Seaport Neighborhood - Infill and Discussion

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Y'all need to calm down. I've moved most of that spat to a closed thread in General. Bring it back on topic.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

This is an excerpt from the Globe story:
"Bostonians stubbornly love their cars, especially in bad weather. But they must deal with two hard and fast numbers: a downtown “parking freeze” that caps public parking places in commercial facilities at 35,556; and the South Boston limit, frozen at about 30,389, according to the city’s Air Pollution Control Commission.

The downtown freeze, in place since 1978 and amended in 2006, specifically limits parking available to the general pubic in commercial buildings. It doesn’t apply to residential buildings, which can install spots for tenants and guests. New commercial buildings also can offer parking for their business tenants -- but not for the public.

New buildings can include parking for the general public only if there are spots available in the freeze “bank,” given up by some other property.

”At the moment there are zero spaces in the bank,’’ said Carl Spector,Boston’s director of climate and environmental planning. In fact, there have been no spaces available since December.

In South Boston, the rules are slightly different. Even commercial buildings creating tenant parking must apply to the bank, and spaces are going fast. There are 1,325 spots in the South Boston parking bank, for which new developments can apply."

Not sure how are 1700 new spots made available. Unless state/city are exempt?
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Maybe they come from current surface lots?

I imagine many people will use these lots to go to the airport, since presumably they'd be cheaper than the airport lots?
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Keep in mind that Massport is over capacity at logan too - there are typicalls 100s of extra cars parked in every nook and cranny of central parking, and they valet park cars on every paved surface of logan - under viaducts, on medians, etc. - which im pretty sure is inconsistent with an east boston parking cap too.

Is it likely that part of the concept is to get logan passengers to hope the silver line from the new southie garage?
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Smartiro said:
In South Boston, the rules are slightly different. Even commercial buildings creating tenant parking must apply to the bank, and spaces are going fast. There are 1,325 spots in the South Boston parking bank, for which new developments can apply."

Not sure how are 1700 new spots made available. Unless state/city are exempt?
Click to expand...

Best guess is that there are expectations that the rest of the spots in the bank will be added due to near-future development, prior to the construction of the garage. Every displaced surface lot adds spaces to the bank.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

The Herald comments are hilarious.
http://www.bostonherald.com/comments/1064616817#disqus_thread

Bob • 4 hours ago
Just 1700 cars? Really?... The Disneyland parking structure holds 10000 cars!! ...1700 spaces solves nothing. If Massport is going to build a garage and try to solve the huge parking problem there, get serious about it and build a garage with 5000 spaces, minimum.
Click to expand...

I'm DYING at my desk.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

....and in the span of a few short hours we've talked about everything except the fact that there is already already glacial gridlock for several hours a day here....
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Maybe the extra traffic will force the SL1 to use the dedicate highway patrol onramp.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

CSTH said:
....and in the span of a few short hours we've talked about everything except the fact that there is already already glacial gridlock for several hours a day here....
Click to expand...

+1,000,000. Keep spending money on parking structures instead of transit improvements and traffic is going to keep getting worse. The bottleneck happens at I-93N. That's not going away.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

AmericanFolkLegend said:
+1,000,000. Keep spending money on parking structures instead of transit improvements and traffic is going to keep getting worse. The bottleneck happens at I-93N. That's not going away.
Click to expand...

There's all that empty space where 93 used to be... seems like a perfect spot for one! Right size and everything.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Hey I hate gridlock traffic and car-centric urban policy as much as the rest of you, but let's be realistic: the Seaport will always be car-centric and that's not all that bad. It has lots of things that appeal to people who can afford high parking rates and hate non-car transportation: convention centers, premium chain hotels, and steak houses. Add in an art museum, concert venue, and a waterfront view and...sorry, fellas but this thing will be a car magnet forever.

Why not build a garage? And if it becomes the first construction over the pike in 30 years, I will cheer.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

So they're replacing the Neo-Copley Place mall concept with a 1700-space parking garage? I'm not sure which would be better...

I always wondered why they didn't build parking underneath the convention center. It was a clean site, and it's not like nearby sites don't have underground parking.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

cozzyd said:
Maybe the extra traffic will force the SL1 to use the dedicate highway patrol onramp.
Click to expand...

Hahahaha... no. You underestimate the power of the little fiefdoms that litter the landscape.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I'm in favor of it. It's a parcel of land that will never be attractive for any other use and the garage itself should be quite unobtrusive given that it's blocked on all sides by elevated ramps/highway, and will be further hidden by the large hotels planned to go up on the Sumner St parcels south of 90.

The garage is replacing the surface lots, all of which are slated to go away (and have already been going away), so that BCEC visitors will still have somewhere to park. They're always going to be fairly car-centric visitors regardless of how good transit is (or in the Seaport's case, isn't), as many drive in from around the Northeast. The garage is also for hotel parking for the 1000 room hotel previously mentioned that's planned on Sumner St.

As it is now, a large BCEC event basically runs out of parking in the area, especially if it's also on a weekday. I've wound up on the top floor of the Northern Ave garage before for PAX East. They're planning on expanding the BCEC, it's obvious that it's going to be needed.

There's a report on here: http://www.t5boston.com/ that pretty much lays out the plans, logic, and expectations of future development with renderings. (note: it's >100mb, don't try to open it in browser).
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

An answer to parking cap in the Globe story:
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2014/10/15/massport-build-car-garage-south-boston-waterfront/9YPj8IavaszX562bGnXdeO/story.html

"Because the garage would be owned by Massport, a public entity, the spaces in it would not count toward the parking cap for South Boston, which is approaching its limit of about 30,389 parking places, said Carl Stratton, the director of climate and environmental planning for the City of Boston. South Boston, East Boston, and downtown all have an upper limit on parking spots as part of an agreement with the state and federal governments to limit air pollution.

Instead, the garage would count toward Massport’s cap of 10,316 spots. A Massport spokesperson could not say how close the authority is to that limit, but said that the garage would not exceed the total."
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

So, am I wrong in suspecting that the Globe article last week on the woes of bank executive parking in Boston was a plant in order to build support for Massport's announcement this week?

It seems awfully convenient in timing. Now the Massport guy can wave his hand and claim that there's a "parking crunch" because of a recent article in the paper.

Sigh. I was looking over some documents for the GLX delay petition deadline (was Oct 14th) and it occurred to me how ridiculous it is that we can't get the existing air pollution mitigation items done in a reasonable time frame, and here we go again with adding more and more cars to downtown. I don't know how strong the air pollution commission is these days, but I have a bad feeling about it...
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

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Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

This church looks like an after-thought in one of the prime, gateway locations to the Seaport. Why couldn't they provide space for the church in One Seaport, similar to what they've done with St. Francis Chapel in the Prudential Center?
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I have a question. Currently Northern Ave curves towards Seaport blvd but on all plans for both Fan Pier and Seaport Square Norther Ave is supposed to be parallel to Seaport Blvd and intersect at 90 degrees what looks like continuation of E Service Road. This will make parcel G into a rectangle from a current triangle.
Is this still the plan? Is city supposed to build this?
I would've expected this to happen already if this is indeed the plan...
 
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