Redevelopment of Cohen Wing Block (Symphony Hall) | 263-289 Huntington Ave | Fenway

[HarvardP]

Storefront retail in prosperous urban areas is far from in decline. If it were in decline, rents would be falling; actually, rents are surging.

Big boxes in the suburbs? Yeah, they're in decline. But not in urban neighborhoods.

Your causation is off. Rents in urban areas are soaring not because of prosperous times for retail/restaurants, but rather because land values have skyrocketed and the landlords either need to make up the difference or are just plain greedy.

 

[curcuas]

....that is not how supply and demand work, or really, any piece of urban real estate works.

@odurandina - Shocked I'm out-pro-building you. I'm asking for the actual capitalist policy - let people decide whether or not to include retail. Stop zoning out it out as the city of Boston does for ground floor retail. My bet is we'll see a lot more of it, even given today's trends. Looking at more retailed cities (eg Chicago), you see lower priced goods from lower retail rents and a greater variety of stores and restaurants.

 

[HenryAlan]

Yeah, there is something really wrong with street level retail in Boston. I'm not sure about the cause, but you can go to many other US cities (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, to name a few) and find block after block of all kinds of interesting low end retail operations. Here it is mostly food or chains or high end.

 

[George_Apley]

Yeah, there is something really wrong with street level retail in Boston. I'm not sure about the cause, but you can go to many other US cities (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, to name a few) and find block after block of all kinds of interesting low end retail operations. Here it is mostly food or chains or high end.

Isn't a lot of that legacy mom & pop's in old-stock building space? I don't know Chicago, but new developments in NYC are pretty sterile as well. There's just so much more legacy retail in big cities like Chicago and NY compared to Boston, where a lot of the legacy retail is a) in 1-3 story buildings, and b) being gobbled up by redevelopment pretty quickly.

Are there any cities that have a thriving small-business environment in their new construction?

 

[reverend_paco]

There is remarkably little information about whether these plans are real or not, aside from the Boston Guardian posting and some hints from poster ChitchIII.

I did find this post from March 2019 from a former member of the BSO who includes one more hint:

This building, which stretches for the whole block, is now owned by the Boston Symphony which has plans to redevelop the block with a new building.

Symphony Hall: Boston’s proud temple of music since 1900

From 1985-2012, I was bass trombonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra’s home is Symphony Hall, on the corner of Huntington and Massachusetts Avenues in Boston’s Back Bay…

thelasttrombone.com

It's a fine loving post on the beauty of the main building.

 

[whighlander]

Is this stretch really worth saving? As a former resident of that area (back when Burger King was in the Panera spot), I never found it to be very architecturally appealing. It feels as the the white stone bits are all that is left after decades of fiddling by the owners (i.e., the now dated brown glass, etc.) It is also full of disposable stores that no one will miss.

Am I being harsh?

These are late early to early middle 20thC cheapo commercial buildings -- look at the street at the time Symphony Hall first opened -- there was nothing here

my guess is that they were built after the Green Line E-branch was extended with the tunnel under Mass Ave
from the wiki

The Huntington Avenue Subway opened on February 16, 1941, taking Huntington Avenue cars (the last to use the Boylston Street Portal) underground for a larger part of their route.

 

[ChitchIII]

There is remarkably little information about whether these plans are real or not, aside from the Boston Guardian posting and some hints from poster ChitchIII.

I did find this post from March 2019 from a former member of the BSO who includes one more hint:

Symphony Hall: Boston’s proud temple of music since 1900

From 1985-2012, I was bass trombonist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The orchestra’s home is Symphony Hall, on the corner of Huntington and Massachusetts Avenues in Boston’s Back Bay…

thelasttrombone.com

It's a fine loving post on the beauty of the main building.

This was the listing for the commercial space. Looks like someone has taken the lease. https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/2-Westland-Ave-Boston-MA/15640238/

 

[whighlander]

This was the listing for the commercial space. Looks like someone has taken the lease. https://www.loopnet.com/Listing/2-Westland-Ave-Boston-MA/15640238/

or possibly because its been taken off the market due to imminent removal of the property from the ability to be leased -- i.e. a soon to be hole in the ground where it used to be located

This Property is no longer advertised on LoopNet.com

 

[odurandina]

FAA feet or bust. Put community space for the lower 3~4 floors inclu a new charter school where all these neighborhoods meet w/ 45 stories of mixed market rate + affordable above. Aim high.

 

[whighlander]

FAA feet or bust.

Odurandina -- No chance of that -- this is the BSO and Symphony Hall -- not a replacement for a muffler shop next to a Dunkin's
The BSO will be very cautious with what and how they build.

There goal is to enhance the functionality of Symphony Hall for events of varying sizes and of course to make some money on the project -- but its not to maximize the sq fts or the FAR

Given their approach thus far -- both in the existing Cohen Wing and with what has been done to enhance Tanglewood -- the most massive and potentially tallest elements will be stuffed way back as far from Symphony Hall as is possible on the site.