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I thought I was in the thread for the new office building at new balance, it looks very very similar.
Some news on my 3rd most hated proposal in the city. (behind Congress Street Lab and 1 Bromfield)
Labs in the Leather District? Some have their doubts, but divisive project goes to BPDA. - The Boston Globe
A long-debated lab project on edge of Leather District and Chinatown has won support for a strong proposal to help develop affordable housing.www.bostonglobe.com
Do labs in core areas get shade because the space could be better utilized, or because the lab boom will peter out and we'll be left with several prominent unfinished jobs?
Do labs in core areas get shade because the space could be better utilized, or because the lab boom will peter out and we'll be left with several prominent unfinished jobs?
Why are we trying to build a sub 200' lab in a spot that could instead be a 700'+ residential?
This this thisThere are always significant challenges with building to that height, but I think there needs to be a fundamental shift in how we're approaching building in this city. The process is always focused on mitigating, minimizing, and containing development as if it's this horrible virus. We need to start with the FAA limit and work backwards. Start asking okay how do we get there? How many affordable housing units can we get in this building? Who can finance this? If changes need to be made based on structural/financial challenges fine. But as many have stated, the best use of this site which is next to a transit hub is dense residential housing. The city should accept nothing less.
Instead, we start with completely arbitrary limits on height, preference, aesthetic, and say what are we going to allow here, as the BCDC member stated at the hearing. Instead of trying to maximize the site, we try to minimize it. And this building is what we get.
We kind of do need 700 feet though—we're in a housing crisis and this is one of the most logical spots to have that level of density in the entire region...
Like Irfox said above, you can’t build a 700ft residential building without it being an ultra-lux condo building, which would do absolutely nothing to mitigate the housing crisis.
We have a dearth of middle/working class housing in the neighborhoods and in the suburbs. That’s what’s making homes and apartments across the metro so expensive. The Back Bay, Downtown, and the Seaport already have more than enough ultra-luxury housing to satisfy the needs of people looking for that sort of thing.
The point is that zoning and policy should allow the most value to be extracted (and returned to society) from the land parcel.
Isn’t that technically what’s happening? If making a 400ft condo building and selling units for 1.1mil a pop was the most valuable use for the land, then it would be happening.
The developer clearly thinks they’ll get more money for a lab.
Is the idea that the local restaurateurs will take turns being the ones doing the cooking? And that no one restaurant has enough big events to actually have a big space of its own, but that they all would like to host a big event (wedding, retirement, anniversary, office party) from time to time?The project includes 16,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial street. At the request of the community, Oxford said it will work to include a banquet hall in that space - possibly even through the return of Hei La Moon, which had long been located on the first floor of the garage, but which moved to Essex Street as planning for the garage's demise advanced.