think the zoomed-out renders do this facade a disservice - it looks quite interesting in the higher-res ground level renders.

I'm not sure they've quite delivered on the "monumental gateway icon for the whole City from I-93" promise in the LOI, but it's not unattractive.
 
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