Seaport Neighborhood - Infill and Discussion

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I do hope that when they get around to building out the residential sections of the SBW it offsets the bland cold corporate feeling here now.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Boston02124 said:
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Forgive me, I'm having difficulty locating the thread for this development — on D Street between the Silver Line WTC station and Haul Road, right over the I90 tunnel. Just noticed it was under construction today and haven't seen any plans or renderings.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

The writing is on the wall for the Seaport area. Super block suburbia close to the city.
City/state, BRA, Menino, Unions, a complete failure for what the City of Boston should have had in this area.

#1 The amount of taxpayers money swindled to help the unions and developers build this crap.
#2 No rapid transit in the area (Silverline Bus vision is a JOKE) Traffic at certain times unbearable.
#3 The Huge superblocks created a wall against the Harbor (Completely went against everything Chap 91 was supposed to prevent.
#4 No Neighborhood Feel (A bunch of rich out of town yuppies with high-priced condos)
#5 Menino/city created BID, tried for the Greenway tax along with all the tax incentives going to seaport cronies like Fallon and the rest of the development corporation hacks in the area.

SEAPORT is a FAILURE---- No innovation going on just companies relocating from Backbay, Downtown to the Seaport.

Innovation district feels like a corporate box show on Boston's waterfront---Nothing Unique about the developments. The architecture is so underwhelming its ashame.

Missed opportunity by the city/state---just the Democrats buying votes saying this was job creations by giving Fallon, JPM and the rest of the hacks with unlimited tax incentives to get something built.

All the city/state had to do was build a transit system that connected to seaport efficiently for the public and let free markets determining what area should evolve into. Like how Kendall Square evolved. Not force this garbage on Boston's Waterfront.

All the NIMBY's is complaining about Chap 91 but they are allowing all this open space to wall off the city from the harbor now?
You ask how the rich get richer? Why do you give tax breaks to GE, JPM, Fallon to a group of corporations that are building in the most desirable city in the country? WHY? This land would be bought up just on Supply & Demand alone.
No families, no school systems---The Seaport community is a bunch of out-towners with money. High net individuals, or executive paying jobs, or a bunch of rich kids.
 
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Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

It's almost as though just a few minutes down the road we had numerous, successful templates for what works really, incredibly well and what people want... and completely ignored that, mumbling something about "we can't make cities like that anymore... doin' biotech... Southie doesn't want too many people moving in... needs more parking."

The development of the Boston Seaport district is like a chef walking out of the kitchen at The French Laundry, going to a new place across the street, throwing some frozen Sysco food in a deep fryer and acting aghast that anyone would think they could've done better.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I'm not surprised that people are increasingly disappointed with this district. I'm afraid I made some similar noises almost 10 years ago, yet many here assured me that I was wrong. The first clue for me was the sheer width of the streets and the lack of concern for pedestrians. A second clue was the focus on aerial views of the proposed district which gave and still give a false impression of how the place really functions for real people. The third was the relatively boring architecture. I'm tired of being told that a mirrored glass box is impressive, and will distract from the horrid paneled surfaces and quirky fenestration of other buildings. The manic push to erect structures without the city reexamining the fact that it was permitting a suburban office park to be plunked onto prime real estate, sans parking lots, has been a sad mistake. I don't really care if the place has a "vibe" for Millennials or if it contains a few notable and expensive eateries. It's as removed from reality as the Back Bay was when it was first created: an enclave for the wealthy who needed town homes to complement their mansions on the coast or in the suburbs; ordinary people need not approach. As sad an outcome, in my opinion, as Government Center.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

It's only half built. Let it develop first.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Padre Mike said:
I'm not surprised that people are increasingly disappointed with this district. I'm afraid I made some similar noises almost 10 years ago, yet many here assured me that I was wrong. The first clue for me was the sheer width of the streets and the lack of concern for pedestrians. A second clue was the focus on aerial views of the proposed district which gave and still give a false impression of how the place really functions for real people. The third was the relatively boring architecture. I'm tired of being told that a mirrored glass box is impressive, and will distract from the horrid paneled surfaces and quirky fenestration of other buildings. The manic push to erect structures without the city reexamining the fact that it was permitting a suburban office park to be plunked onto prime real estate, sans parking lots, has been a sad mistake. I don't really care if the place has a "vibe" for Millennials or if it contains a few notable and expensive eateries. It's as removed from reality as the Back Bay was when it was first created: an enclave for the wealthy who needed town homes to complement their mansions on the coast or in the suburbs; ordinary people need not approach. As sad an outcome, in my opinion, as Government Center.
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I think that is largely true, but to each there own. Thankfully they retained a bit of human scale architectural character next door in the fort point block. To me Boston is at its best when it mixes the old and the new and doesn't fo this sort of break it first approach. Unfortunately they took a West End approach to redevelopment in the Seaport... Rich developers convincing the government to level a neighborhood so 30 years down the road they can put in a few condos. Basically this is a somewhat nicer looking West End.

All that glass would have looked great intermixed with a more human scale street level interspersed with a few older brick buildings.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

TallIsGood said:
It's only half built. Let it develop first.
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I guess I am of the opinion that at halfway in you get a pretty good feeling for the final product.

IMHO that product is meh. Not horrible, but certainly not great.

Transit, though, is horrible. Silver Line needs an aggressive replacement/upgrade option under serious discussion and planning, and not just in this message board, I mean at the MBTA and MassDOT! I had to use it about 10 times last week, and I would shoot myself before I became reliant on that horrible infrastructure on a daily basis.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

tangent said:
I think that is largely true, but to each there own. Thankfully they retained a bit of human scale architectural character next door in the fort point block. To me Boston is at its best when it mixes the old and the new and doesn't fo this sort of break it first approach. Unfortunately they took a West End approach to redevelopment in the Seaport... Rich developers convincing the government to level a neighborhood so 30 years down the road they can put in a few condos. Basically this is a somewhat nicer looking West End.

All that glass would have looked great intermixed with a more human scale street level interspersed with a few older brick buildings.
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Not quite the same...West End was a densely-popuated, lived-in area at the time it was leveled...Seaport was a largely un-lived in industrial wasteland (If you read the plaque at fan pier, it talks about the substantial fed-funded environmental remediation that had to happen when those parking lots were produced in place of largely vacant warehouses, etc...this was an industrial area that had left the sites highly contaminated).

I say this largely agreeing with the above comments about the architecture/missed-opportunities, etc...but it's not correct to say that much was lost when this area was leveled.

I think we can be a bit sad about the monolithic / borg-cube-like glass architecture and lack of streetscaping, but, it's not over yet and we've discussed numerous times on this forum plans to improve the streets (new medians with trees etc).

I think I just would have liked to see more Lovejoy Wharf-esque architecture that plays more of an homage to boston's legacy buildings than what we ended up with...or at least a diversity of old-meets-new.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

tangent said:
All that glass would have looked great intermixed with a more human scale street level interspersed with a few older brick buildings.
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It certainly would but there were no older brick buildings in the Seaport. The area was an asphalt field. It was destined to be filled with buildings of similar style because the buildings are all being built within a short period of time. The avoidable problems were the excessively wide Seaport Boulevard and awful mass transit, but also probably at least to some degree the superblock scale.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

The city specifically requested glass.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

nm88 said:
The city specifically requested glass.
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I actually think the glass can be a nice contrast to the rest of Boston.

Architecturally (Master Planning really), the problem, in my opinion, is too many superblocks, being allow to absolutely maximize the FAR within the height limit. This district needed a much lower FAR for the given heights to force some architecturally diversity. Instead we got maximum FAR boxes.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

JeffDowntown said:
I actually think the glass can be a nice contrast to the rest of Boston.

Architecturally (Master Planning really), the problem, in my opinion, is too many superblocks, being allow to absolutely maximize the FAR within the height limit. This district needed a much lower FAR for the given heights to force some architecturally diversity. Instead we got maximum FAR boxes.
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Lower FAR may make buildings look more interesting, but higher FAR results in more offices, more residences, more retail and services, and more tax revenue. Given Boston's incredible supply restrictions, I'd say that allowing higher FAR at the the expense of interesting architectural is a net win for the City.

In short, I don't think that restricting development here for the sake of aesthetics would be worth the implied social costs.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

JumboBuc said:
Lower FAR may make buildings look more interesting, but higher FAR results in more offices, more residences, more retail and services, and more tax revenue. Given Boston's incredible supply restrictions, I'd say that allowing higher FAR at the the expense of interesting architectural is a net win for the City.

In short, I don't think that restricting development here for the sake of aesthetics would be worth the implied social costs.
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It would help if our dumb fucking leaders properly laid out an infrastructure plan for a efficient transit grid connected to the area before building a corporate shitshow.

Most building Lego instructions
1-2-3-4-5

Boston Building logic
2-3-5-4-1--Throw in a tax break or two

You allow the area to turn into millions of square-footage of superblock developments allowing everybody to take the Silver-line bus in the area.

Only short-minded-- dumb people think this way. Its job creation thou--
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Boston's Mid-rise Boxes and Exceedingly Lousy Built-After-1950 Garbage.....

Tom Menino said:
What if the argument really is:
Bad architecture and non-existent transit vs the slow ride to urban death....
and I got us our 'get out of jail free' card from the latter?
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to be contd.....
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I just want to point out these blocks aren't even close to being superblocks.

The west end has super blocks the seaport definitely does not especially considering some of the lots are going to be subdivided by more roads than they are currently.

UUelEod.png


See the difference
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

JumboBuc said:
Lower FAR may make buildings look more interesting, but higher FAR results in more offices, more residences, more retail and services, and more tax revenue. Given Boston's incredible supply restrictions, I'd say that allowing higher FAR at the the expense of interesting architectural is a net win for the City.

In short, I don't think that restricting development here for the sake of aesthetics would be worth the implied social costs.
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I get all your points except the more tax revenue. That part we gave away in all the tax incentives in the district.
 
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