Rose Kennedy Greenway

Also great photos -- except for that Ugly fan buiding sticking out of the middle of the Greenway ne ar Dewey square. -- not your fault of course.

That location would have been a good spot for a medium scale building such as one of the two museum-like structures by the Signature Architects -- that definitely shouldn't be built further up the Greenway - -where they are currently supposed to go.

I think the open Greenway should just be parks {and very small scale structures such as cafes and toilets} and the surroundings should provide the wall to the Greenway. Instead we waste good park space for the "New Center for Culture" and the "New Museum" while there is a giant open parking lot near the Sumner / Callahan Tunnel head-house.

The only exception to the above is that there should be a covered {but otherwise open} canopy for the farmers and non-farmers to market there produce year round.

The canopy could have transparent / translucent fabric wall s that can be rolled down to provide additional cover in the winter and opened in the summer for maximum ventilation

Westy
 
Harbor Parks Pavilion being designed for 3d time
Changes and slow fund-raising put visitors center behind schedule

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr.
Globe Staff / December 29, 2007

The Harbor Parks Pavilion, a stunning glass visitors center heralded as the first in a series of public facilities to grace the new Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, was supposed to open a year ago. But, like the Big Dig itself, it fell behind schedule - now being designed for the third time, and not slated to open until at least 2009.

more stories like thisWhen the Island Alliance, a nonprofit that promotes the Boston Harbor Islands, unveiled plans for the pavilion three years ago, it promised a gateway to Boston's island national parks that would include a cafe and a place to relax along Atlantic Avenue near a busy tourist spot, Long Wharf.

"The building should be 21st century," Boston Redevelopment Authority chief architect Robert Kroin said at the time, citing architectural examples like the glittering Serpentine Gallery Pavilion in London.

But the Island Alliance has not yet found a design it can afford or raised any private money for the estimated $5 million project. This is despite contributions of $1 million from the federal government, $300,000 from the state, and $80,000 from the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority.

Just yesterday Senator Edward M. Kennedy's office reported that the pavilion will get about $1.8 million more in federal funding, according to Thomas B. Powers, president of the Island Alliance.

Still, the alliance has been working on the project since it announced an architectural competition for the facility in December 2004 and has spent about $300,000 on design and related costs.

"We continue to search for a design that we are comfortable with," said Powers, adding "we haven't found it yet."

Powers said yesterday that a combination of other alliance priorities, such as raising money to bring children to the Harbor Islands in the summer, had slowed progress. Also, construction costs have skyrocketed, meaning the alliance can afford less.

The pavilion is one of four public institutions planned for the Greenway, a mile-long, 30-acre corridor of parks and other public space that replaced the old elevated Central Artery highway. All of the public institutions have been delayed for years as the Big Dig project took longer to complete than expected.

The YMCA of Greater Boston threw in the towel on building a community center on a North End block, but now wants to try again. The Boston Museum Project still has millions of dollars to raise for its facility near Faneuil Hall Marketplace but this year hired a chief executive and hopes to open in 2012. The New Center for Arts and Culture expects to open its doors near Rowes Wharf in 2012.

The Harbor Islands Pavilion - much less ambitious and expensive than its counterparts - was supposed to be ready soon after the Greenway was completed. The Greenway parks are substantially done today.

Following a competition in 2005, Stephen Yablon Architect PLLC of New York was chosen to design the building. In May of that year the alliance unveiled Yablon's impressive glass box, with a reflective moat surrounding the structure.

That design, however, not only exceeded the $3 million construction budget but also would not have proved as environmentally friendly as the governing Greenway Conservancy would have liked because it used too much energy.

Based on a consultant's analysis, the project was scaled back, eliminating plans for a cafe or a bookstore. This fall the alliance reluctantly retreated to a design for a "three-season" structure - meaning it would be closed in the winter and would not have public restrooms.

When a tentative design for the less ambitious pavilion was shown to BRA officials in November, "it did not get overwhelming endorsement," alliance president Powers recalled. According to Douglas M. McGarrah, a member of the alliance board, "We've had a little bit of a setback. We have to do some tweaking in the design."

McGarrah said the BRA wants more transparency - apparently meaning more glass - so that sight lines on the parks corridor are preserved.

City officials also are not happy that the facility has shrunk. "We would prefer to see something that would serve visitors year-round at that prominent location," BRA spokeswoman Jessica Shumaker said yesterday.

McGarrah was stubbornly optimistic yesterday, saying he believes the project could break ground in 2008 and open in late 2009. "Doing anything in Boston is hard," he said. "These things are harder than they look."
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http://www.boston.com/business/glob...or_parks_pavilion_being_designed_for_3d_time/
 
But the future sites of those buildings are not "good park space". In reality, they aren't "space" at all, as they now contain highway on- and off-ramps. They need to be covered over.
 
Rose Kennedy "Whiteway"

2200666672_eff4d2f95c_b.jpg


and per FLICK'R Terms of service a link back to their website

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gmack24/2200666672/
 
Great photos you guys have here :)

My apologies if this is the wrong forum to post here (if so, just let me know!)-- I'm working on creating 3D model scenes of the greenway in Boston (using 3ds Max); more specifically, working on parcels 6, 12 and 18 at this time.


Currently working on parcel 18 (ramps CS-P, A-CN and open park space in between). For now, I need to have ramps done first to fit the model scenery; this is a completed picture of ramp A-CN. Next step is to work on ramp CS-P then the open walking space/plantation.. Some of the photos in this thread have been very useful for referencing.

abm1.jpg
 
Blahdy, good to see you here after seeing your work on Simtropolis and Sc4devotion.

**Edit** are you still working on those models for SC4? Also, seeing as I am addicted to Google Earth, is there any way for you to upload those models to google's 3D warehouse so they could appear when viewing Boston in the 3D buildings mode? I know that I personally haven't seen any 3-D infrastructure (only buildings) in GE, but it would be a cool addition if possible.
 
Lrfox said:
Blahdy, good to see you here after seeing your work on Simtropolis and Sc4devotion.

**Edit** are you still working on those models for SC4? Also, seeing as I am addicted to Google Earth, is there any way for you to upload those models to google's 3D warehouse so they could appear when viewing Boston in the 3D buildings mode? I know that I personally haven't seen any 3-D infrastructure (only buildings) in GE, but it would be a cool addition if possible.
Click to expand...

That's the eventual plan, when all is done and completed, these will most likely end up in places like Google 3d warehouse for public uses. For that reason, the ramps and structures are being modeled carefully as possible, using satellite photos, propscaling and triangulations to determine height and 3D dimension distances.

I'm eagerly waiting on what they are going to do about Parcel 6 (where YMCA is supposed to pop up on top of ramps SA-CS, SA-CT, ST-SA, ST-CN, SA-CN near Haymarket Station. Looking forward to model the building on top of the ramp space when I get to parcel 6 work. I'm not sure if the original Y plan diagram made back in 2003 is still valid, given the cost/funding situations surrounding the parcel...
 
$450m Big Dig accord expected
Deal would exempt consortium from state criminal charges in tunnel collapse
By Andrea Estes and Sean P. Murphy
Globe Staff / January 23, 2008

State and federal authorities are prepared to announce, perhaps as soon as today, a settlement of about $450 million with the firms that designed and managed the Big Dig, according to two sources who have been briefed on the negotiations, bringing closure to many of the legal battles over a project that has been marred by chronic leaks and a fatal ceiling collapse.
Related US House passes national tunnel inspection program
more stories like this

Under terms of the 50-page settlement, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff, the consortium that oversaw the Big Dig design and construction, will return $399 million to the state, and a number of smaller companies will pay about $50 million to Massachusetts, the sources said.

Both the US attorney in Boston, Michael Sullivan, and state Attorney General Martha Coakley have approved the deal at least in principle, one of the sources said. Spokeswomen for both declined comment last night.

The settlement would allow authorities to seek additional damages from Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff in the event of a major failure in the project in the future - an incident that causes more than $50 million in damage, one of the sources said. The consortium's liability would be capped at $100 million in any future failure, and an arbitrator would have to determine that the consortium was at fault, according to the source.

But by signing the agreement, Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff will avoid state criminal charges in the tunnel collapse. The other companies in the settlement had not been targets of criminal prosecution. In addition, Bechtel, whose business depends on government contracts around the country and the world, will not be barred from receiving future federal and state government contracts.

Some of the settlement money will be placed in a special trust fund and used to pay for Big Dig costs and repairs, according to one source. As a condition for approving the settlement, the US attorney's office wanted assurances that the money would not go into the state's general fund, one of the sources said. The federal government will receive some of the settlement money.

The settlement amount represents a major turnaround in financial recovery efforts for the state after years of frustration. As of 2003, it had recovered only $35,707 from Big Dig firms.

Since then, the job of trying to win settlements has been spearheaded by a retired probate court judge, Edward M. Ginsburg, former attorney general Thomas Reilly, and now Coakley, who appointed a special assistant attorney general, Paul Ware, to handle the criminal investigation into the tunnel ceiling collapse and the settlement talks.

Last year, Aggregate Industries paid a $50 million penalty to the state for its role in providing 5,700 truckloads of substandard concrete to the Big Dig - material that was not implicated in the ceiling collapse. By agreeing to pay, the company was able to continue its government work.

A lawsuit against Bechtel/ Parsons Brinckerhoff and other companies by the family of Milena Del Valle, who was killed in the July 2006 ceiling collapse in the Interstate 90 tunnel, is, on its face, unaffected by the state settlement.
Related US House passes national tunnel inspection program
more stories like this

Del Valle died after concrete panels weighing 26 tons fell from the I-90 connector tunnel ceiling on July 10, partially crushing the car she and her husband were riding to Logan Airport. The death further undermined public confidence in the trouble-plagued highway and tunnel project - and touched off multiple criminal and civil investigations.

It also sparked a political uproar, which ultimately forced the resignation of then-Massachusetts Turnpike Authority chairman Matthew J. Amorello. Former governor Mitt Romney reacted to the disaster by assuming control over the project and ordering immediate "stem to stern" inspections.

Brad Henry, one of the lawyers who represents the Del Valle family, said Bechtel's payment "certainly seems to be a substantial admission of liability. They're paying $75 million more than it cost to build the entire Gillette Stadium. That sends a strong message that Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff was aware that its conduct was in large part responsible for the collapse of that ceiling.

"It's odd that Bechtel is willing to pay hundreds of millions of dollars for the cost of broken concrete and state trooper overtime, but is unable or unwilling to try to repair the damage to the family of Milena Del Valle," he said.

Bechtel has declined to comment in the past on the Del Valle case.

So far only one of more than a dozen defendants has settled with the family. In December, Powers Fasteners Inc. of Brewster N.Y. agreed to pay the family $6 million. Powers, which provided the epoxy blamed in the collapse, is also the only company facing criminal charges after the attorney general's office charged it with one count of involuntary manslaughter in August. If convicted, Powers faces a fine of $1,000. The company, which pleaded not guilty, has denied responsibility for the fatal accident.

Because the maximum penalty for manslaughter is only $1,000, Coakley decided to seek a financial settlement from Bechtel/Parsons Brinckerhoff rather than prosecute, though she held open the possibility of criminal charges if settlement talks broke down, legal sources have previously said.

In 2004, the Globe reported the O'Neill Tunnel was riddled with hundreds of leaks, allowing almost 2 million gallons a month into the tunnel system. Only 36,000 gallons a month had been anticipated. Crews are out almost nightly plugging leaks.

Andrea Estes can be reached at estes@globe.com. Sean Murphy can be reached at smurphy@globe.com.
 
I wonder if this settlement ^^ will lead to the realization of the Boston Museum, cultural center/performing arts venue or the conservatory, all of which are desperately in need of funds.

It'd be nice if the Greenway ended up being something more than a few suburban backyards separated by thickly trafficked tunnels and intersections. For $15bln one would hope to make a substantial, rather than arguable, improvement on what was.
 
Boston Globe Magazine article written by Tom Keane found on Boston.com:

The Grass Isn't Greener
The Greenway is nothing more than the world's most expensive median strip - and a hard lesson for the city.
By Tom Keane | January 27, 2008

In 2004, Big Dig workers began dismantling the old elevated Central Artery, leaving a moonscape of debris and construction equipment in their wake. But fear not, officials assured us, something wondrous would soon emerge: the 15-acre Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

Well, it's emerged, all right. Not wondrous, though, wretched - wretched not only in execution but also in conception. Poor Rose's Greenway neither cures the ills left by the Big Dig nor gives us a decent piece of open space.

Odds are, you've never walked its length, and in your mind's eye the notion of a "greenway" conveys some sense of meandering parkland, a cool, green respite from urban rigors. Far from it. The Greenway is less a park than a series of disjointed "parklettes." Officially, there are four (Chinatown, Dewey Square, the Wharf, and the North End). In reality, it's more like 15, with each of the spaces cut up by cross streets. The parklettes are filled with the various gimcracks beloved by landscape architects who try to "define" spaces, inject "whimsy," and "echo" history, but which really look more like leftovers from a giant Tonka Toy.

I walk the Greenway at noon on a pleasant winter's day, and it feels as if I'm on the world's most expensive median strip. Three lanes of traffic travel on each side of me, two roaring and honking mechanistic rivers. People are out; the city is busy. Yet on my excursion, it occurs to me that I have found the answer to Southwest Airlines' "Wanna Get Away?" query. Visit the Greenway. I'm the sole pedestrian, alone in a crowded city. If Thoreau were alive and seeking solitude today, he might have chosen the Greenway over Walden Pond.

I'm being unfair. Come summertime, I have little doubt that workers from nearby office buildings will venture outside to catch some noontime sun. Good for them. Still, I imagine I could put together a list of 100 things Boston might have done to improve itself, and nowhere on that list would be, "Create more outside places for office workers to lunch." But $14.8 billion later, that's what we've got.

The real problem, however, is not the insipidity of the parklettes. Rather, it's the notion of the Greenway itself. I have long been skeptical that open space was the best use for these new acres. I had hoped to be wrong, but, sadly, am not.

What should we have done instead? Stand in one of the North End parklettes and look east. You'll see the densely packed brick buildings of the North End. Look west and, lo and behold, you'll see the same kinds of buildings in the Haymarket. Why is that? Because the two sides used to be one. The elevated highway was built back in an era - the 1950s - when urban planners did whatever they wanted. They wanted a north-south highway and, r-i-i-p, homes were torn down and 20,000 residents were summarily displaced. ("Ah," I can hear real estate developers sighing, "Those were the days.") Many, quite accurately, described the Central Artery as a wound through the city and, carrying the metaphor further, the purpose of the Big Dig was to close that wound.

Instead, we've just turned the wound into a scar. The right approach would have been to build across, filling in the emptiness with the kinds of buildings that exist on both sides and knitting the two halves together. That's true not only of the North End, but also of the other halves divided by the parklettes: Chinatown could link with the Leather District, downtown with the waterfront. Instead, we've kept in place a mile-long moat between two parts of the city. Sure, with the elevated highway down, at least one can see the other side. But the division remains.

And so the Greenway fails. As a park - or series of parks - it's dull, hard to reach, and seems doomed to become a trash-strewn no man's land. Ultimately, it's an object lesson for the next time we decide to fix one of our broken spaces (City Hall Plaza leaps to mind). The Greenway lacks courage, insisting on remembering - or paying homage to? - a regretted roadway that would have been better forgotten.

Tom Keane, a Boston-based freelance writer, contributes regularly to the Globe Magazine. E-mail him at tomkeane@tomkeane.com

Source: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2008/01/27/the_grass_isnt_greener/?page=full
 
Thats refreshing coming from the globe. Hopefully it will be better once the YMCA and Boston Museum are built, but it will never be the best use of that space no matter how great the parks turn out.
 
Come summertime, I have little doubt that workers from nearby office buildings will venture outside to catch some noontime sun. Good for them. Still, I imagine I could put together a list of 100 things Boston might have done to improve itself, and nowhere on that list would be, "Create more outside places for office workers to lunch." But $14.8 billion later, that's what we've got.
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Bravo. I've heard this sad echo of support for the Greenway mouthed even by people on this very forum, and it rings rather hollow. A $15 billion seasonal corporate cafeteria is an inherent failure as a public space.
 
The Chinatown and North End parks are shaping up nicely; the wharf parks are clumsy, undefined and desolate. It is unfortunate that the Boston metro has some international landscape architects that were not invited to design these parcels; Sasaki Associates did wonderful work on the Charleston Waterfront Park (I believe it just received the highest honors in the field) and they also designed one of the new city squares in Savannah's downtown expansion. These have/will turn out better than the Greenway.
 
"Create more outside places for office workers to lunch." But $14.8 billion later, that's what we've got.

Let's see, if I remember correctly, 14.8 billion dollars later, we have the Ted Tunnel, the Zakim Bridge, and miles of underground highways that make traveling to and from the airport and the city an absolute pleasure compared to what it was 20 years ago. The Big Dig, IMO, was one of the best things to happen to Boston! The Greenway is splintered because so many promises were made to so many neighborhoods and so many neighborhood groups were involved in the planning. Every neighborhood bordering the Greenway wanted their particular section as their own and the powers that be responded. Tom Keane, the author of the article, knows perfectly well that the neighborhoods would have been up in arms if his proposals for more buildings and less parkland was proposed. Chinatown, the North End, Harbor Towers, all those neighbors bordering the Greenway looked at the particular parcels as their own and any suggestion to use "their" park for private use would have been shot down.
 
Let's see, if I remember correctly, 14.8 billion dollars later, we have the Ted Tunnel, the Zakim Bridge, and miles of underground highways that make traveling to and from the airport and the city an absolute pleasure compared to what it was 20 years ago. The Big Dig, IMO, was one of the best things to happen to Boston!

Atlantden, I couldn't agree with you more, the Big Dig made Boston a livable, convenient city. In the long run 14.8 billion is small change compared to what doing nothing would have cost Bostons' economy. The parks turned out to be fairly boring, but they can be improved over time.
 
Wasn't Keane a Boston City Councilor when the Greenway was being conceived? What views did he voice back then?

And again, yes you could have created the structure for an urban street grid where the Greenway now is, but only if the city were willing to pay the additional construction costs so that the CA/T tunnel supported such. In some sections, the tunnel roof is so close to the surface that they discovered, belatedly, they can't grow trees in those sections.

So the buildings on top can have basements, why not bury the tunnel deeper, increase the hydrostatic pressure, and have taxpayers pay more every year to keep plugging the leaks.

This is a city so cheap that it refused to pay the costs of maintaining the Greenway. But I guess some feel its generosity would have had no bounds when it came to paying the additional construction costs so it could build properties on top and reap the tax revenues.
 
atlantaden said:
"Create more outside places for office workers to lunch." But $14.8 billion later, that's what we've got.

Let's see, if I remember correctly, 14.8 billion dollars later, we have the Ted Tunnel, the Zakim Bridge, and miles of underground highways that make traveling to and from the airport and the city an absolute pleasure compared to what it was 20 years ago. The Big Dig, IMO, was one of the best things to happen to Boston! The Greenway is splintered because so many promises were made to so many neighborhoods and so many neighborhood groups were involved in the planning. Every neighborhood bordering the Greenway wanted their particular section as their own and the powers that be responded. Tom Keane, the author of the article, knows perfectly well that the neighborhoods would have been up in arms if his proposals for more buildings and less parkland was proposed. Chinatown, the North End, Harbor Towers, all those neighbors bordering the Greenway looked at the particular parcels as their own and any suggestion to use "their" park for private use would have been shot down.
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I don't think the author was arguing that we wasted our money on the big dig. He is just stating that surface parks were the wrong choice to finish this project. (Which I couldn't agree more with)

It all goes back to the legislation passed that requires 75% open space. A truly arbitrary number that has been blindly adhered too, this legislation handcuffed any meaningful attempt to put back what was lost when the central artery was constructed.

One park each for the North End, Waterfront, and Chinatown. Everything else should have been housing (I'd even bump up the affordable component to 25%). Now what Neighborhood could argue with that? Weren't 20,000 residents displaced from this area? Stringing together 15 vacant lots does nothing for our city.
 
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