Seaport Neighborhood - Infill and Discussion

Re: South Boston Seaport

^wharf street in Portland, Maine.
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

It's a smaller area, and connected to multiple modes of public transit, but yet there are familiar problems. The photos reveal boxy inept buildings (some nicer ones too, but perhaps this reflects a faster build-out giving it overall a more finished neighborhood-like look) and what more...

Unlike its King Street facade, which steps back to (at least try to) break up its mass, The Beacon's Townsend side is a monolith with blank walls, parking garages and loading docks at street level, continuing for nearly a thousand feet. Part of the reason Mission Bay is perceived as sterile is its large lot size: repetitive massing and use of materials can be "harmonious," and while modernist architecture like that found throughout Mission Bay may lack detail, when done right, it can be clean, simple and attractive. But The Beacon dominates Mission Bay's north side -- and while not all buildings at Mission Bay are as boring (thankfully), and others aren't quite as bulky, the net effect is of not enough diversity.
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And...

The plaza on the Caltrain station's southeastern corner is a focal point for the neighborhood. Unfortunately, connections to Muni Metro lines bound for downtown are not so focused. To the right of the streetcar in this photo is the platform for the T-Third line, in the middle of 4th, across King. To reach it, one must cross seven lanes of traffic -- five of them headed to or from the freeway -- and three sets of tracks. (To reach the N-Judah platform in the median of King, out of frame to the right, you only need cross two lanes of traffic speeding toward 280 and one pair of tracks.)
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Re: South Boston Seaport

Familiar problems, which demonstrate that a lot of the Seaport's issues are probably the result of more widespread real estate / zoning / planning failures, and not mere local oversights.

But nothing in Mission Bay is worse than the Seaport, and a lot of it is better - light rail, uninterrupted storefront retail, lots of residential units with street entrances, no gratuitous "open space".
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

The plaza on the Caltrain station's southeastern corner is a focal point for the neighborhood. Unfortunately, connections to Muni Metro lines bound for downtown are not so focused. To the right of the streetcar in this photo is the platform for the T-Third line, in the middle of 4th, across King. To reach it, one must cross seven lanes of traffic -- five of them headed to or from the freeway -- and three sets of tracks. (To reach the N-Judah platform in the median of King, out of frame to the right, you only need cross two lanes of traffic speeding toward 280 and one pair of tracks.)
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Uhh, "speeding toward 280"? They really make it sound much worse than it is. Xfering from Caltrain to the N-Judah platform is absolutely no trouble.

Also, that is a sweet kayak house.
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

It's worth remembering though that Boston's seaport is a much larger opportunity. It's not just Fan Pier or Seaport Square, or the "Innovation District" around the industrial port. It's also Fort Point, which based on the current plans will likely be done much better - less open space, smaller footprints - ...and also everything east of the convention center between D Street and Pappas Way, for which there isn't even a plan (Intercontinental owns some land along D Street and actually has an approved residential devleopment they're sitting on).

Maybe those areas will all be done right.

To be honest, it's a great thing that the shit developments like Fan Pier are progressing slowly. When the money flows again, maybe the political will to get it right along the rest of this great opportunity will be there. Maybe there will even be political will to bring proper transit (for which an expensive tunnel was actually built!)
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

City "Innovation District" lacks fast 'net
Boston Business Journal - by Galen Moore

Bocoup LLC has everything Mayor Thomas M. Menino could want for an innovation district. The web development consultancy, which does business as Bocoup Labs, is run by a couple of open-source pros who are wired in with celebrity developers and the global open web standards community headquartered at MIT?s World Wide Web Consortium.

ounders Boaz Sender and Alistair MacDonald are turning their loft space on A Street into a community center for startups, providing coworking space, booking luminaries for events, and ? as of last week ? offering free servers to startups through a sponsorship agreement with California hosting services firm Media Temple Inc.

Now there?s just one more thing they need: a high-speed Internet connection.

?Boston?s Innovation District? is the name given to Bocoup?s neighborhood, Fort Point, and the adjacent South Boston Waterfront, by Menino and city officials, in hopes innovative firms will settle there.

But like most of Boston proper, Fort Point isn?t served by high-speed fiber Internet cable.

The existing copper and co-axial connections are too slow for some tech businesses. In most of Fort Point and the South Boston waterfront, the fastest available download speeds available are 10 MBs per second: that?s what tech incubator MassChallenge got through a two-year agreement with Comcast Corp. (Nasdaq: CMCSA)

Instead, Bocoup and the other tenants at 319 A St. get their Internet signal streamed over the air. A Rhode Island firm called Towerstream Corp. (Nasdaq: TWER) beams high-speed web service from a transmitter atop the Prudential Tower. CEO Jeff Thompson said Towerstream can compete on price with any traditional broadband service ? but Sender said data speeds fast enough to support Bocoup?s planned growth would be prohibitively expensive.

?Our plan is to bite the bullet and get a higher-grade connection when we expand,? he said.

Goldman Properties Managing Director Albert Price said the firm, which owns 319 A St. and seven other Fort Point buildings, is using Towerstream in several of its properties. It has tried to get fiber for tenants to no avail. ?We were unsuccessful in getting any kind of attention from Verizon directly,? he said. ?Comcast was the same kind of deal. We kind of got the runaround.?

Home to luxury condos and many of the city?s architecture firms, Fort Point was hit hard by the 2008-2009 recession and real-estate market collapse. Warehouse buildings like 319 A St. were once home to artist studios. Goldman Properties, the real estate arm of The Goldman Sachs Group Inc., bought 319 A in 2005 with Archon Group LP as part of a 17-building Fort Point purchase, with plans to build condominiums. The artists are gone, but development plans are on hold. The building, largely unchanged from its original lofty layout, is about half-empty.

Now, with officials pushing its new identity, the Fort Point neighborhood faces a chicken-and-egg scenario: it needs a critical mass of tenants demanding high-speed service, before Internet service providers will make the investment. ?I think of it as tipping point,? said city cable television licensing officer Michael Lynch. There has to be a math to the capital investment?.Your choice is: I?ll trench to this area where I haven?t quite got the population yet, or I can build out further in Dorchester.?

So far, only Comcast has announced plans to improve Internet infrastructure in the area, said Lynch. But those plans remain indefinite. A Comcast spokesman said the firm has laid conduit for fiber-optic service in the Innovation District, but it still needs permits to do the work that will connect that new line to the rest of its fiber network. There is no date set for when the project is likely to be completed, a spokesman said.
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http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2010/08/09/daily3.html
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

Ha! Who'd have thought that a high-tech "innovation" district would need an up-to-date communications infrastructure?

Yet another well thought out Menino scheme.
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

briv said:
Ha! Who'd have thought that a high-tech "innovation" district would need an up-to-date communications infrastructure?

Yet another well thought out Menino scheme.
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I almost feel as if Menino and the BRA just throw titles, or designations to areas in Boston, like a BID or Innovation District just to get headlines to make it appear as if they are actually doing something. This will fail like the BID will. Who is going to pay for the infrastructure upgrades?
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

that(SB) skyline is too tall! The plane nearly clips the tops of those skyscrapers!
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Re: South Boston Seaport

Too bad Menino burned the bridge with Verizon over Fios.
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

Is there a so boston dev. thread or was it combined with this one?
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Re: South Boston Seaport

Could probably move that to the Dot Ave thread since it's on Dot Ave. Great location (near Broadway Station, I-90, I-93). This is becoming an FW Webb Distribution / Showroom.
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

From http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2010/07/26/ideas_percolate_in_innovation_district/

The creators are among 110 nascent entrepreneurs who have won free office space situated in what city planners are calling the Innovation District, a 1,000-acre swath of South Boston that encompasses much of the view from the 14th floor of One Marina Park Drive at Fan Pier, where entrepreneurial teams will work.
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I learned last night that the "Innovation District" leases on Fan Pier are for three months, and a number of the companies offered space didn't show because logistically it made no sense for such a brief period.

One would figure the Boston Globe would have done some actual reporting beyond reprinting a press release from the Mayor's office. There is no mention in the media of the BRA's contracted consultants Cooper, Robertson & Partners whose Master Plan for the Seaport District (circa 2000) took 2 years to draft over the course of hundreds of BRA-hosted public meetings.

The final chapter in the CRaP Plan calls on the BRA as a next step to codify the Master Plan in a "zoning amendment." This advice was never followed, as the BRA began negotiating with property owners parcel by parcel.
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

3 months? Really? That's hilarious.
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

GLOBE EDITORIAL

Seaport project should proceed despite limited parking spaces
August 12, 2010
WITH PRESSURE growing on Boston?s rental housing market, it?s a good time to build scores of apartments at the proposed Waterside Place development on the South Boston waterfront.

A weak economy forced developer John Drew to scale back his megaproject that originally called for 209 condos, a 300-room hotel, 640,000 square feet of retail space, and a 2,350-space garage on the so-called Core Block between Summer and Congress streets. Now Drew wants to develop the property in phases, starting with the northern part of the site. His current plan calls for 234 rental units, 72,000 square feet of retail space, and a 14,000-square-foot innovation center for startup companies. The plan calls for only 185 parking spaces, including 78 dedicated spots for the apartments.

Neighbors in nearby South Boston are wary of the limited parking, and voiced their concerns at two recent public hearings....
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Full article
 
Re: South Boston Seaport

^Arborway

More fabricated controversy by the Editorial Board where none exists. They make it seem like Drew's project is being held hostage to a handful of additional parking spaces.

^cszz

Despite the name, the CRaP Plan was positive in a number of respects -- megablocks and megastreets aside. It called for up to 8000 housing units in the Seaport, recognizing the critical role of new residents. That was not politically palatable at the time, and remains so today. By comparison to the Whatever Sticks Plan (WSP) we have now, ranging from a sprawling BCEC expansion to an Innovation District christened with 3-month leases being thrown at startups, the CRaP Plan was a dream.
 
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