Re: Seaport Square (Formerly McCourt Seaport Parcels)
Seaport is going to have alot of trouble to even get to the Kendal Square situation. There is a reason why Kendal, Porter, Harvard, Davis have all evolved so unique, its called location. MIT (Broad Institute), HARVARD, TUFTS which has great access to the Red Line.
Unless we get a corporation that relocates its entire base and requests for million square feet, I think SPID will end up being a suburban box building disaster.
Rates are the lowest in the real-estate market in history under 4%.
Residential Housing will not be a community affair in that area. I see two demographic groups gravitating to the SPID area
#1 Upcoming Business Executives
#2 Overseas Rich college grad students
On the building of the residential units
If interest rates are under 4% who in their right mind is going buy 300-500ft studios apartments for 300K in an area that doesn't even have an underground T to walk to?
The numbers don’t work unless we get more demand…….which would be 2 factors for this area.
#1 Major Tenant moves to the area which could support the demand
#2 More taxpayers money to fund the entire foundations of the area. But the demand is missing. Unless the residential units are priced right. I don't see how the builders can make money in this area without housing being priced cheaper than DTX. (maybe JKeith comments could help me on this point for better explanation)
Please somebody tell me how SPID is going to have a neighborhood feel especially with the two demographic groups that I think would actually buy real estate in this area?
I'm calling it now SPID=BUST.......Reason why is just the lack of planning. They are slamming whatever they can build in an area that had unlimited potential but never focused on the infrastructure first.
Something will be built and everybody will say oh thats nice but in the end the city planners get a big F for this entire debacle.
Riff -- you were doing much better for a while -- now you fallen back into load, fire, aim every once in a while
You wrote: "Seaport is going to have alot of trouble to even get to the Kendal Square situation. There is a reason why Kendal, Porter, Harvard, Davis have all evolved so unique, its called location. MIT (Broad Institute), HARVARD, TUFTS which has great access to the Red Line.' -- first Red Line had nothing to do with it.
Kendall became the Kendall / Cambeidge Center which some on this forum appatently love to hate -- because of cheap available land right next to MIT (the old industrial land cleared for NASA) coulpled with MIT's investment in the land (e.g. Tech Square) and some additional decision by Draper to set-up its new shop on Broadway -- but even after that there were seveeral failed interations (e.g. AI Alley) before Whitehead put his money into the place and then things started to move when the Human Genome Project came along and Whitehead did a large part of the sequencing, Biogen, Genzyme, Amgen and then finally Novartis and Broad began building big dedicated facilities.
then you wrote "Unless we get a corporation that relocates its entire base and requests for million square feet, I think SPID will end up being a suburban box building disaster." -- of course we just got one in Vertex and the amount was exactly 1 M sq. ft. in the two towers in Fan Pier currently under construction
So your barrel was already fouling -- but you kept firing: '"Residential Housing will not be a community affair in that area. I see two demographic groups gravitating to the SPID area
#1 Upcoming Business Executives
#2 Overseas Rich college grad students
" -- what about the possibly thousand or so people who are likely to be working in the SPID both for new companies such as Vetex as well as established companies in the district and then there are the commuters on foot to the FID
But you kept firing -- not even looking at the target: "who in their right mind is going buy 300-500ft studios apartments for 300K in an area that doesn't even have an underground T to walk to? " -- actually of course it does have an underground T (2 Silver Line stations) are easibly in walkng distance of most of new buildings underway in the SPID and South Station is a short walk from the older Summer Street end
I do agree that the long-term planning needs to include more transportation infrastructure such as other unerground branches of the SL going to the various key parts of the SPID
and eventually I think that an additional Red Line stop is needed when the U.S.P.S. situation gets resolved -- but actually the readily acheivable transit potential for the SPID is better than Kendal / Cambridge Center
Finally -- you fired once more -- "Please somebody tell me how SPID is going to have a neighborhood feel especially with the two demographic groups that I think would actually buy real estate in this area?"
SPID can have a neighborhood feel if enough people start full-time living in it -- this is still un-realized potential of the district -- but people are starting to occupy the newly built housing and more is in the pipeline -- again retiurning to Kendal -- its only in the past few years that new residential construction or conversion of some of the old industrial propertes to residences has been underway -- even Kendal as a residenial area is still a work in progress -- you've got to give the SPID at least a decade from now
Riff -- you are bringing up some good and significant points -- but you've got to be more thorough in your research of the topics and more careful of what you post
