Pierce Boston (née The Point )| Boylston St/Brookline Av | Fenway

Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

palindrome said:
I believe those units are long term leased to Harvard for grad school housing.
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Correct. The tenants are Harvard Medical School students. This lease came about when the residential tower component of Longwood Center (née Joslin Center) was cut.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

palindrome said:
Also kind of related. Anyone know whats going on with the park itself? The whole thing has been torn up and all the trees cut down. There were a few bulldozers and an excavator there.
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Like Choo said, daylighting the muddy river. It's an ACOE project. I think the rationale was flood control. But it will be a nice little extension (restoration) of the Fens.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

Was down in the area today for work (looking at the Yawkey Way Extension project) and was floored by how much pedestrian activity there is in the area. As I remember it, the area around Fenway used to be DEAD during the day non-baseball season. Today there were people shopping, eating, hanging out. Samuels deserves the urban planning equivalent of a medal of honor and he's not even done yet.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

Can we outsource the BRA to Samuels? Please?!?
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

Roof top pool = fuck yes.
No parking, already built = double fuck yes.

Now onto what I dont like:

The pedestrian area by the triology turned into a service road

Boylston ave redesign not shown at all, and it just recently was deleted from the city website, whats going on?

The green roof seems wasted, should be more residential ameneties

Balconies would be nice as well. - would possibly work as a triangular flatiron element.



When will the sears circle be fixed? In our lifetimes?
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

I love what's happening along this stretch of Boylston. The thing is though, these buildings are not that different than the other crap that's going up all around the city. They have big footprints and they're squat. Albeit their materials may be a bit better. But what really sets them apart are their street levels. They are totally pedestrian oriented. These buildings have active perimeters, lined with tons of retail. This is all it really takes to make a building a well behaved urban building.

So if Samuels can do this on a auto strip on the outer frontier of the city's core, why can't other developers do it in more established parts of the city? Why do we have buildings like Liberty Mutual's new HQ with a totally inactive street level, or buildings like the Victor, Kensington, 120 Kingston, or 319 A St. devoting substantial portions of theirs to above-ground parking garages? Why does 45 Stuart St devote the entirety of their street level to parking? These buildings are essentially creating permanent dead spots in the city.

Samuels is demonstrating how good urbanism can equal success--as if it had to proven here. There's really no excuse for the poorly designed street levels we're getting from most new buildings in Boston today.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

briv said:
I love what's happening along this stretch of Boylston. The thing is though, these buildings are not that different than the other crap that's going up all around the city. They have big footprints and they're squat. Albeit their materials may be a bit better. But what really sets them apart are their street levels. They are totally pedestrian oriented. These buildings have active perimeters, lined with tons of retail. This is all it really takes to make a building a well behaved urban building.

So if Samuels can do this on a auto strip on the outer frontier of the city's core, why can't other developers do it in more established parts of the city? Why do we have buildings like Liberty Mutual's new HQ with a totally inactive street level, or buildings like the Victor, Kensington, 120 Kingston, or 319 A St. devoting substantial portions of theirs to above-ground parking garages? Why does 45 Stuart St devote the entirety of their street level to parking? These buildings are essentially creating permanent dead spots in the city.

Samuels is demonstrating how good urbanism can equal success--as if it had to proven here. There's really no excuse for the poorly designed street levels we're getting from most new buildings in Boston today.
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+1

Boston is a CITY.

It should be ILLEGAL for any non-hospital building over 6 stories to exist without ground floor retail/restaurant, etc.

Cities are not gated suburbs. People live and group in cities for the communal experience. It's the very DEFINITION of "city".

In this respect, I disagree with you about the squat, large footprint point you made. Late 19th century buildings in Paris and Berlin are very often "large footprint/squat" - - the difference however is that they incorporate ground floor retail!!!!!!

THAT is the secret to the sauce, folks. The hell with almost everything else. The folks here clamoring for supertalls as if it is the only criteria would be happy living in Houston? I don't think so.

We are human beings. The on-the-ground human experience is what counts most. I would love Boston to have a giant skyline as much as the next, but a city of supertalls with little to no street life is not an interesting or vital city......it is just an immense gated community.

What Steve Samuels is doing is fantastic. The transformation of Boylston Street and the Fenway area should be studied by everyone in contrast to what is going in the North Station, Cambridge (although Kendall Square seems to be attempting to correct its past mistakes) and Seaport areas.

My hope is that, with the new influx of residential in central Boston (you know, actual HUMANOIDS migrating in to LIVE) there will be a more pronounced push for active and urban streetscapes.
 
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Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

Ya know what, I am sick and tired of people framing arguments around here as if height and street-level interaction have to be mutually exclusive.

So just because I point out that Boston's 7 tallest buildings have been dominating the skyline since they were built in the 60's, 70's, and 80's (25+ years ago for all) I automatically want Boston to turn into Houston? Can you make any more of a MISGUIDED argument? Houston's problem has nothing to do with the height, and everything to do with lacking the density of a more established city around the skyscrapers. To make Boston more like Houston, first we would have to level areas such as the North End, Beacon Hill, Back Bay sans high spine, South End, etc. This isn't going to happen.

There is no reason we can't have tall buildings built in the core/high spine that also incorporate ground level amenities.

In terms of the current proposal, I like it. Adds variety and it will slightly raise the height of the whole area. It's good for where it is, but let's not try to transfer this and say we should be filling in the Filenes hole with a 22 story building just for the ground level retail. It's the 21st century so maybe Boston should learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

DZH22 said:
Ya know what, I am sick and tired of people framing arguments around here as if height and street-level interaction have to be mutually exclusive.

So just because I point out that Boston's 7 tallest buildings have been dominating the skyline since they were built in the 60's, 70's, and 80's (25+ years ago for all) I automatically want Boston to turn into Houston? Can you make any more of a MISGUIDED argument? Houston's problem has nothing to do with the height, and everything to do with lacking the density of a more established city around the skyscrapers. To make Boston more like Houston, first we would have to level areas such as the North End, Beacon Hill, Back Bay sans high spine, South End, etc. This isn't going to happen.

There is no reason we can't have tall buildings built in the core/high spine that also incorporate ground level amenities.

In terms of the current proposal, I like it. Adds variety and it will slightly raise the height of the whole area. It's good for where it is, but let's not try to transfer this and say we should be filling in the Filenes hole with a 22 story building just for the ground level retail. It's the 21st century so maybe Boston should learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.
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Excuse me, but where did I write anything as if height and street level interaction were "mutually exclusive" and that you "automatically want Boston to turn into Houston"? Go ahead, DZH22, where????

Why don't you leave out the hyperbole and maybe there can be a decent conversation on the subject.

Most intelligent people reading the words I wrote regarding height - -
"I would love Boston to have a giant skyline as much as the next, but a city of supertalls with little to no street life is not an interesting or vital city......"
- - would easily understand that I am NOT against height and would merely want the best of BOTH worlds.

When you wrote: "There is no reason we can't have tall buildings built in the core/high spine that also incorporate ground level amenities." That is EXACTLY the point I am making! Shame on the developers of those tall buildings for NOT FINISHING THE JOB.


I am deeply sorry you were not able to comprehend the very straightforward post I made applauding Briv's.
 
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Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

DominusNovus said:
Anyone else think it looks like a Star Destroyer from above (the 'site' map shows that best)?
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True, and even more chillingly, it looks like the Death Star toy from the 70s, complete with a large trash compactor on the second floor.

I think this building looks great, and I'm glad that they didn't go flat iron all the way. I'd enjoy owning one of the three bedroom units.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

^^^Sorry, most of it really wasn't directly at you either, although you happened to mention Houston. It's more of a personal rant that you just kind of found yourself in the way of. (although, I didn't understand your 19th century Paris/Berlin buildings quote at all. Of course they were going to build short, it was the 1800's! Aside from church spires, there was no tall!)

Basically, here is my problem at this point. My first memory of a skyscraper under construction was seeing 1 IP when it was already topped off, from a school bus on a field trip. I was in kindergarten! So, in essence, I have spent my entire life without seeing Boston go taller than what was already there. Not just the Hancock either, I mean the top 7 which dominate the high spine and the plateau. In fact, did you realize that we haven't built a 400' building here in 10 years?

It's not like Boston is some dead or dying city. There have been a ton of great proposals, and always the promise of "just you wait until next year, when A, B, and C are all under construction!" Well we have been getting jerked around now for 15 fucking years!!!!!

So at this point I have ZERO TOLERANCE for people who say that Boston is fine and never needs to build tall again. It's as if the comment temporarily infects me with the rage virus from 28 Days Later. It's not just that I disagree with you, but I literally want to destroy you.

I have been gone 9 months now, with the full expectation that by the time I returned in May, both the Copley Place Tower and Filenes Tower would be out of the ground and I could watch them rise. Instead, we have a record amount of cranes and not even a 100 meter building to show for it. I think the closest disappointment I can compare this to for me is 18-1. That's how much it hurts.

As a last thing, I am very happy that Boston continues to make gains in its street level interaction. But for those of you who complain about this, Boston/(Cambridge/Somerville/Brookline/etc) has one of the largest walkable areas of land in the entire United States. Try checking out the cities in the South for some truly shitty urbanism! I have noticed this in some of the midwestern cities too. The urbanism dies when the skyscrapers do. People here just don't know how good they have it.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

RE: the design & street level:
If you walk around Manhattan, the vast majority of the architecture boarders somewhere between "meh" and "fucking terrible". But on the street there is a storefront every 20 feet or less, so you rarely ever look up to appreciate the awfulness towering above. This is why Manhattan frequently beats the crap out of all other citys in the US for urbanism, its everywhere.


RE: going tall:
I am so completely ambivalent to skyscrapers I'm sure its baffling to the tall fetishists. Honestly my thought is "who cares?"

Skyscrapers can, for the most part, only be seen and fully appreciated from outside the city, or at least from a great distance from their direct area of influence.

Skyscrapers only economically make sense where the desirable area is fully built out (ie, manhattan). In Boston there is a wealth of space that has remained stagnant for decades that has the potential to be built out. Fenway is of course the poster child for this, but you could see that level of development (parking/vacant lot and single floor taxpayer redevelopment) in Allston, Roxbury, JP and Eastie for the next 30 years and still not need to go +200'.

Boston is a compact city. You can walk from most of the outer neighborhoods to the center of the city in an hour or so. In NY you can't even traverse a borough in that time.This is the main reason I think you don't see many tall buildings here, and the ones you do see have by and large been built by corporations where economics are not an issue, but image is. And if you want a paramount image, a skyscraper is the way to go.

To be clear, I'm not arguing against tall buildings. If they work, then fine. And they do work in the dense city center. What I am arguing is that Boston does not have a striking need for them. For every Kensington you could build three or more Trilogys. As has been seen in Fenway, the transformative effect of just a smattering of these buildings can holistically change the character (and economic status) of a neighborhood for the better.

So, if people (developers and tenants) want to pay the premium for a high rise for the image or views, then let them. But the net effect of several 15-30 story buildings is a far greater net positive than a single tower. This isn't the 70s where every city was clamoring for a supertall to put it on the map to help fend off white flight. City's in general are in the midst of a renascence, and it is the metropolitan aspect of living that is driving this, not the image of an iconic tower.


RE: street level interaction and towers being mutually exclusive.
The taller you go, the more "stuff" you need. A short building may only need a garage door for some trash bins while a tall one needs an entire room for a compactor or incinerator, and an office for the staff to operate it. You start needing fire command centers, more elevators banks and their associated lobbys, ventilation shafts, loading docks, BRA mandated drop off zones, redundant stairwells, communications closets, generator rooms, and parking.

Now while some of this stuff can be moved to the roof and sub levels, when it comes down to it the taller you go the more bloat starts accumulating on the first few floors. So while yes, a tall building can have excellent street level interaction, it can logistically never be as good as a shorter one, all else being equal (well, unless you took Chicagos approach and built multi-level streets to separate "ugly" things off the street, but I don't see that happening here).
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

If you walk around Manhattan, the vast majority of the architecture boarders somewhere between "meh" and "fucking terrible". But on the street there is a storefront every 20 feet or less, so you rarely ever look up to appreciate the awfulness towering above. This is why Manhattan frequently beats the crap out of all other citys in the US for urbanism, its everywhere.
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Good post Dave. But I would add that it's not entirely fair to separate height from street-level retail. Manhattan buildings can support retail every twenty feet because there's usually a minimum of 8-10 stories of people living/working above them. If the South End were built in 8-story row houses instead of 4-story row houses, we'd probably have 2x as much retail.
Cities don't need towers to have a successful streetwall (as Dave points out sometimes the opposite is true). But there is a correlation between height (i.e., density) and the ability to support ground floor retail.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

^^^^davem & AFL OMG the voices of reason. Great posts!!
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

And the arguments were made without use of the Caps Lock key, excessive employment of which passes for intelligent discourse in some quarters.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

Other than the ubiquitous CVS and Starbucks, street-level retail is threatened by the move to showrooms, where people simply look, and then go home and buy on-line. For multi-store retailers and merchandisers, the advantages are no commissions to sales people, no percent of sales payments to landlords, and better control of and significant savings in inventory.

For landlords and property owners and developers, the question becomes how many 'showrooms' does a city need, and how much rent is a retailer willing to pay for a showroom, a space that carries little or no actual inventory.

Some people seem intent on building a city as it was 20 or 30 years ago, where one went to a bookstore, a music store, a video rental store, or a corner newstand.

I'd be interested in hearing exactly what kind of retail is supposed to fill all this streetwall that's being constructed.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

stellarfun said:
Other than the ubiquitous CVS and Starbucks, street-level retail is threatened by the move to showrooms, where people simply look, and then go home and buy on-line. For multi-store retailers and merchandisers, the advantages are no commissions to sales people, no percent of sales payments to landlords, and better control of and significant savings in inventory.

For landlords and property owners and developers, the question becomes how many 'showrooms' does a city need, and how much rent is a retailer willing to pay for a showroom, a space that carries little or no actual inventory.

Some people seem intent on building a city as it was 20 or 30 years ago, where one went to a bookstore, a music store, a video rental store, or a corner newstand.

I'd be interested in hearing exactly what kind of retail is supposed to fill all this streetwall that's being constructed.
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To answer your question, I would say everything one would find in the street wall in NYC, Paris, Berlin (and the Fenway, Central Square, Harvard Square - - yes the template does exist in Boston/Cambridge already). Bakeries, shoe repair, restaurants, clothing stores, electronics shops, barbershops, cafes, pizza/shawarma take out, etc.

With the increasingly residential aspect of downtown and a more 24/7 lifestyle, there really is no excuse today for the BRA not to mandate a requirement on all new buildings over 6 stories to have street level retail. It makes economic sense (more economic sense to the developer than the "affordable units" or linkage payments already foisted on them by the BRA). The term "urban renewal" was hijacked 50 years ago to mean the exact opposite what urban renewal truly represents.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

The problem, as Jane Jacobs described, is that new construction commands a rent that your local barbershop or shwarma joint can't afford. The new Fenway buildings are no exception.So, street level retail in new developments almost always means a bank or Starbucks or a "concept" restaurant chain etc. Better to have it than to not have it, because it can always be something else down the road, but it won't turn a neighborhood into Harvard Square overnight.

By the same token, though, even today's blank walls can be repurposed as storefronts if and when demand rises for such things.

One other New York/Boston differentiator I've noticed. New York is a city of shopkeepers and shoppers. Boston is a city of professionals, students and academics. The dynamics of the two cities are very different - and I think it's largely a product of the local demographics, not of the availability of retail locations.
 
Re: The Point (Boylston/Brookline)

Shepard said:
The problem, as Jane Jacobs described, is that new construction commands a rent that your local barbershop or shwarma joint can't afford. The new Fenway buildings are no exception.So, street level retail in new developments almost always means a bank or Starbucks or a "concept" restaurant chain etc. Better to have it than to not have it, because it can always be something else down the road, but it won't turn a neighborhood into Harvard Square overnight.

By the same token, though, even today's blank walls can be repurposed as storefronts if and when demand rises for such things.

One other New York/Boston differentiator I've noticed. New York is a city of shopkeepers and shoppers. Boston is a city of professionals, students and academics. The dynamics of the two cities are very different - and I think it's largely a product of the local demographics, not of the availability of retail locations.
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1) Regarding the economics of shops, Shepard, I fully agree. Hence my point about BRA mandates. If the BRA can mandate something to a developer even more economically unfeasible as affordable residential units or linkage payments, then it can certainly mandate affordable rent shops instead - - something that actually improves the developer's property and gives the working lower income people something - - the whole "Give a man a fish, teach a man to fish...." analogy. Why is affordability of housing more important than the ability to open a business in Boston? To me they are at least of equal importance and perhaps the shops are even more civically important since they add to street level life and living conveniences for all.

***In fact, why not "linkage" the two? Those affordable units already set aside in all the new buildings - - why not make three or four of them that are already in the plan available to the shopkeepers of the ground floor? Wouldn't that be the ultimate in "Smart Growth" - - to allow them to walk to work and stay off the automobile?

2) Regarding your second point, very true in the past and at the moment. However, I think most of us concur that it is a very good thing that the local demographics of downtown Boston is indeed changing. Residential is exploding and the character of Boston of which you speak is evolving. In short, central Boston is actually becoming more of a 24/7 living, breathing city.

So I will once again quote Briv's excellent post:
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"So if Samuels can do this on a auto strip on the outer frontier of the city's core, why can't other developers do it in more established parts of the city? Why do we have buildings like Liberty Mutual's new HQ with a totally inactive street level, or buildings like the Victor, Kensington, 120 Kingston, or 319 A St. devoting substantial portions of theirs to above-ground parking garages? Why does 45 Stuart St devote the entirety of their street level to parking? These buildings are essentially creating permanent dead spots in the city.

Samuels is demonstrating how good urbanism can equal success--as if it had to proven here. There's really no excuse for the poorly designed street levels we're getting from most new buildings in Boston today."
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Amen. I see no excuse for it today.

.
 
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