Seaport Neighborhood - Infill and Discussion

[vanshnookenraggen]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Once the new residences open up the whole feel of this area is going to change for the better. The architecture will still be bland but I think everything will work in spite of the lackluster urban design.

 

[kjdonovan]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Great dusk and night shots, kz

 

[Shepard]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

]

Cover up the downtown skyline and you have a streetscape with striking resemblance to much of downtown Washington DC.

Could be worse... I guess nobody's building new Georgetowns or Old Town Alexandrias these days anyway.

 

[Matthew]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I guess nobody's building new Georgetowns or Old Town Alexandrias these days anyway.

Because zoning does not allow you to build nice places like that anymore. They've been banned by overzealous regulation.

Also doesn't help that city planners are still completely obsessed with building giant avenues for every single street.

 

[Shepard]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

That's absolutely true, of course.

In terms of the Seaport, the three parallel overbuilt avenues are especially silly. With the exception of the Summer Street causeway, a few north/south streets (A, D) and the Ted Williams Tunnel (through which most of the traffic never starts or ends up on Seaport streets anyway) the Seaport is essentially a dead-end peninsula. Why therefore build roads with the same capacity as Route 9 out to Natick? To say nothing of the transit situation, the street design essentially invited gridlock here.

 

[Equilibria]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Because zoning does not allow you to build nice places like that anymore. They've been banned by overzealous regulation.

Also doesn't help that city planners are still completely obsessed with building giant avenues for every single street.

No, it's because we now have building technologies that allow for developers to put up much more profitable superblocks. Multifamily residential zones COULD all be brownstones - there's nothing preventing that in the regulations - it's just that you're hard-pressed to find a developer who will take that over filling the whole block with one building.

 

[Suffolk 83]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I agree that the superblocks suck, especially when correlated with the lack of height but the seaport sucks for more reasons than that. I've been going here the past few years for dinner and drinks, especially in the summer and the thing that has ruined it lately for me is its full of rich assholes almost exclusively. Everybody is white (i am too) and everybody is fucking loaded and its either they're constantly showing off how loaded they are or they're entitled and extremely rude. It drives me crazy, you'd think there'd be parking spots over there at 630pm when ppl leave work but there's not, even more so lately. Waiting for the silverline sucks, walking over there sucks. The entire area is a tourist/rich ppl trap: there is nothing reasonably priced for dinner there and the stuff that's borderline is shit food. Gather and Salvatores are reasonably priced, but theyre both garbage. ABG and Priest just had half their great views ruined by pier 4.

So in summary, fuck that place.

 

[cca]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Multifamily residential zones COULD all be brownstones - there's nothing preventing that in the regulations - it's just that you're hard-pressed to find a developer who will take that over filling the whole block with one building.

It makes no financial sense to have multi-parcel blocks. It makes no financial sense to build multiple small buildings on different schedules. It makes no financial sense to spend money on party walls, separate foundations, separate utilities, separate servicing.

Now that i have said that, the real tension is that the product of super blocks makes only some people actively unhappy and the rest don't understand they dislike Kendall Square vs. Newbury Street. They just feel it in their bones. No one knows how to put a pricetag on good urbanism, or dynamic street walls, or human scale development, SO, there is no argument to be made against the truths laid out in the first paragraph.

As a designer who has worked on many urban master plans in my career, I have come to the conclusion that there is not way of designing out of this box. The superblock will continue to thrive as long as the environment it is attempting to survive in continues to be hospitable and encouraging.

Rant off.

cca

 

[TheRifleman]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Once the new residences open up the whole feel of this area is going to change for the better. The architecture will still be bland but I think everything will work in spite of the lackluster urban design.

The area will work because location is everything. The seaport is unique. The real problem will be the Grid-lock traffic that will be nightmarish scenario for this area. This is something that we won't be able to escape.

 

[SeamusMcFly]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

While I agree the attractions there bring the loaded folks to visit. The hundreds and now thousands of people working there are not generally loaded. Architects, engineers, and lab techs don't pull down huge numbers in salary. They do alright, but the majority are not loaded.

They are by and large a socially inept group. This may lead to folks seeming more rude or arrogant than they really are. Plenty are don't get me wrong.

The younger folk now, don't even realize they're being rude with the constant staring down at their phones, and then stopping mid-pace based on something on that phone. They walk super slow and don't realize they're holding everyone up. Again, another contributor to their social ineptness and unawaredness.

Having never experienced any pains waiting for the SL, I can't comment, but I usually find walking to and into the seaport to be a generally positive experience every time. Walking over the Summer St. bridge in nice weather is especially nice.

 

[SeamusMcFly]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

The area will work because location is everything. The seaport is unique. The real problem will be the Grid-lock traffic that will be nightmarish scenario for this area. This is something that we won't be able to escape.

"We" can escape it fine. Don't drive there. Problem solved.
Those who choose to.... can deal with the consequences of their actions.

I don't know why the "gridlock" would be any worse here than any of the other employment centers in the city. Downtown and the Back Bay both have much higher density than this ever will, and people make it work. Down town is such a maze of non-parallel roads, one ways, and cow trails, that driving there is ridiculous.

Oh they work fine cause of T and transit etc. Yep, that's part of it

The silver line sucks its a bus blah blah.

The silver line is fine and will be fine.

Once people realize the seaport is not a good place to drive to, they'll learn and seek an alternate method. Then they'll be fine. If they don't, then sit in traffic. Their own fault.

 

[underground]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

there is nothing reasonably priced for dinner there and the stuff that's borderline is shit food.

Uhhhh, if you've never been to Yankee Lobster, you should fix that soon.

 

[nico]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Couldn't the complaints of overly wide boulevards and lackluster public transit be resolved simultaneously with light rail?

 

[AmericanFolkLegend]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Couldn't the complaints of overly wide boulevards and lackluster public transit be resolved simultaneously with light rail?

And a blank check?

 

[JohnAKeith]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

John Hynes made a good point last night at the BRA meeting. There are 3,000 fewer parking spaces in the Seaport than there used to be (his estimate) yet there is more gridlock. How can that be? There are fewer people leaving the Seaport at 5 p.m. than before yet they can't get out.

In his opinion, it's because of back-ups going into the tunnels - I-93 north and south.

I'm not sure I completely agree with his conclusion but it's worth thinking about.

 

[Deetroyt]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

The silver line sucks its a bus blah blah.

The silver line is fine and will be fine.

To me the issue isn't that the silverline doesn't work in this neighborhood (this is arguably the only place it DOES function correctly), but rather that its not connected to the rest of the system (the exception being the red line at SS obviously). If this was a greenline train that hit SS and also Tufts (orange), Boylston, Park, GC, etc., I think it would go a long way towards making this area more reliant on public transit and less on cars.

 

[commuter guy]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I agree that the superblocks suck, especially when correlated with the lack of height but the seaport sucks for more reasons than that. I've been going here the past few years for dinner and drinks, especially in the summer and the thing that has ruined it lately for me is its full of rich assholes almost exclusively. Everybody is white (i am too) and everybody is fucking loaded and its either they're constantly showing off how loaded they are or they're entitled and extremely rude. It drives me crazy, you'd think there'd be parking spots over there at 630pm when ppl leave work but there's not, even more so lately. Waiting for the silverline sucks, walking over there sucks. The entire area is a tourist/rich ppl trap: there is nothing reasonably priced for dinner there and the stuff that's borderline is shit food. Gather and Salvatores are reasonably priced, but theyre both garbage. ABG and Priest just had half their great views ruined by pier 4.

So in summary, fuck that place.

I too have felt this same vibe on occasions when i walk over the bridge and go for a drink/ bite to eat there. I do enjoy Harpoon Brewery's Beer Hall though. Also, I'm curious if you find the same atmosphere prevalent in the establishments located in the older warehouse buildings of Ft. Point. I find the smaller places in Ft. Point more local and welcoming than those along the waterfront in the Seaport. Perhaps it's the large commercial space footprints of the new buildings in the Seaport, which house the chains or large restaurant groups such as "Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House" etc., that attract the obnoxious local/tourist type.

 

[Matthew]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

No, it's because we now have building technologies that allow for developers to put up much more profitable superblocks. Multifamily residential zones COULD all be brownstones - there's nothing preventing that in the regulations - it's just that you're hard-pressed to find a developer who will take that over filling the whole block with one building.

The problem is (and as cca noted) when one developer does something big, and all at once, it just turns into another nasty superblock because that's what's most efficient for them to do.

This is not a new observation. Jacobs made it in Death & Life, and that's why "old buildings" (or a mix of ages) are one of her four essential characteristics. This was in opposition to urban renewal, which was all about demolishing all the old buildings and putting up one big new block.

The reason I said "zoning" is not because of outward appearances (e.g. cute brownstone vs dreary institutional block) but because of its effect on the development process. When you have zoning the way Boston does zoning, it's nearly impossible for an urban district to develop organically. The red tape, the endless variances, the hoops, the probably-behind-the-scenes corruption, all that is way beyond the small or mid-size developer. That leaves only the big shots, the ones who can pull the strings that are needed to make those problems go away. And those are also the folks who are most likely to want to just put up a big superblock development.

It's not an accident that every single one of Boston's nice urban neighborhoods were developed almost entirely before the modern zoning code kicked in. And since then it's either been tinkering on the edges, or just plain crap. Under zoning, you can't create another North End, Beacon Hill, or even a Back Bay, because that requires many people coming together to work on fulfilling their own needs over the course of decades (and centuries). And the zoning code locks out everyone but the biggest fish from playing in the sea.

And that's exactly how they like it.

 

[JeffDowntown]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

I too have felt this same vibe on occasions when i walk over the bridge and go for a drink/ bite to eat there. I do enjoy Harpoon Brewery's Beer Hall though. Also, I'm curious if you find the same atmosphere prevalent in the establishments located in the older warehouse buildings of Ft. Point. I find the smaller places in Ft. Point more local and welcoming than those along the waterfront in the Seaport. Perhaps it's the large commercial space footprints of the new buildings in the Seaport, which house the chains or large restaurant groups such as "Del Frisco's Double Eagle Steak House" etc., that attract the obnoxious local/tourist type.

I find the smaller places in Fort Point much more enjoyable, with a better crowd. It is also a nicer walk from downtown.

The big box faux restaurants in Seaport are designed for expense account and don't know better tourist trade, and it shows. And it is obvious that is the crowd when you check Uber Black Car service in the evening -- they are parked all over the Seaport.

 

[Padre Mike]

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Wow, thanks for the rants guys. I feel less isolated and alone now...I've felt similarly about nearly all of Boston proper for a long time. Too many low end and high end eateries trying to overwhelm each other and underwhelm the public. Too much confusion, traffic, and noise, and yes, manners are not what they should be. After I'm gone maybe the pendulum will swing back (I don't plan to go anywhere for at least 30 years though...I'll probably move away first!)