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

This is a loss of the NCAAA museum, lots of retail, lots of housing, and lots of jobs. Personally I thought it was fine, but who cares if they were squat it was a ton of housing on an eyesore plot in an area thats hard to get development dollars, esp big projects like this.
With whittier choice going up next door this area was going to be transformed. This was 727 housing units with 107 affordable units. Thats a lot. That plus 650 office jobs, 799 retail jobs, with 436,000sf of cultural/retail space. The empty dirt lot is definitely not better than all of that.
The developer said he expects to start a new round of bidding next year, so who knows what will happen. It is a loss of financing like SST had and not the developer pulling out like 1000 boylston so theres still a chance.
 
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^I was just reiterating what the article said, but who knows.

They also said this which I had no idea “Speaking of football, P-3 was once eyed for a new arena to house the Kraft Group’s soccer team, the New England Revolution.”
 
stick n move said:
.....but who cares if they were squat......
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Frankly, they weren't squat enough for the width. We are all so happy to get rid of huge barriers like the Congress Street garage, yet suddenly are in a rush to build a ridiculous amount of buildings with essentially the same proportions as that garage around here, Assembly, and North Point. At least the garage was short enough not to leave the adjacent streets in perpetual darkness. These buildings are basically double-height Congress Street garage type barriers. Unlike the garages though, these are the types of mistakes that probably wouldn't be fixed, ever. It's sad how many people here are so accepting of this type of development. "Better than nothing" actually doesn't apply when this is the alternative! Overwhelming width should be the boogeyman! Not height! Width! One to two buildings of this stature can essentially wall off entire neighborhoods!
 
In the context of the area these buildings were going to be in, their size and shape worked fine in my opinion. Remember they were across the road from NU International Village which itself is a large hunk of building, and I think the design complemented that quite well while also provided really good use for the site. It's such a prime site in terms of location so it needs this kind of dense development. And the area as a whole needs the retail and jobs. What a shame to see this go, they even had tentative retail stores already signed on.
 
All Im saying is IN MY OPINION I hate to lose that much market rate housing, affordable housing, jobs, the museum, and retail. Everybody is going to have their own opinion on the architecture, thats how it works, but I was fine with it and glad with how much this was going to bring to the area.

After decades of starts and stops it looked like something was finally going to be built here, something that IN MY OPINION was appropriate for the area and brought a lot of positives. Who knows how long were going to have to wait now and theres not even a guarantee that what we get ends up better than this. So to me this is a loss, everybody else is free to feel however they feel about it, its not happening anyways so it is what it is..
 
Sorry -- but its a classic example of Gov't telling the market how to behave

Put it up for bids to the highest bidder and let's see what the market really wants to do with 7 Acres which are walking distance from the core of Downtown
 
The vertical big box aspect of Tremont Crossing was definitely the weirdest part for me. It was driving the awkward massing and enormous amount of parking. Having BJs as an anchor tenant literally across the street from a major intermodal transit hub (Ruggles)? Really?

This is for the best. This should come back better in the future. More housing. Taller. More dense. More civic/cultural space that isn't an afterthought. No ridiculous big box retail. Less parking.
 
datadyne007 said:
The vertical big box aspect of Tremont Crossing was definitely the weirdest part for me. It was driving the awkward massing and enormous amount of parking. Having BJs as an anchor tenant literally across the street from a major intermodal transit hub (Ruggles)? Really?

This is for the best. This should come back better in the future. More housing. More dense. More civic/cultural space that isn't an afterthought. No ridiculous big box retail. Less parking.
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I don't disagree that this should have been much better, and hopefully will be resurrected better in the future. It's just frustrating that this parcel will continue to sit dilapidated for years and years to come.
 
I don't think this was ever getting off the ground/built - the City has been giving extensions for a decade. Hopefully this sends a message to other projects that seem to continuously get extensions and nothering actually happens. Here's hoping a competent developer wins the bid when it goes back out and something is actually built.
 
cden4 said:
Would there be any benefit to subdividing the lot and developing them separately?
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It's more valuable as a parcel for sure, and quicker to construct in one without different contractors and engineers all trying to coordinate schedules and designs (which is always chaos and never ends well). There's a lot of site prep and utility work to do too.
 
cden4 said:
Would there be any benefit to subdividing the lot and developing them separately?
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THIS. i've thought (such thing) for a long time. Why does the whole gd smash have to be built, when clearly it's better just to put op a single 325' tower? ....Start there--and tell the people, "this is how you avoid committing development malpractice, which we're not doing anymore."
When the shovels get on site for the 325', come back and approve 380'--
and tell the people, "this is how you avoid committing development malpractice, which we're not doing anymore. This is the center point of the iconic Town of Roxbury!"
 
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HelloBostonHi said:
It's more valuable as a parcel for sure, and quicker to construct in one without different contractors and engineers all trying to coordinate schedules and designs (which is always chaos and never ends well). There's a lot of site prep and utility work to do too.
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100 percent this. The city would need to perform some amount of enabling work to allow the parcels to work independently. As designed, utilities need to be moved and new roads built, not to mention the shared parking structure and public benefits such as the museum. I doubt any one parcel could float enough of the required pieces to get off the ground. In addition, it would be harder to achieve the mix of uses as desired by the community. The retail would be more difficult to coordinate under multiple owners and significantly less valuable and likely not feasible. If developed in parcels it would probably be an entirely residential scheme with significantly fewer public benefits.

All that said, I agree with the sentiment and think while it is unfortunate this derailed the aim should be to do better on the next go around. One method might be selecting different architects for each phase to encourage a diversity of design without losing the coordination benefits required to pull this site together. I would ditch BJs and get Market Basket which I think would better service the community. And now that I am going, I was also never a big fan of the parking structure over looking the sports fields, a waste of southern light and views of green space and a poor urban design choice- it should have been wrapped. Ditto for the orientation of the towers which dont appear to maximize skyline views or sun exposure.
 
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Is the museum a guarantee for the site or are Roxbury residents going to have to get a new developer to make concessions to the community all over again?
 
cden4 said:
Would there be any benefit to subdividing the lot and developing them separately?
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cden -- I think the right approach is Master Developer -- a la Seaport Square-- the Master Developer does all the hard permitting work -- and subdivision

Then over the next few years each of the parcels is "sold off" to a developer with their own team of architect and possibly tenant -- parcel by parcel just as the Amazon and the Foundation Medicine parcels in the Seaport -- one of the parcels could be reserved for a local "Roxbury Team" involving the Museum
 
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