Seaport Neighborhood - Infill and Discussion

Boston Business Journal said:
National Development buys Fort Point Channel property worth $74.2M

Boston Business Journal - 11:35 AM EST Thursday

National Development closed on the purchase of five buildings from Berkeley Investments Inc. for $74.2 million.

The Newton, Mass.-based real estate developer purchased the assets, which total 333,000 square feet, with New York based investment firm Angelo, Gordon & Co. The property is located in Boston's Fort Point Channel neighborhood at 332 and 374 Congress St., 33-41 and 43 and 44 Farnsworth St. In addition to the existing buildings, a parking lot at 38 Farnsworth St. was also included in the sale.

The deal was first reported in the Boston Business Journal last December. Holliday Fenoglio Fowler represented the seller, Boston-based Berkeley Investment which originally bought the five buildings as part of a larger 12-building portfolio it purchased from the Boston Wharf Co. in 2004 for $100 million.

"Clearly there will continue to be increasing migration to the Seaport area," said Thomas M. Alperin, president of National Development in a statement. "We believe that this portfolio is well positioned to take advantage of continuing growth in the area."

The properties are currently approximately 85 percent leased to a number of office tenants. National Development plans to continue to operate the buildings as office properties and may convert the ground floors of the buildings into future retail and restaurant space. Richards Barry Joyce and Partners LLC have been hired to lease the property.

? 2006 American City Business Journals, Inc. and its licensors. All rights reserved.
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Fallon may build spec office building on Fan Pier
Boston Business Journal - 3:22 PM EST Thursday
by Michelle Hillman
Boston Business Journal

Developer Joseph Fallon is "exploring" beginning construction of a 480,000-square-foot office building on Fan Pier by year's end, even though tenants have yet to sign on, he told the Business Journal Thursday afternoon.

"We are exploring moving ahead with the office building on a speculative basis," said Fallon, who also is pushing forward with plans for residential and hotel properties on the site near the new federal court house on the South Boston waterfront.

"The market is continuing to tighten up," said The Fallon Co. chief.

Fallon said he expected to win tenants in part because they'll want to move into newer space. He said 80 percent of the city's supply is at least 25 years old.

Also working in his favor, he said, is a dwindling supply of big spaces. He specifically listed potential clients as operations needing blocks of 50,000, 75,000 or 150,000 square feet.

By 2009 or 2010, finding that much contiguous space will be difficult, he said.

Construction of the new building could begin by year's end and continue into late 2009 or early 2010, Fallon said. It would be located near the center of Fan Pier overlooking a marina and adjacent to a park.
 
Developer sets schedule for Fan Pier construction

February 3, 2007

THE REGION
Developer Joseph F. Fallon said he will begin construction on his first office building at the 21-acre Fan Pier project on the South Boston Waterfront this year or early next year. Fallon said he would break ground without having signed up an anchor tenant. He said there are enough large and small prospective tenants in the market now for office space, and with so few other new buildings underway in the city, starting a modest tower of about 500,000 square feet "on spec" makes sense. Fallon also expects to begin work this year on a hotel and residential building on the site. The developer has long-range plans to build about nine buildings, totaling about 3 million square feet, on property formerly owned by the Pritzker family of Chicago. (Thomas C. Palmer Jr.)


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uh yeah, and that thing is of what significance?
 
Even thought the buildings look bland, together in a cluster, it looks really really nice.
 
Yep, all modern buildings look decent from this distance. Too bad they all suck spherical organs up close.

And I see a LOT of precast :cry: :cry: :cry:
 
Looks like a great cluster there. There's lots of precast, but a healthy amount of glass too. I'm reserving judgement on this until we get some detailed renderings. Before we decide that up close they'll "suck spherical organs", lets actually see them up close instead of deciding that from a rendering thats based well over 1,000 feet away.

It very well may suck when seen up close, but lets try and stay positive...this has been a long time coming, so lets try not to shit on this development before we actually get to see it up close and personal.
 
Yeah yeah, but come on, do we really expect some level of detail to emerge once we're at 500 feet away? 100 feet? The stuff shown in the rendering is what I'd call "2007 Contemporary," meaning it's barely up-to-date with the minimum amount of thought put into it. Guess what 2007 contemporary makes for.. it makes for 2009 Bland, 2011 Banal, and 2017 Dated and In Need of a New Facade Within Another 10 years.

I can only hope these are placeholders and not the final designs, because by the time they're built we'll probably be sick of the whole "break up the precast slabs with glass, and then we'll break up the glass with precast" thing that's so common today.

[/woke up on grumpy side of bed]
 
Oh yeah, this article is about is this project, right? I get all the waterfront stuff mixed up, so if not, speak up..

S. Boston project adds a developer

W/S to handle retail part of site near court

By Thomas C. Palmer Jr., Globe Staff | March 23, 2007

The South Boston Waterfront property once owned by businessman Frank H. McCourt Jr. has a new name -- Seaport Square -- and new development partner.

Retail development powerhouse W/S Development Associates LLC of Chestnut Hill will be part of the team building out the 23 acres of parking lots near the federal court. Specifically, W/S Development will be responsible for an estimated 1 million to 1.7 million square feet of shopping and restaurant space, the company revealed yesterday.

W/S Development joins new owners John B. Hynes III and Morgan Stanley Real Estate, that are planning to convert the largely undeveloped L-shaped parcel into a dozen or more blocks of office buildings, residences, hotels, stores, and parks -- 6.5 million square feet or more of new construction, Hynes estimates.

W/S Development, will jointly own, lease, and manage the retail component, which will occupy ground- and second-floor space, and is expected to be a highly visible element of the Seaport complex. Financial terms of the deal have yet to be worked out.

The company does not yet have tenants lined up, but Thomas J. DeSimone, W/S Development executive vice president, said there would be a wide variety of retail uses: some larger stores and many smaller shops, as well fine- and casual-dining restaurants, entertainment, and probably a grocery store.

"We have a palette here, a clean piece of paper to do something that is really significant and can appeal to a wide range of communities," he said.

DeSimone said the retail mix will approximate the range of what is available in the Back Bay and will not fit any one category -- it won't be a mall, for example, or lifestyle center, such as those in the suburbs.

The property is across the street from the Institute of Contemporary Art, and DeSimone said a movie theater and night clubs are also possibilities.

Seaport Square is mostly between Old Northern Avenue and Seaport Boulevard and abuts two other large planned waterfront development projects, Fan Pier and Waterside Place. It is located along the MBTA's Silver Line at Courthouse Station, a spacious, modern underground facility that could be linked to ground-level retail space.

W/S Development is one of the largest privately owned retail development firms in the country. It plans to begin construction this summer on a massive mixed-used project in Dedham, Legacy Place, that will include tenants such as Legal Sea Foods and L.L. Bean. The firm is also building Mansfield Crossing, a 400,000-square-foot shopping area, and Wareham Crossing, which will have about 700,000 square feet of retail space.

Hynes, along with Vornado Realty Trust, another large retail development firm, is also redeveloping the old Filene's building at Downtown Crossing. He said W/S Development's knowledge of the market impressed him. "They're local guys, and their enthusiasm for doing something in Boston kind of carried the day," he said.

McCourt gave up long standing plans to develop the land, bought the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team in 2004, and moved to the West Coast. He sold his South Boston holdings last year to News Corp., which in turn sold the land to Hynes and Morgan Stanley in September for $203.7 million.

Thomas C. Palmer Jr. can be reached at tpalmer@globe.com.
? Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
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My biggest concern with the seaport district's development is not so much the material used for facades (though of course I'd like buildings of the quality of One Charles St.), it is the streetscape. What will pedestrians be looking at? Will the first couple of floors engage us as we walk through the streets, or will artificial storefronts be tacked on like so many Cheese Cake Factories (though again, there's always room for some fanciful design here and there)? So far many of the buildings completed around the WTC for pedestrians are boring, dull and lifeless. The Jimmy's Harborside development may prove to be better (though I haven't seen renderings), but I hope the entire district can avoid having small pedestrian-friendly enclaves cut off from each other by highways and blank service ports.
 
People, let's not make judgments on Fan Pier based on this rendering. Until we see the actual designs for each building, we can't determine what it will really look like.

The rendering was just to give us an idea of what it might look like - in terms of density and building placement. Every time an abstract rendering of something comes out, this board goes crazy. Just calm the hell down.

I'm sure the buildings for Fan Pier have not been finalized. I don't even think an architect has been selected...I could be wrong.
 
Those are pretty bland....but I agree that we should reserve judgment. The architects have been selected, though (it was announced a while back)
 
It sure would have been nice such that when approaching the city by boat, you would have something memorable here the way the Rowe's Wharf arch, or round International Place are. Instead we get generic apartment buildings. Alas, asking for anything seems to be too much to ask for these days.
 
Joe_Schmoe said:
It sure would have been nice such that when approaching the city by boat, you would have something memorable here the way the Rowe's Wharf arch, or round International Place are. Instead we get generic apartment buildings. Alas, asking for anything seems to be too much to ask for these days.
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I sort of feel like the marina does this. IMO, this is going to be one of the best developments Boston has seen in a while. Sure, there's ugly precast, but the density is a lot better than i thought, the marina is awesome, and it looks like the harborwalk is going to be pretty nice too. Just imagine that area on a nice summer day, people all around going to the ICA and the Marina, people jogging around the harborwalk, activity all around. I even think, for the first time in a while, that the amount of park space is appropriate.
 
I really like the marina.

I also really like that the ugly courthouse will be shielded from view. :D
 
I like the subtle way in which the stacked-boxes look evokes the one-time port functions of the area.


justin
 
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