Piers Park 3 Redevelopment

beck4537 said:
Trustees of Reservations offers a glimpse of its first urban waterfront park, on Boston Harbor
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Wow.
MQ5L7GJXJJCZ3FCBAVS7THWAKU.jpg
 
Piers Park 3 is a nice idea and all but Piers Park 2 was part of the mitigation for the Terminal E parking garage and for as long as that's on hold we won't see a Piers Park 2 being built.
 
lexicon506 said:
All Trustees properties are free to the public. You likely frequent many of them without realizing it.
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I guess you're talking about walk-on visits? They definitely charge parking fees, and sometimes admission fees (De Cordova).
 
Arlington said:
I guess you're talking about walk-on visits? They definitely charge parking fees, and sometimes admission fees (De Cordova).
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You're right there are a few museum-like exceptions such as DeCordova and Crane Estate, but I don't believe they charge any fees for their extensive parks and natural areas. Parking sure, but so do state parks. Cars aren't members of the public.
 
The pier in question is the middle one here:
Boston+Wharf-17.jpg

By my measure, that's about 2.5x the area of the existing Piers Park pier (on the left). That's a lot of space to be worked with.

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2020.11.16_PP3+Concept+Rendering.jpg

I'm not a sea kayaking expert, but the kayaks shown in the foreground of that "Concept Rendering" do not look seaworthy for the harbor to me. It's usually appropriate to just ignore all the people / cars / etc. pasted into renderings, but if they are indeed planning to put in a boat launch here they'll have to be mindful of the people and vessels that will use it. Any John Q. Public with an average level of common sense can drop a kayak into a lake or even the Charles and be fine, but kayaking in Boston Harbor can be harder-than-one-might-think and legitimately dangerous. There's wind and waves and currents and choppy cold water and big fast heavy ships out there! It'll be interesting to see how they approach this.
 
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I suggest Trustees work with New England Aquarium on design of a new waterfront aquarium, ferry terminal, and marina at Piers Park Phase 3 site. The vacated Aquarium site at Central Wharf could be redeveloped by Trustees (via land swap) as a new waterfront park in a Downtown always hungry for green space; NEAQ gets a potentially landmark, skyline-facing, brand-spanking new facility that maintains connectivity to the harbor and transportation infrastructure; Aquarium visitors and Eastie residents gain broadened connectivity to a transformed harbor; yacht, sailboat, houseboats, and marine vessel owners gain 120-150 marina slips on the harbor. Added up, there are thousands of hotel rooms that have gone up along the harbor in recent years. Among an aquarium, enhanced waterfront park space, and strategically-designed, harbor-facing, indoor/outdoor event spaces (I'm talkin' weddings, y'all), I think a plan for Piers Park Phase 3 that coordinates with New England Aquarium et al could become a globally-recognized boon for Boston as a destination. And if nothing else, it'll silence some of the NIMBY noise coming from the Pinnacle/Harbor Garage project.
 
JumboBuc said:
The pier in question is the middle one here:
Boston+Wharf-17.jpg

By my measure, that's about 2.5x the area of the existing Piers Park pier (on the left). That's a lot of space to be worked with.
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Also with piers park 2 planned to be built at the base, it will really tie them both together. Cant wait.


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EBos.jpg
 
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stick n move said:
Also with piers park 2 planned to be built at the base, it will really tie them both together. Cant wait.


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EBos.jpg
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So per the early plan (last picture) this is being proposed for the pier that was to just be demolished. That is great!
 
I think building a park that you can only get to by walking through another park kind of defeats the purpose of park.

Sure, nature reserves should work that way, but, should parks? really, wouldn't they be better off letting the harbor reclaim this pier, and, instead creating a linear park along the edge of the harbor, where users might live as close as 100 feet away?
 
I mean with piers park phase 1 you also have to go through a park to get to the wharf portion just the same and its a pretty big success.

Idk I think that by looking at the phase 3 render it seems like it has some pretty cool elevation changes and dense vegetation that should help block out the city letting people feel more disconnected from the hustle and bustle. I think that by having the wharf portions it helps you “escape” the city much more by being able to venture pretty deep into the park to where having the whole other park behind you puts a dense buffer of trees/park between you and the street. In other words it makes it dense enough that it becomes much more of an escape from the city, than if the park were just phase 2. Thats my opinion at least, in practice it could end up being a waste, I guess well see.
 
stick n move said:
I mean with piers park phase 1 you also have to go through a park to get to the wharf portion just the same and its a pretty big success.

Idk I think that by looking at the phase 3 render it seems like it has some pretty cool elevation changes and dense vegetation that should help block out the city letting people feel more disconnected from the hustle and bustle. I think that by having the wharf portions it helps you “escape” the city much more by being able to venture pretty deep into the park to where having the whole other park behind you puts a dense buffer of trees/park between you and the street. In other words it makes it dense enough that it becomes much more of an escape from the city, than if the park were just phase 2. Thats my opinion at least, in practice it could end up being a waste, I guess well see.
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It also dramatically increases the water access footprint. People like being near the water. The Pier provides much more linear shoreline.
 
I attended one of the first neighborhood listening sessions last night. (01.12.21) There wasn't a huge amount of new information, but the Trustees really wanted to hear ideas from everyone. This is a fairly new video on their website that has stunning overhead images of Boston: One Waterfront Be warned.......it's 30 minutes long. :)
This is such a great project with amazing potential.
 
Java King said:
I attended one of the first neighborhood listening sessions last night. (01.12.21) There wasn't a huge amount of new information, but the Trustees really wanted to hear ideas from everyone. This is a fairly new video on their website that has stunning overhead images of Boston: One Waterfront Be warned.......it's 30 minutes long. :)
This is such a great project with amazing potential.
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That's one of the most absolutely stunning videos I've ever seen. Whoever produced that work is an ace.
 
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