Quaker Lane + Congress Square | Downtown

Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

vanshnookenraggen said:
And honestly that's probably what will happen. I was only talking hypothetically that a modern tower could go in here because combining the lots has already been done. I don't know the Boston office market well enough but it's entirely possible that there isn't even a demand for Class A or AA space yet. My point is once there is...
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"Combining the lots" has already been done, but note that there are still 4 or 5 separate tax parcels in this Fidelity-owned block. If it made sense to Fidelity, they could sell each tax parcel to a separate buyer. Highly unlikely, of course--but it would be damn interesting!
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

commuter guy said:
Large firms like the large floor plates. However, I work in a suite of 8 professionals in a class B prewar building near the Parker House Hotel. Our suite is 2500 sq. feet. Recently, Class B rents have been increasing, maybe faster than Class A rents. Our lease is up and the owner is proposing very significant rent increases. We've hit the pavement with commercial real estate brokers and there is very little availability for these types of smaller office suites downtown. Generally, the only viable options are these Class B older buildings with small floor plates and they are in very high demand from smaller firms/businesses. If these fidelity buildings remain and were leased as is they would be filled in relatively short order with small and mid size firms. Downtown can use all types of space and buildings to remain healthy.
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That's actually a very good point. This needs to be considered if we're going to still be considered one of the kings of the start up company...though not many go into downtown Boston.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

This is one of the best discussions that this forum has had in a while. Everyone is making a good point.

Very exciting to see what could potentially happen here.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

I just want to point out that facadedectomies (sp?) are NOT historic preservation. In any way. Most in the field (myself included) would rather see a building torn down then be humiliated by some false effort to graft a shadow of its soul onto some thoughtless monstrosity of a new building inside. The issue of course is that new architecture built of the same quality, detailing, and whimsy of the past is virturally non-existant for a myrad of reasons today. So instead of fighting the good fight, designers are taking the cheap route and grafting the skin of a formerly proud independant building onto their modern value engeneered crapheap. They are the zombies of the built envirnoment. A building is the sum of its parts, removing its floors and partitions (a la the technologically amazing and rare gustavino vaulted tile floors at russia wharf) reduces them to a corpse.

So what would I like to see here? An interior renovation (perhaps with openings in party walls to combine ajacent buildings to increase floor plate size), along with 4, 5, 6 floors added on top for some actual class A. But its unglamorous and expensive, and profits are not guarenteed. So the chance of it happening (especially now that its an all or nothing buy in) is practically nill.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

Can somebody post pictures of the exact 4 buildings in question here?

I am all for height, but far from enthused at the prospect of losing 4 pre-war buildings. Part of what makes Boston so great compared to many other cities is the streetwall provided by these structures. It's what's missing from so many of the "newer" cities, such as the southern cities. Go to Charlotte or Atlanta and they have these grand skyscrapers, yet they are missing the true city feel of a Boston/Philly/San Fran. The gaps in the streetwall play a big part in this.

The worst case scenario is that we knock down buildings and then sit with a hole/parking lot for years/decades. Frankly, there are better places to build up in the city without tearing down its (historic) urban fabric.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

IMO facadectomies do not work if you're simply preserving the skin of a large floorplate building and constructing a new large floorplate building (e.g., Exchange Place).
But in this instance, you'd be preserving the facades of multiple buildings, with multiple entrances, multiple storefronts, etc. This would necessarily lend itself to multiple ground floor uses and an activated streetwall.

Compare two recent high-rise developments in Boston: Liberty Mutual and Atlantic Wharf. I personally prefer Liberty Mutual's architecture, but in terms of activating the streetwall, providing urban amenities, attracting people to the area, etc. it's a no-brainer. Atlantic Wharf wins because of the multiple uses along the streetwall (defined largely by the multiple facades of the wharf buildings).

This is the same effect that Samuels is going for near Fenway. He's basically mimicking facadecotmies to define different uses and enliven the streetwall.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

A couple of thoughts. Dismissing facadectomies as simply pandering to the past and not really saving anything.... is selling them short (when done right). As stated, these buildings are no longer viable as office space, but the exterior is better than anyone would build in this day and age. Repurposing them saves the biggest architectural aspect of them, the exterior. I'm sure there are great finishes, molding, crenelations (sp?), etc. inside, and sadly most of that will be lost to open up floor space.

The facadectomy offers many benefits as well beyond svaing the past. They discourage the large grade level open lobby (or at least don't allow it to visually F up the street), they encourage set backs creating podiums on which to build the tower, they help maintain at least a semblance of human scale at the street by maintaining smaller footprint buildings (visually anyways.)

So, that being said. I'd love to see height here in the form of at least 2 towers, while maintaining the exteriors of the buildings at the street. I also love this corridor when walking.

Whether residential or commercial (or both) I'll leave up to the market demands.

I would posit however, that residential in the area will continue to increase. Retail and hip and trendy eateries and clubs will continue to be inserted into the mix. Companies will notice, and want to be in the hip neighborhood. Much like office tenants flocked to the Back Bay. It is the hippest or richest place to be, so companies want to be thought of in that same breath. Similar to what is going on in the SBW, but with the infrastructure in downtown, it has a much better chance for sustained success.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

Van, regarding "having enough modern spaces to keep the city viable enough to even appreciate historic buildings."
I see this as a Forest for the Trees problem, but in the opposite way that you seem to. I hate to butcher Ablarc, but he once posted something to the effect of: "How much of you could we remove before you were no longer the same person?" So much of pre-war Boston has already been destroyed. This cluster is a brief moment in your walk through the city, and Downtown is so small as it is. How much more of it can we part with and still think of it as a unique and attractive place? I just can’t see replacing these buildings w/more of the vinyl sided high-rise at ~51 Devonshire, when the garage further down the street at Winthrop Sq. sits crumbling. My hope is for the best facadectomy that they can pull off.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

If we can get a facedectomy similar to what we got at Atlantic/Russia Wharf, I say bring it on.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

tmac9wr said:
If we can get a facedectomy similar to what we got at Atlantic/Russia Wharf, I say bring it on.
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I tend to agree. The fact is that 99% of people walking by these buildings will never go in or look up to see if there is a shiny tower above. But we can all enjoy a few handsome, very Bostonian facades for decades to come.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

nico said:
My hope is for the best facadectomy that they can pull off.
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+1

Sure, we can hope the ultimate buyer doesn't obtain the other parcels nearby, or that he keeps the buildings as they are and rents to smaller tech firms or whoever.

Liberty Mutual is a handsome building (despite its subpar first floor), but we're unlikely to see its successes re-created here: any development here is unlikely to be put up by the building's tenant (like a Lib Mutual ... or a Fidelity). It's infinitely more likely to be a developer's project: glass, pre-fab concrete panels, a parking garage, no street-level activation, and likely an awkward setback that destroys the streetwall and the urbanity of the area.

The likely choice is: Kensington (or Dainty Dot) vs. Atlantic Wharf. I'll go with the facadectomy.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

Filene's is a facadectomy. No actual building remains behind those walls on Washington and Summer streets. Would you rather have the walls removed instead of keeping them and inserting a new building behind them?
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

Ron Newman said:
Filene's is a facadectomy. No actual building remains behind those walls on Washington and Summer streets. Would you rather have the walls removed instead of keeping them and inserting a new building behind them?
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Um... what?! I've roamed the Filene's vacant interior with the property manager (a friend of mine) on multiple occasions over the past couple of years. I can assure you, the weight-bearing columns are very much in place. You write as if the Burnham Building's facade is a Hollywood-designed fake--but there's still all kinds of structural components in there. Please explain.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

I have to agree with others who note there are plenty of places where large floor-plated towers can go in and around downtown Boston that don't involve destroying intimate streetscapes or historic buildings. If that happens here, it'll be a dispiriting planning fail.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

Ron Newman said:
Filene's is a facadectomy. No actual building remains behind those walls on Washington and Summer streets. Would you rather have the walls removed instead of keeping them and inserting a new building behind them?
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Yes.

Its a lie. And its a cheap, dirty, chickenshit lie at that. I would rather live in a sea of kensingtons than watch another ferdinand, russia wharf, or hong luk happen. At least the kensington is truthful in its unapologetic value engeneered cheap ass facade. Its honest in its expression of the testimony to sacrificing any self worth or pristige for the bottom line profits. Facadectomies are taking the impressive works of the past and tearing out their soul, to replace it with consumable garbage. Then even worse, everyone stands back and pats each other on the back saying what a great job they did "preserving" something.

Bullshit. Is it preserving your mother if she has cancer, so I take out her bones, muscle, brain, etc and replace it with a monkeys? She still looks the same, and she's alive! We preserved her! Don't worry that the eyes are a different color and the insides don't quite work the way they did, its all the same, right? And its progress! A testemant to modern medecine!

If a building has outlived its useful life in its current form it should either be evaluated to see how it can be adapted and reused in the modern era, preserved as a museum, or TORN DOWN. Its about so, so much more than aesthetics. Its about truth. Its about soul.

There is no reason we can't build today as we did before. It is the acceptance of this lie that allows the rumor to perpetuate. It is the acceptance of the arguement for facadectomies that "well, we couldn't POSSIBLY build something like this again" that allows the cycle of sub par workmanship, cheap design, and crappy materality to perpetuate. Every facadectonomy that occurs is just one more thumbs up to developers that they dont have to even try when they design, they can just build a cheap box, pretend its something else, and then use a marketing department to convince everyone it is. Its bad design propoganda, on a fascist scale.

Looking at russia wharf makes me sick. Watching the ferdinands skin propped up makes me want to vomit. These buildings could have lived on useful as ever but their developers were too cheap, lazy, stingy, and stupid to bother even thinking of how to do it. Its too hard. Tearing the guts out of a building is easy. Fooling the public into believing they somehow perserved something is easy. Not having an iota of independent thought to realize that these buildings are a cheap cop-out for true design is easy. Realizing that one would rather suffer a million government centers because at least they are honest and shameless as to what they are is not. People hate post modernism for its irony and shoddy use of detailing? It doesn't even hold a candle to this.

*again, sorry for my bad spelling, I'm on my phone for the week*
 
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Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

Holy overblown rhetoric, Batman!

Davem, I have tremendous respect for you and your words, but judging by the anger in your voice I'd suggest maybe stepping down from your ivory tower for a bit.
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

So. Is there an actual proposal, or is this thread just singing the "Monkey Spank Blues"?
 
Re: Fidelity's HQ may go high

Buildings are things. They don't have souls. Facades are exactly that, facades.
 
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