Rose Kennedy Greenway

This was more of a political ploy on his part. What he's trying to do is set himself up so he can point back to this state and how fucked up is and how he had no real power to change things as governer. I don't blame him. The state and the city are a mess, people are leaving in droves and corruption is rampant at all levels.

Thinking more and more about it, I agree with his original veto. It should be a priority to make the tunnels safe. What'll get done with 31 million dollars anyway? Some contractors will push around dirt for six months.

I had some friends recently up to visit from New York. The last time they were here was February and they commented that nothing had changed while walking across the street from fanueil to the north end. Nothing will change for a long time. And that has nothing to do with the tunnel collapse.
 
or so he can say, when the project fails, that he voted against it. And if (when) it succeeds, he'll say "I still think we should have waited until the Big Dig problems were sorted out for the safety of the residents of Boston"

It's a win-win, really...
 
bosdevelopment said:
I had some friends recently up to visit from New York. The last time they were here was February and they commented that nothing had changed while walking across the street from fanueil to the north end. Nothing will change for a long time. And that has nothing to do with the tunnel collapse.
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That's exactly how I feel. I just spent some time downtown and in the North End last week and I made it a point to walk much of the Greenway, but I was thoroughly disappointed to see sand pile after F-250 after half-finished sidewalk after.. ect. I wish I took more pictures of it last year so I'd have something to compare to to see if my impressions are perception or reality, but at the least it looks like nothing has progressed.... doh. That $31 mil better go reeeeeal far.
 
I was under the impression that the 31 million was for capping over the ramps leading to/from the tunnels so the non-profits had a foundation on which to build their buildings. The money is not going to landscaping and parks as far as I understand though maybe I'm wrong. The park/landscaping money has already been budgeted.
 
atlantaden said:
I was under the impression that the 31 million was for capping over the ramps leading to/from the tunnels so the non-profits had a foundation on which to build their buildings. The money is not going to landscaping and parks as far as I understand though maybe I'm wrong. The park/landscaping money has already been budgeted.
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No you're right, but I just took advantage of the veto to bemoan the entire situation. BTW, has anyone noticed that impromptu bum living room set up in a parcel near haymarket?
 
Park construction stopped, at least for a few weeks, after the tunnel collapse.

Also, a lot of the construction-zone look is in the Bulfinch Triangle. That's all going to be buildings, not parkland.

I hope the veto override is enough to bring the YMCA back on board.
 
I hope the YMCA, and the other proposed ramp parcel buildings, do not go through. In my opinion, they all do a terrible job of doing what they're supposed to do - i.e. cover and hide the ramps, and provide some level of cross-artery activity. Part of the problem is that on at least two of these parcels (the ones on both sides of the two North End park parcels bounding Hanover Street), there appears to have been no room left for sidewalks. The open gashes of the ramps literally abut (separated by a bare concrete wall) the surface road on the North End side of the artery. So any building built over these gashes is going to have a big long wall that runs along the street, with just a curb. Instead of feeling like a BUILDING, it will feel like a WALL - even if it has windows. It will feel suburban, sterile, uninviting. Combine that with the fact that across the street, in the North End, you have even more gashes in the urban fabric (like the hole in the ground for the Callahan Tunnel, the ugly and useless front yard for the tunnel administration building, and some crappy parking lot thing), and it seems like this section of the "greenway" will be dusty, windswept, and isolated no matter what is built on the ramp parcel itself.
 
The parking lot is supposed to become a development parcel for the BRA, and I think the other parcels you mention are also designated for development if anyone wants to buy them.

I presume that covering the ramps will include building sidewalks on top of the covers.
 
I could be wrong, but I seem to remember the renderings for both the YMCA building and the Boston museum building not including sidewalks on all sides of the buildings.
 
The Boston Museum and the Center For The Arts are certain. They will be built. The YMCA is still in question. But, with the financial assistance to build caps over the ramps the possibility is more real.

I, for one, am glad that the money is going to the park. I still have hopes that this will be a great place and will bring a lot of revenue to the city.
 
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At least in the case of the Boston Museum Project, there is an attempt to use the project as a means of connecting different parts of the Greenway, rather than as an interruption. Whatever one thinks of the design, the hulking structure above the surface was in part an effort to have the park continue through the site. From Moshe Safdie's website http://www.msafdie.com/:
This desire to preserve the open space while creating an intensive attraction, has become the central theme of the design proposal for The Boston Museum Project. The base of the complex, accommodating a pedestrian street, museum information center, theater, education facilities, and cafes is formed by a mound; an undulating park whose roof forms an extension of the Greenway park system, under which are components of the museum program. And then, as if floating above, a major sculptural object, transparent and reflective, a structure that accommodates the museum's Grand Hall, l'Orangerie, and permanent exhibits.
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It sure is different, especially for Boston which is one of the reasons I like it. I guess they could have built a museum using the traditional brick and architecture of the area (boring) and I'm glad they didn't. Not many families are gonna walk by this structure without the kids tugging at their parents to go see what that building's all about...if nothing else, to walk up those pathways or getting onto the glass-enclosed escalator. I think that building, if it's ever built according to the specs on Sadfie's website, is gonna be an instant hit.
 
Re: ...

Merper said:
i hate that thing.
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The rendering is pretty crude. I think it's pretty interesting. I'd like to see a more refined drawing.
 
If the design is modified I hope the grass-covered, man made hill is kept.
 
I honestly laughed out loud on that one. :lol:

There is too much dead open space in the area and this design could add to that isolated, windswept feeling. Although as I walk thru and drive this area I am more and more convinced that this might be pretty good.

btw-I always wished, even as a child that somehow the long granite buildings that were shaved off would be made whole. That will never happen and that it will be done in a Modern style, for these I cannot forgive. This is a Boston HISTORY museum... it is not the ICA... and the era which Modern dominated is IMO the low point of Boston architectural history. The John Hancock could be the exception that proves the rule.

A giant whale tail doesn't say Boston history to me, it says New Bedford or Nantucket history, GRANITE says Boston history to me. Look at the Essex Museum in Salem for what a Boston museum could be like.
 
I also like the idea of a grass-covered, man-made hill. There is one of these in Amsterdam, on one corner of the Museumplein, which is a large park/field surrounded by a bunch of cultural institutions, over a big underground parking garage.

Here is a picture of the Museumplein. The man-made hill is that triangle on the lower left-hand corner of the park.
museumplein.jpg


Even though I went and sat on the top of this thing many times while I was there, I idiotically didn't take a picture of it. It's shaped like a triangle that's tilted upwards, so that only one edge touches the horizontal plane of the park. Here are a couple of pics I ripped off of a Dutch website:

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Underneath the hill, mostly on a below-grade level, is a large supermarket. Pretty sweet.

Anyway, my gripe with the Boston museum is not the hill, just the fact that the sides will be blank and lifeless. If the North End side of the hill had a sidewalk (which it doesn't in the above rendering), and an entrance to some sort of active use, like a supermarket, I think it would be swell.
 
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