Rose Kennedy Greenway

Ron Newman said:
Why does the second one need redevelopment? It looks like it is already full of boats and has a pleasant walkway along the marina edge.
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Ron, czsz wasn't being too unkind. Unfortunately, Google has yet to streetview map DC and there are no images on the Web that show the architectural motif of the three or four motels / restaurants that line the Maine Avenue waterfront. The Boston analogy that comes to my mind would be if the now-demolished Jimmy's Harborside x4 had been constructed out of cinderblock and cement circa 1970-1975, with a bit of Daytona Beach kitsch thrown in for good measure.
 
Sweet deal: Finale lands spot in North End
By Jay Fitzgerald
Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Finale Desserterie is moving into a high-profile North End space that used to house the landmark Martignetti liquor store.

The fancy dessert chain, which also announced yesterday the opening of its new central pastry kitchen in Allston, now joins Cafe Graffiti, Gigi Gelateria, Christina Defalco (an upscale boutique clothing store) and a Citizens Bank as planned tenants in the former Martignetti building that abuts the new Rose Kennedy Greenway.

Finale, which already has four dessert shops in Boston and the surrounding area, plans to move into the prime location by this November, the company said yesterday.

The new shop will employ about 35 people and have seating for about 70.

Mayor Thomas Menino showed up yesterday for the official opening of Finale?s new 8,500-square-foot central kitchen at 9 Travis St. in Allston.

The company?s kitchen, which used to be in Malden, will employ about 20 people. Finale Desserterie also will move its corporate headquarters to Allston from space in the back of its Park Plaza shop.

?I?m proud that we were able to assist Finale in finding the right space in Boston for their new pastry kitchen and corporate headquarters,? said Menino.

The mayor toured the already up-and-baking kitchen yesterday with Finale Desserterie president and co-founder Paul Conforti.

By moving into the old Martignetti?s site, Finale will have a shop sitting at the gateway to the North End, at the corner of Salem and Cross streets, just as the Rose Kennedy Greenway takes shape in the post-Big Dig era of Boston.

Martignetti closed earlier this year, shocking some North End residents. The store, which gave birth to the Martignetti liquor empire, had been in the North End building for 70 years.

Citizens Bank, which holds the master lease to the entire building, is overseeing renovation of the structure for new tenants.
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http://www.bostonherald.com/business/general/view.bg?articleid=1093864


The Allston bakery is in a Harvard-owned building in the so-called Keystone block east of Barry's Corner.
 
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it's not "a Citizens Bank", it's a Citizens Bank ATM (replacing a Bank of America ATM at the same site). The North End branch of Citizens Bank is staying where it is now.
 
Tonight on Channel 4 news @ 11:00 p.m. there is going to be a story regarding the North End Greenway park. The preview of the story indicates that the theme of the story will be that the neighborhood is very disappointed with the outcome of the park.
 
Just saw it. Not a big Jon Keller fan, as he has only one delivery mode on any subject: slow whine about the painfully obvious. The North End park got raked for not living up to what was promised.
 
From the beginning, there was a faction in the North End that wanted an Italian piazza instead of the park design that was selected. Was this related to tonight's TV report?
 
^^^^
Precisely, Ron. Much it involved comments from some 60+ woman who said that the neighborhood was promised something that would be representative of the "Italian spirit". Then followed the observation that there was nothing "Italian" about what was built. (I don't know about that...Monte Cassino circa 1944?)
The denouement was Keller declaring the park "the pits". Thanks for the newsflash.
 
I was out there when they were filming that segment. It must have been the windiest day in May, hence the lack of people and the lack of fountains (they shut off automatically when it gets too windy).
 
Seeing as how the North End is now less than 50% Italian, I'd say the park is just as Italian as the neighborhood.
 
Being an Italian-American who has spent lots of time in various parts of Italy, and whose parents were born in the North End, I am amazed that anyone living there now would complain about the greenway park not being "Italian" enough. The only "Italian" aspects of the North End, architecturally speaking, are Sacred Heart church (converted from a Protestant chapel), and St. Leonard's church, and the Prado (created in the 1930's). The tenaments are vintage early-20th C. American and the street pattern is vintage 18th C. English. What has traditionally given the North End even a whisp of "Italian" flavor have been the specialty shops, restaurants, and the cigar-chomping, older men hanging around Hanover St. speaking various Italian dialects. Today, there are many more so-called Italian restaurants than 40 years ago (most serving mediocre iterations of Italian meals), many fewer speciality shops (upper Hanover St. is looking more like a yuppy haven every day, and Salem St. is barely hanging on) and not as many older men hanging around as before. It's a marketing miracle that the North End is at all "Italian" (thanks to the tourists). IMO the residents have nothing to complain about regarding the design of the greenway. Let's first see how many residents will actually use the space provided under the canopy of girders.
 
Don't forget the five big saints-day festivals every July and August. If you want to see the North End in full Italian glory, that's the time to visit.
 
Padre,
I'm dying laughing, you are so right. Had a little business to attend to in the area last Tuesday, thought I'd finish up with some barolo, meat and sauce. Walking down Hanover St., I might as well have been walking down Charles St. Not that there's anything wrong with it, of course.
Toby
 
Ron Newman said:
Don't forget the five big saints-day festivals every July and August. If you want to see the North End in full Italian glory, that's the time to visit.
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And the irony is that the people selling food and goodies are nearly all from the suburbs! I agree, however, that the feasts are fun and would not be celebrated without the dedication of organizations still present in the North End (though I wonder how many of their members are at Mass on Sunday....I'm so bad!)
 
Greenway pedestrian bridge proposed

Boston Museum says walkway would span highway ramps

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | May 17, 2008

Executives of the Boston Museum, one of the visitor facilities planned for the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, are proposing to build a curvilinear, cable-stayed pedestrian bridge that would span one of the most forbidding of the Big Dig blocks.

The Boston Museum was originally supposed to build on a block built over the underground highway just north of Faneuil Hall Marketplace. But that block is disfigured by two traffic ramps, and museum executives said they determined it would cost $50 million more to build over ramps than on a vacant piece of land.

"It was so expensive that we couldn't do it," said Frank Keefe, the president of the group planning the facility.

So the Museum Project - intended to educate residents and visitors about history in Greater Boston, particularly the relatively neglected last 200 years - hopes to build instead on a nearby block of land, between Hanover and North streets, just off the main strip of new downtown parks.

Fund-raising, design, engineering, and construction of the five-story, 100,000-square-foot museum, which has been scaled back in size by about one-third, will take at least five years, Keefe acknowledged.

But the project is still obligated to solve the pedestrian access problem on the ramps parcel where the museum was initially planned, and Keefe said he hopes to win city approval for a steel span, which would link other blocks of the Greenway, as early as this year.

"It's a suspension bridge" over the ramps, he said. "A simple, elegant solution."

Keefe said Massachusetts Turnpike and city officials have reacted favorably so far, and the bridge could be completed well before the museum is done.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he'd seen the plan but still has questions. "Do they have the money to build it and maintain it?" he asked.
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http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/05/17/greenway_pedestrian_bridge_proposed/


Is this new site the block of land thats fenced in and has police cars parked in it? And Tommy might have asked the same question of Belkin re: his tower.
 
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What a disaster. Why can't the Museum move, and something else, like oh I don't know a building, be built instead of a terrible skywalk.
 
this skywalk, if done properly, could be just the iconic symbol/attraction for the greenway.....

.... not better than a building though....
 
While they're at it, why don't they propose an entire system of pedestrian bridges to make the rest of Greenway accessible to people as well.

This space, the artery corridor, was never suited for the vague grand "world class" green space that was promised to begin with. Cars still command the artery corridor and the Greenway is nothing more than a glorified median strip--the table scraps of highway engineers.
 
One problem with the pedestrian overpass is that it will visually reinforce the image of the Greenway as just the median strip of a highway. The overpass will make the Greenway look all the more like a freeway corridor running gunbarrel through the middle of the city.
 
It seems as though a couple people think the Rose Kennedy Parkway (not Greenway) is too wide; how about if we make a path down the middle, basically, like the Commonwealth Mall? For people only, but perhaps we could get businesses to do the pushcart thing?

Thoughts?
 
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