Porter Square Infill and Small Developments

cca said:
Good spot for one ...or two. Right across from a T stop, easy access to downtown. Not another hotel for a long way.(harvard)
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???

The same developer recently opened a hotel about 100 meters from here and has a third hotel going up 400 meters from here.

A big clean site right on the Red Line and we're getting a four-story hotel...
 
JumboBuc said:
A big clean site right on the Red Line and we're getting a four-story hotel...
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Very Sad. Cambridge should allow 10 stories tall here as long as there's no parking (hotels seem ideal...so why not taller?)

Just like Downtown Seattle has added 42,000 workers but very few car trips, if you don't build parking, you don't add cars.
 
You still add traffic from Uber and Lyft drivers. A large portion of people visiting from a different city would rather use that as it's easier (while being slightly more expensive) then trying to learn the public transportation system.

So yes you add cars even when you don't add parking.
 
tysmith95 said:
You still add traffic from Uber and Lyft drivers. A large portion of people visiting from a different city would rather use that as it's easier (while being slightly more expensive) then trying to learn the public transportation system.

So yes you add cars even when you don't add parking.
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Yeah but visitor traffic is more sporadic and smeared-out than commuter traffic, so its less of an issue. The bigger-impact issue is how people plan their commutes, and peoples' willingness to bite the bullet and take public transit has a lot to do with how inconvenient it is to get their car in & out.
 
tysmith95 said:
You still add traffic from Uber and Lyft drivers. A large portion of people visiting from a different city would rather use that as it's easier (while being slightly more expensive) then trying to learn the public transportation system.

So yes you add cars even when you don't add parking.
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Ok, offer hotels the option of upzoning in exchange for obligating hotels to provide a T-pass good for the duration of the visit and show their guests how to use it. (You Tube), and see whether developers take us up on the offer.

The idea that the only solution is to limit heights on buildings to 4 stories is absurd.

Plenty of tools are at hand:
- Remove curbside parking. Foot and transit have much better potential to move people (and deliver customers to merchants)
- Mandate T-Pass Availability/Purchase/Distribution on site
- Mandate that any new tall parking-free apartment or office building have an Employer-like T Pass program for tenants (and building employees)
- Use added tax $ to improve platform & station access & bike/ped/bus facilities.

I'd also suspect that these hotels end up serving very local needs (Harvard visitors of all sorts), and you could also encourage campus/hotel/convention shuttles for trips that you don't quite steer onto the Red or 77
 
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Arlington said:
Ok, offer hotels the option of upzoning in exchange for obligating hotels to provide a t-pass good for the duration of the visit and show their guests how to use it. (You Tube), and see whether developers take us up on the offer.
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This is actually a really good, "outside the box" kind of idea that I think could work. The road is a disaster to navigate by car. As a frequent driver on Mass Ave, it honestly seems like the lights favor the side streets much more than the flow of traffic on Mass Ave itself. Basically, it's really easy to get on the road, but then you are almost guaranteed to hit a ton of lights and it can take upwards of half an hour just to get from Harvard to Route 16. (Cambridge/Arlington line) The lights around Porter are the absolute worst.

I definitely don't think the area can handle the extra density without finding a way to limit the additional traffic. Your hotel plan makes a lot of sense in that regard.
 
bigpicture7 said:
Yeah but visitor traffic is more sporadic and smeared-out than commuter traffic, so its less of an issue. The bigger-impact issue is how people plan their commutes, and peoples' willingness to bite the bullet and take public transit has a lot to do with how inconvenient it is to get their car in & out.
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I want to agree with you: I do think hotels generally tend to disperse their trips differently from commute-to-work trips, but they're still going to be commute-ish.

Another tool would be to actually accept offers from the "tall building" developer and buy back and retire parking spots at Leslie (like a gun buy-back program, only for parking spots). This would essentially let the car-trips be fixed but reallocated (call it cap-and-trade). Both are market mechanisms, rather than a one-size-four-floors-fits-all.
 
Arlington said:
Ok, offer hotels the option of upzoning in exchange for obligating hotels to provide a T-pass good for the duration of the visit
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I doubt that this would do too much in practice to change guests' behavior--visitors' demand for taxi/uber vs. public transit likely exhibits much less cross-price elasticity than residents' demand--but integrating a Charlie Card into a hotel room key card would be pretty cool.
 
It would be just another tax since it would be rolled into the cost of the room. Doesn't make any sense. I travel for work a lot, stay near meeting places and walk. Why do I need a T (or subway, metro, BART, etc.) pass? Just another tax.
 
TallIsGood said:
It would be just another tax since it would be rolled into the cost of the room. Doesn't make any sense. I travel for work a lot, stay near meeting places and walk. Why do I need a T (or subway, metro, BART, etc.) pass? Just another tax.
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The more damaging tax is the current 100% perpetual confiscation of all buildable air above 50' (and a confiscation aimed clumsily at somehow reducing traffic when it actually just frees up space used by car commuters from beyond Cambridge)

Compared to confiscatory height limits, a transit mandate would be, yes a tax, but (1) opitional (applied only if the owner builds tall) (2) much lighter tax than confiscation (3) no worse an likely better at reducing congestion (4) I would expect the hotels and guests to converge over time in favoring guests who are clued in to the transit benefit they get

A T pass mandate should be compared to a developer having to make a transit proffer, like when a builder plunks down umpteen millions for a new entrance, elevator or concourse.
 
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Most visitors to Boston are from New England (i don't feel like digging up the statistics but they are out there). I scold anyone who drives a car into Boston. Usually the same people who say they hate boston because of traffic and parking. I tell them they are crazy and to just take the bus to south station and get a hotel room near the red line. Problem solved. Also I really wish there were more hotels near the red line, especially in Cambridge.

Also I keep my charliecard in my wallet at all times. I personally don't need a pass.

Busses are a lot harder for out of town people to figure out than anything on rails. I'm proud for even using the busses. And I only started using them after really spending a lot of time in the area. Not only do they suck at keeping on schedule, not getting overcrowded etc but the routes don't make sense to people who don't live there. They aren't exactly linear for the most part.

... I wish people outside of this forum valued the merits of the subway system more. If they valued it more it wouldn't have been left so horribly underfunded for so long.
 
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Jouhou said:
... I wish people outside of this forum valued the merits of the subway system more. If they valued it more it wouldn't have been left so horribly underfunded for so long.
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If the big dig hadn't dumped a major portion of their debt on the MBTA then maybe it would have been able to afford improvements without doubling the cost of a ride. (and still being unable to get ahead of the interest payments)
 
DZH22 said:
If the big dig hadn't dumped a major portion of their debt on the MBTA then maybe it would have been able to afford improvements without doubling the cost of a ride. (and still being unable to get ahead of the interest payments)
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They should find spare space to rent out to vendors if they can't find more advertising revenue. If there's room for buskers there's room for a coffee stand. But I suppose this conversation belongs in the transportation forum.
 
JumboBuc said:
Just when I didn't think it was possible for the slowest developer in the Commonwealth to get any slower, the under construction condo building at the Gourmet Express deli site has regressed. The ground floor was fully framed out in November, and then the site sat idle with the framing exposed for the better part of three months, but this week all of that framing was taken down. Now we're back to a very minimal steel structure again...
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Progress. Steel framing is now going up where the wooden frame was taken down. This slug is back online.
 
The Cambridge Day has an article about a batch of hotels opening up around the city, and it includes renders of the two under-construction Porter projects.

041817i-hotels-timeline.jpg


I hadn't seen that "Hotel Cambridge" render before. I live right across the street from this project and it makes me so mad. Such a waste...

It looks like Somerville is allowing more density at the corner of Beacon and Somerville Ave than Cambridge is allowing on Mass Ave directly across from the Porter T.
 
I swear the residential plan for that site had more density than the hotel.

Semi-related: Is Lesley actively planning to do anything with its parking lots across Mass Ave from the Porter Exchange?
 
The Hotel Cambridge project has been a fiasco from the start. Originally a 5 floor condo building (that was greatly undersized given it's location 50 feet from the T) then mysteriously switched to an even more undersized 4 floor hotel and it's been what 2(?) years since Gourmet Deli was demolished. The weirdness: foundation was partially dug, then filled in, then dug out again. The first floor was framed out in wood only to all be taken down and replaced by the steel framing going up now.

At least this part of the block will now have some shade. It and the parking lot next to it is like a 3 minute walk through a frying pan on a sunny summer day.
 
Brad Plaid said:
At least this part of the block will now have some shade. It and the parking lot next to it is like a 3 minute walk through a frying pan on a sunny summer day.
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Oh God, shadows!!!!! Anything but shadows!!!!!
 
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