Our Lady of Good Voyage | Seaport Sq Parcel H | 55 - 57 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

It's fine to go after the church and its tax status...but then please go after mosques, temples, universities, schools, hospitals, government buildings, shelters, food pantries, and a myriad of other tax-exempt institutions. This doesn't justify the homeliness of this particular rendering (let's hope the interior is a calm, peaceful, and beautiful design) but I also want remind everyone that the chapel is not a stand-alone church. It is the responsibility of a South Boston parish, which is must maintain and staff the chapel and which may be a financial burden already to an overly-stretched parish community. It would be a sad day when or if quiet, meditative, and spiritually nurturing places stopped being available for the benefit of all just because of the obvious foibles and shortcomings of organized religions and the hurt that humans running such organizations may sometimes perpetrate, despite the faiths' core messages. I contend that the good resulting from religion, which rarely gets attention, far outweighs any bad results. And despite my nom-de-plum, I'm no longer in ministry.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Padre Mike said:
It's fine to go after the church and its tax status...but then please go after mosques, temples, universities, schools, hospitals, government buildings, shelters, food pantries, and a myriad of other tax-exempt institutions. This doesn't justify the homeliness of this particular rendering (let's hope the interior is a calm, peaceful, and beautiful design) but I also want remind everyone that the chapel is not a stand-alone church. It is the responsibility of a South Boston parish, which is must maintain and staff the chapel and which may be a financial burden already to an overly-stretched parish community. It would be a sad day when or if quiet, meditative, and spiritually nurturing places stopped being available for the benefit of all just because of the obvious foibles and shortcomings of organized religions and the hurt that humans running such organizations may sometimes perpetrate, despite the faiths' core messages. I contend that the good resulting from religion, which rarely gets attention, far outweighs any bad results. And despite my nom-de-plum, I'm no longer in ministry.
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Officially the last joke I'll ever attempt to make on this site.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Padre Mike said:
It's fine to go after the church and its tax status...but then please go after mosques, temples, universities, schools, hospitals, government buildings, shelters, food pantries, and a myriad of other tax-exempt institutions. This doesn't justify the homeliness of this particular rendering (let's hope the interior is a calm, peaceful, and beautiful design) but I also want remind everyone that the chapel is not a stand-alone church. It is the responsibility of a South Boston parish, which is must maintain and staff the chapel and which may be a financial burden already to an overly-stretched parish community. It would be a sad day when or if quiet, meditative, and spiritually nurturing places stopped being available for the benefit of all just because of the obvious foibles and shortcomings of organized religions and the hurt that humans running such organizations may sometimes perpetrate, despite the faiths' core messages. I contend that the good resulting from religion, which rarely gets attention, far outweighs any bad results. And despite my nom-de-plum, I'm no longer in ministry.
Click to expand...

Why do you assume that I do not have a problem with tax exempt status of other houses of worship? I also have a problem with having most hospitals (who really are profit making institutions) as tax exempt. And I think it is asinine that schools like Harvard with massive endowments do not pay taxes as well as many private schools in general. It would be stupid for the government to tax its own buildings however. However most (if not all) food pantries and homeless shelters are not out there to make a profit. Those are the very institutions tax exemption should be used for. I a not against tax exemption, I just think it is hard to look at the vatican or the evangelical preachers and say they are not profit making institutions.

While I fundamentally disagree with you on religion I am not going to go into it because It is unrelated to the thread and I know my comments will be put somewhere else while yours will be allowed to stand.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

110714goodvoyage.jpg


While the Herald covers the chapel groundbreaking, the project is actually the office building (above left) and chapel. The two buildings are connected by a passageway.

For better or worse, the passageway from office building to chapel block one of the few view corridors into and out of a Fort Point, this one being the alley seen here:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/B...2!3m1!1s0x89e3652d0d3d311b:0x787cbf240162e8a0

Having attended only one public meeting, I have no idea why the two buildings needed to be adjoining. If the chapel needed more space perhaps it should have been built on a different parcel or added another floor. Or, with the chapel seen as a high priority in the Seaport Square Master Plan, perhaps it should have occupied the entire site and the office building site used for the required open space.

View corridors and alleys add interest to pedestrians walking along an otherwise blocky district. Now Parcel H eliminates one opportunity. My two cents.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

DZH22 said:
Why do we need any more churches in this city? Are the existing ones overflowing with huge congregations?
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Unlike the colonial meeting house and church era, Catholics were not in Boston Proper when all the long-held church locations were staked out for residential walk-to-church congregations. Nor were there any Catholic churches anywhere in the Back Bay. Upper crust Boston was strictly Protestant and staked out for itself protestant places of worship...which are still dotted over the city center. Catholics mostly bought used buildings as the congregations moved out (St Stephen's in the North End and the old Cathedral site on Franklin St were both bought as the protestant upper-crust moved to better digs in fancier neighborhoods)

So Boston Proper is relatively under-churched for a city that came to have (and still has) has a relatively large number of Catholics thanks to late 19thc Irish and early 20th C. Italian/Portuguese.

Only in the 1950s, when Cardinal Cushing built the "workers chapels" (one at Kenmore, Prudential, Beacon Hill, DTX, and OLGV at the seaport), did Catholic churches arrive in the historic parts of Boston.

Chapels were not built by/for congregations in this case, but were put there to support office/transient/worker populations, predominantly working class Irish and Italians who found themselves working Sundays & Holidays (jobs like Telephone Operators and building staff like janitors, elevator operators, and boiler tenders, if you read who the donors were at St Anthony's Shrine in the stained glass in the lobby). OLGV catered to fisherman, dockworkers, and ship's crews.

The economic status of Catholics has improved, and now the grandchildren of those populations are lawyers, bankers, and accountants...and still find themselves working downtown on Sundays and Holidays.. and using those chapels. And some (enough) go to church more than 1x per week.

DZH22 said:
Does the Seaport have every other necessary amenity that we can build frivolous shit like this?(emphasis added)
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Who is we?

I'd say that the way a free society gets its amenities is through a mix of government, for-profit, and charitable action.

To each his own, or as the old faux-Lincoln quote has it:People who like this sort of thing will find this the sort of thing they like."

The Government should build an elementary school (if there turn out to be kids in the Seaport, which I doubt...or maybe a charter school, if someone can come up with a theme that needs a school, if the neighborhood doesn't)

Some grocery company, we hope, would find it a profitable enterprise to open a store. I won't compel them to, and they're not going to ask me to chip in for shelves and display freezers.

And the charitable sector--religious, in this case--may find that believers find a walkable chapel a very nice amenity. People who like this sort of thing, will find it the sort of thing they like. And as I understand it, OLGV sat for a half-century on a triangular plot (donated by the New Haven Railroad or its President because they owned the RR-piers), and that large-ish plot was a grid-buster for the new street setup and so natural to swap for a corner lot facing the Financial District (and being a convenient walk to places that St Anthony's Shrine is not).

{Edit: and you can be almost guaranteed that somebody in the university sector is going to plop a night school location somewhere in there, if University of Phoenix doesn't drop a for-profit one in first}
 
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Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Padre Mike said:
...It would be a sad day when or if quiet, meditative, and spiritually nurturing places stopped being available for the benefit of all...
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Totally agree.

2011_BatesHall_BostonPublicLibrary_USA_6597714759.jpg
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I don't think i'd really call a library a spiritually nurturing place.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I don't know what would be a better example of a place that nurtures the human spirit.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Not everyone is religious or is involved in organized religion so while I agree that churches are spiritual they are not the only option. In reality spirituality and spiritual places vary for each person so yes for you it is a church, but for someone else it is the library, for another person it might be spending time in nature, etc.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

This is not the appropriate thread for this discussion at all.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

datadyne007 said:
This is not the appropriate thread for this discussion at all.
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If we could stay focused on what uses make a "city-center district" complete, I think we can get through this.

The Suburban Basics:
Office/Lab space? Check.
Convenience/Lunch Retail? Check.
Fitness/Leisure/Active/Children's Museum? Check.
Bar? Check
Structured Parking? Coming Soon.

So, far, its Burlington, with a Children's Museum playing the role of Chuck E Cheese.

The "Destination" Extras
Cinema/Performance/Convention? Very.
Transit hub? Check.
Hotel/Event/White Tablecloth? Check.

Ok, so now its a slightly better version of Quincy.

Really if you look at this as a checklist, the Seaport is doing very very well...if you're the kind of person who never stops to breathe or eat a meal cooked by you or someone you know. The seaport has got the make-money / spend-money / indulge thing nailed. But then, what about....

The "True Multiuse"
Residential...kinda rare and isolated
Grocery...chicken & egg with residential
School...depends on at least residential and probably grocery

Which, if it had it, would make a sort of Disney Celebration Burlington. How about a voice or two that isn't strictly for profit? Seems like that's pretty important....

Quiet/Contemplative
Religious
Library
Art Museum

Ok, got the Art Museum and now 1 chapel. If the city had had a land-swap library branch, I bet we'd be looking at renders of it. Instead, I come back to Boston having been good at streering the upside of the Silver Line into business blocs and not so good in promoting actual life...thank God (or god) for non-governmental non-commercial actors here. If only we'd gotten a tunnel under D street from the City...
 
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Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

District Hall is proving to be a pretty spectacular and unique "other place" on the Seaport. And that's from someone who doesn't at all buy into the Innovation District branding.
 
Re: Our Lady of Good Voyage/SpSq Parcel H/55 - 57 Seaport Blvd/Seaport

New chapel will be on the west side of the site and a small office building will be on the east side of the site.
goodvoyage
 
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