Plan Nubian Square Parcel P-3 (née Tremont Crossing) | Roxbury

In a way, yes, this building would be an island of development. That's until this corridor becomes the new hot bed for development. Right up the street we have the new, multi-phased development going in at Roxbury crossing. As someone who went to school at wentworth and knew the running joke of don't go to this side of the tracks, this area would've turned into a great spot for everyone and I'm really really disappointed in this redesign. I'm totally one of those people that argue against complaining about height, but giving this specific area a beacon would've been amazing for the neighborhood and the city!

And what's really bothers me is that we will be getting another parking structure with nothing above, the wasted opportunity is an absolute killer!
 
It could've been sort of like a "mini Downtown Crossing"! Roxbury always seems to be the last part of the city to get stuff!
 
Once again, the anger/venom of the "heightists" seems badly misplaced.

When I was back in real estate class in business school eons ago, we had a guest lecture by a commercial office developer ... who ran us through the math, in nauseating detail, behind the 3-5 story office block you see in any office park around the country where land is readily available ... think Woburn. Shorter than that and you left money on the table. Taller, and your costs psf went up as more floorplate was sacrificed to HVAC and utilities, elevators got more expensive, and parking required more investment than a simple graded and paved lot around the building. So if you needed more space than you could fit in 3-5 stories, you simply built another one down the road. Even the business school students found the resulting aesthetics boring, but as the developer noted, his job was to make money building useful office space. People didn't pay him to build icons.

Now, Roxbury isn't suburbia. But it isn't Downtown Crossing, either. It's not even the Fenway. The reason you don't get Pierce-equivalent height here is probably because you can't hope to command Pierce-equivalent returns psf. As has been noted over and over again on this board, both the Hancock and the Pru were designed partly as "vanity" projects at the time of their construction - marketing and corporate image was part of the justification for the outsized height ... and there is also some "extra" value that accrues to uniqueness. Boston has "grown into" that height range in the decades since.

But what on earth leads us to conclude that tall pencils out in this location in 2016? Do we think people will pay a premium to be in the tallest building in Roxbury? Is it because the developer initially proposed something bigger and has now amended it to be smaller? Again, that's development 101 and negotiations 101. Until you've finally sorted what you are going to do, you ALWAYS float proposals for the biggest envelope you can imagine, because you can't go backward. It's naive to presume that all or even most scale-backs are based on the BRA or Tito Jackson or some pissed-off neighbor tilting at windmills. Or that real estate developers always make money. In boom times, yes, but markets change quickly and few industries have a longer track record of spectacular bankruptcies.

Look, I get it, tall buildings look cool on postcard-like snapshots. And as Boston real estate prices have increased, the economics of building taller have become more favorable in some parts of the city. But we still aren't Manhattan and we aren't Hong Kong. We won't get a ton of large-scale air rights development or supertalls until the market has munched up most of the easier/shorter development opportunities within a few miles of the city ... of which there are still many, enough to absorb lots and lots of demand.

As for the housing shortage - look at the Southie and Eastie threads. You can pack a lot of new housing into buildings of modest proportions, and at much more modest psf costs than is entailed in building another Four Seasons tower. Shoot, central Paris is far denser than Boston, and there's hardly a building over 8 stories tall. It's usually a fool's errand to clamor for new affordable housing ... because new construction, even modestly scaled, isn't cheap. Affordable housing throughout history has always been dominated by "used"/repurposed buildings. Still, there's obviously a huge difference in price point between a condo in one of the many new buildings near Broadway Station and the ones in the Millennium buildings downtown ... and a huge difference in office rents at the proposed new Hancock tower and new low-rise offices in Somerville. There's a much larger market for more modestly priced units, even if they push the definition of "affordable." That's logically the market at which Roxbury developments must be pitched.

So riddle me this: who, exactly, is going to pay the psf premium required to go high in Roxbury right now? There are still acres and acres of vacant and underdeveloped land within a par 5 of this site. It's one thing for a non-profit with an existing footprint (Northeastern) to build a tall dorm, it's quite another for a developer to build so tall that he/she would need to command rents (whether residential or commercial) comparable to those in other new developments in areas that are perceived as more desirable.

Patience, grasshopper.
 
Stillinthehood, the question is whether the project was scaled back for reasons economic or otherwise. The fact remains that anything tall in this area - which is a very good area to build tall, one of the few such areas left with room for anything dramatic - is immediately shot down. And the poster above who called out Tito Jackson is right to do so, because he's a leader of the pack in this game of playing obstructionist. Like many people on here, I'm not all for height at any cost... But I'd like to know just why this project got smaller. And, really, if it is truly and purely economics, the fact remains that the cost of construction in Boston is artificially inflated due to the endless hoops all large project developers must jump thru before anything eventually gets off the ground.
 
came in at the very tail end.

https://www.cityofboston.gov/cable/live.asp

Don't know what part of the project just won approval.

But it sounded like the entire project after the height reduction of 90 for the two big towers, the elimination of the hotel, and 1/2 of the offices.

followed by the "ayes have it "and a big congratulations from Burke.
 
odurandina said:
came in at the very tail end.

https://www.cityofboston.gov/cable/live.asp

Don't know what part of the project just won approval.

But it sounded like the entire project after the height reduction of 90 for the two big towers, the elimination of the hotel, and 1/2 of the offices.

followed by the "ayes have it "and a big congratulations from Burke.
Click to expand...

Sounds like they cut out half the project as originally proposed.
 
Why would the city possibly reject a hotel? the private sector is begging for more hotel rooms in the city.
 
I'm sure a hotel would have done great here being next to events at Northeastern and adjacent to transit (sigh)
 
My guess is the hotel rejection is due to (part of) the surrounding neighborhood being unsafe. Too many out-of-towners wandering into the slums could be bad for PR?
 
DZH22 said:
My guess is the hotel rejection is due to (part of) the surrounding neighborhood being unsafe. Too many out-of-towners wandering into the slums could be bad for PR?
Click to expand...
There are two hotels on Mass Ave in the South End, in the middle of Methadone Mile.
 
Tremont Crossing project

It may be time for a thread devoted to a major project which is proud to tell everyone its in Roxbury

The Herald is reporting today, Saturday, September 24, 2016 that P-3 Partners say that they have the right combination of things to finally get their proposed $500 million, 
1.2 million-square-foot, mixed-use Tremont Crossing project underway -- something in typical Boston fashion in the pipeline as a Project X since a decade ago
http://www.bostonherald.com/business/business_markets/2016/09/roxbury_project_gets_remake

Roxbury project gets remake
Donna Goodison Saturday, September 24, 2016

...Developers of the proposed $500 million, mixed-use Tremont Crossing project believe they finally have the right mix to get the 
1.2 million-square-foot Roxbury project approved and rolling next spring.......

P-3 Partners, comprised of Elma Lewis Partners and Feldco Development Corp., eliminated a 175-room hotel, cut the office space by almost half, reduced the number of parking spaces and building heights, and added three new streets and nine town homes.....
now includes 398,700 square feet of retail space, 105,000 square feet of office space, 694 apartments and a new 31,000-square-foot location for Roxbury’s Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists. The project would occupy four city blocks on the vacant, 8-acre, BRA-owned Parcel 3 site.....
A 90,000-square-foot BJ’s Wholesale Club will be the project’s retail anchor, and P-3 is in talks for a 10-screen Regal Cinemas, a 48,000-square-foot Burlington store, and a CVS, Planet Fitness, and Forever 21 and Skechers stores.

“This present development team was possible because we were always looking for a partner who was interested in development in which the cultural piece was not a tack-on, but a central aspect of the development,” said Barry Gaither, NCAAA executive director and a member of ELP, an NCAAA entity created to support its future through a push to become developers of Parcel 3 starting back in 2006
092316tremontcrossing003.jpg

Credit: COURTESY RENDERING

A rendering of the Tremont Crossing project in Roxbury. Rendering by Cambridge Seven Associates
Click to expand...

More details in an IAG BRA presentation filed on 22 September 2016
http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/getattachment/e82d61cc-2a92-491b-a6ca-a1d567cdd9fd
 
Re: Tremont Crossing project

tysmith95 said:
Thanks for the updated info but it should be merged with this http://www.archboston.org/community/showthread.php?t=4177
Click to expand...

TySmith -- Yes and No -- its really closer to a new project than just a small update

Gone are the Hotel and Student Housing

Added is a street :eek:

some 9 town homes

A lot more still needs to be done such as adding height back to one of the two towers and making the Museum more prominent

The museum is the key to the project after all it is within an easy walk of the MFA
 
Re: Tremont Crossing project

Weigh,

it's an enzo/110%

we reported the cutting of 90' off each tower and loss of hotel 6 weeks ago on the TC thread.
 
Re: Tremont Crossing project

whighlander said:
TySmith -- Yes and No -- its really closer to a new project than just a small update

Gone are the Hotel and Student Housing

Added is a street :eek:

some 9 town homes

A lot more still needs to be done such as adding height back to one of the two towers and making the Museum more prominent

The museum is the key to the project after all it is within an easy walk of the MFA
Click to expand...

Um... that's not how these threads work. It's still the same underlying project at the same location, even if the details have changed; it should be merged. You've been on this forum long enough that you should know this.
 
Re: Tremont Crossing project

This is fantastic news… I've been hoping they would add some streets ever since I heard about this project. Hopefully they won't be stupid little cul-de-sac streets and will actually tie into the street grade and connect Columbus, Melnea Cass, and sham this is fantastic news… I've been hoping they would add some streets ever since I heard about this project. Hopefully they won't be stupid little cul-de-sac streets and will actually tie into the street grade and connect Columbus, Melnea Cass, and Shawmut/Dudley.
 
Re: Tremont Crossing project

I believe that Northeastern is still committed to building a hotel on Parcel 18 (?) adjacent to the Renaissance Garage. Maybe that is why they dropped the hotel from this project?
 
Re: Tremont Crossing project

JumboBuc said:
Um... that's not how these threads work. It's still the same underlying project at the same location, even if the details have changed; it should be merged. You've been on this forum long enough that you should know this.
Click to expand...

JumboBuc -- I'd agree if we were talking about what was done a few years ago to redo the existing Pru with its wind tunnel shopping into the City Under Glass

There you had an existing major development that was transformed -- yet everyone still called it the Pru -- even when Pru itself decamped for Wellesley at Rt-128

But this is different - -the only thing really in common with the following [circa 2102 -- already 6 years into the "plan"] is the P-3 designation on the BRA maps
AdamBC said:
1M sq foot building proposed near Ruggles T stop:
http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/r....html?ana=e_du_pub&s=article_du&ed=2012-04-20
0420-Tremont-Crossing-Elma-Lewis-Partners-rendering-750.jpg
Click to expand...

I rest my case
 
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