Rose Kennedy Greenway

Banker & Tradesman - April 14, 2009
Solo Bid By Boston Museum A Potential ?Disaster'

By Paul McMorrow

Banker & Tradesman Staff Writer

Today



Real estate observers are closely watching today's deadline to see if the Boston Museum is the only bidder on the 29,400-square-foot Parcel 9 in downtown Boston, owned by the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and fronting the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

The Boston Museum has already made its bid public. But the telling moment comes today, when Turnpike officials unseal potential bids from the Boston Museum's competitors - or, alternately, reveal that the economy has rendered their site all but worthless.

"It would be an absolute disaster for the Pike," one local real estate player told Banker & Tradesman, speaking anonymously because the bidding process remains active. "If they're the only bidder, and they have no money, it means there's no value for the property at all."

The Boston Museum turned to Parcel 9 more than a year ago, after a multi-year effort to build atop some neighboring I-93 onramps proved prohibitively expensive. Parcel 9 was seen by the museum's leadership as a cheaper alternative.

Turnpike Executive Director Alan LeBovidge recently questioned the museum's ability to build the $120 million facility it envisions for Parcel 9. "Show me the money," LeBovidge told the Boston Herald. He noted that the museum had raised just $7 million for the project and asked, "Can they put together a financing package? I have no idea."

"It's an impossible site," the real estate source said. Restrictive zoning and an awkward triangular footprint will make it hard for any private developer to recapture the value of the land, which is assessed by the city of Boston at more than $5.5 million. "You're going to spend money to bid, and then to build, and you can only build five stories - what can you do with that?"


The Turnpike's real estate offerings have generated mixed results lately. It will soon name a winner in the bidding for Parcel 7, a Greenway garage and office complex that attracted bids from WinnDevelopment and Pennsylvania-based hoteliers Hersha Developers. But the Pike was forced to extend the bidding deadline for 11 Turnpike service plazas by a month after the offering attracted scant interest. The new deadline for that offering is April 24.
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Could the parcel be made larger by closing the adjoining road on the Greenway side?
 
The Common is a functioning park - why on earth would we want to develop it?

You can play baseball, fly a kite, play frisbee, run around with your children, rollerblade, bike, hear concerts, see cultural landmarks, attend rallies, even ice skate on the Common.

The patches that comprise some mythical "Greenway" will always be traffic islands that are too dangerous and too small for any true recreation or activity.

They are inherently useless. So develop them into something useful.

Only in a town like Boston is that considered radical.
 
I would say the North End & Chinatown parks are as functional as the Common. The rest should be developed, with pocket parks scattered throughout.
 
I only know this because I made the mistake of trying to throw a frisbee around with my 5 year old nephew on one of those median strips.

Even calling these median strips "parks" is a dangerous form of false advertising. Parks aren't often framed by live and active Interstate Highway traffic ramps.

You can't DO anything on these things other than pass through them. It's not their fault, they are just too small.
 
statler said:
I would say the North End & Chinatown parks are as functional as the Common. The rest should be developed, with pocket parks scattered throughout.
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Your right........I mean the shadows laws and politicians are worried about a STRIP of land running through the city so the taxpayers can pay 10 Million a year to maintain is absolutely insane. The Boston common is a functioning park and there is no comparison.

I once heard somebody comparing what the Greenway was going to be like a Central Park in NYC. The reality of the Greenway is comparison to an upgrade of COMM AVE.
 
Upgrade? I agree they are similar, but I think the Comm Av Mall works a lot better than the Greenway.
 
Perhaps this experiment would be worth trying: On selected Sundays throughout the warm weather months, close one of the two side roads and make the other one two-way. See what effect this has on the usability of the parks.
 
Ron, I really like this idea - I'm sure the Boston entrenched interests will find a way to make sure it can't happen... but I certainly think it's worth trying.

I believe the Federal Government also gets a say because it is their highway ramps that are a chief culprit.
 
This does not require closing any of the ramps. Just divert the traffic going to and from them.
 
The point you labelled "End of the Greenway" is, in fact, supposed to be the end of the Greenway. Beyond it are supposed to be a YMCA (on the Haymarket ramp parcel) and Bulfinch triangle developments.

The 'wtf?' parking lot is supposedly designated for future housing development.
 
No matter what they do, it is always going to look awkward. It is still the path of the old highway that was unnatural to the organic pattern of the streets. It's far too narrow to be a park, maybe squares would have been better.

This is way before my time, but does anyone remember whose idea it was to make it like this, instead of knitting the streets back together? They should have reconstructed the old streets and sold the parcels to developers, instead of wasting all this time with these nonprofits, which are never going to have the money to build on these odd strips and over empty space.
 
Others may know more details than me, but I think it goes back to the Dukakis years when the high open space ratio was established. The thinking was the open space would environmentally mitigate the additional roadway capacity of the big dig.
 
The blame rests squarely on Mike Dukakis.

Lucky for us, he's back in office, with a tan.
 
The power to make the Greenway better is already in the hands of private developers. All up and down the Greenway are hundreds of private businesses and landlords holding on to properties and businesses that used to contend with a major elevated highway. To do so, they turned their back to it. Now that the highway is down, more and more businesses and landlords are reorienting themselves towards the street. This is the number one thing that will make the Greenway work. Trees, traffic, programing, whatever - none of these will have as much of a positive effect as businesses creating street level interaction. Writing off this project now is ridiculous, as is blaming the Government.
 
Banker & Tradesman - April 14, 2009
Pike Parcel Draws Multiple Bids, Gutierrez In Mix

By Paul McMorrow

Banker & Tradesman Staff Writer

As many as four bids were submitted for the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority's Parcel 9 property in Boston, Banker & Tradesman has learned, including a proposal for a 170,000-square-foot, mixed-use development from The Gutierrez Co.

Turnpike officials were not immediately available to discuss the bids, which were unsealed at noon Tuesday. The fact that there were multiple bidders on the property would seem to be a statement of faith in the long-term prospects of Boston's real estate market, which has been battered by falling values and ballooning office vacancies.

Some local real estate observers worried that a lone bid on the property, from the Boston Museum, may signal a disaster for the Turnpike as it tries to unload assets and raise money. The parcel is valued by the City of Boston at $5.5 million.

Gutierrez is proposing to build a 6-story, 170,000-square-foot, mixed-use building on the 29,400-square-foot parcel, which abuts the Rose Kennedy Greenway and Haymarket. The first floor would be a mix of retail and market uses, in line with the Boston Redevelopment Authority's wish to reinforce Haymarket's market characteristics. The upper five floors would house office space.

"It's a pretty exciting parcel, and we hope to be the frontrunner," said William Caulder of The Gutierrez Co. ADD Inc., of Boston, performed design work for the Gutierrez proposal.

Sources told Banker & Tradesman there were potentially two other bids on the property, in addition to the one confirmed by The Gutierrez Co. and a publicly disclosed bid by the Boston Museum, a nonprofit organization seeking to build a $120 million city history museum on the parcel.

Given its lack of funds, competition can't bode well for the Boston Museum in the face of well-heeled developers like Gutierrez. The nonprofit group has reportedly raised just $7 million, and its financial stability was recently questioned by the Turnpike's executive director, Alan LeBovidge.
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underground said:
The power to make the Greenway better is already in the hands of private developers. All up and down the Greenway are hundreds of private businesses and landlords holding on to properties and businesses that used to contend with a major elevated highway. To do so, they turned their back to it. Now that the highway is down, more and more businesses and landlords are reorienting themselves towards the street. This is the number one thing that will make the Greenway work. Trees, traffic, programing, whatever - none of these will have as much of a positive effect as businesses creating street level interaction. Writing off this project now is ridiculous, as is blaming the Government.
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The city & State job should be limited to the basics at this point.
The city & states job should be to create a beautiful Garden of flowers, trees, and keeping the Greenway clean. THAT IS IT.
The city and it?s cronies should begin to move away from developing anything because it ends up costing the taxpayer?s 10-50 times the amount a private company can actually do it for. Let the private Developers lead the way with incentives for the strip.
The city or the state can't continue to run a MASSIVE deficit every year without trying to balance the budgets. It's only a matter a time before they start taxing small or midsized companies into bankruptcy.
 
Cafes and "streewall engagement" still don't change the four lanes of traffic you have to cross to get onto the median strip grass patch.

Chiafaro's plan at the aquarium garage will do more to breathe life into these dead patches than adding some meager cafes and retail shops along the distant edges.
 
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