Seaport Neighborhood - Infill and Discussion

Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Just a reminder of how good parcel M plus the L parcels along with 121 seaport are going to look. They are also going to bring depth off of the main strip and create a shopping nook tucked between the main drag. This is really going to come out good. This shot is looking down autumn lane located behind pwc and 121 seaport.

M1%2BM2%2BAutumn%2BLane_1.jpg
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Also the ped plaza between pwc and 121 seaport leading to the area above.

121Seaport_01.jpg
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

odurandina said:
...instead of inventing straw men seeking to destroy a fictitious pristine harbor...
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You're taking it too far, dude (as much as you know I support development). Some of the waterfront policy has been very good for the majority of bostonians, including the public access rules. I just walked along the new sections of the harborwalk in front of 22 Liberty this weekend, and it was bursting with energy...it looks beautiful...lots of people enjoying it...the the policy certainly didn't do anything to damage the business prospects of the developer (e.g., Fallon's 22 Liberty selling out extraordinarily rapidly). Yes, there are those activists who take it too far, but there has been some good policy work done to maximize the benefit of the waterfront for everyone.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

^ I went there this weekend and it was one of the better waterfront spaces in boston. Tons of people there with a great view of the city along with a very well executed park.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Coming soon retail all over the place here, including this very large CVS and 3-4 high end 'fast lunch food' spots on the ground floor of PWC

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1:30pm on Friday:

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Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

timsox6 said:
Please stop using this forum as a place to have personal arguments. No one wants to check in on ArchBoston just to see that your personal insults have been added to while actual discussions and news have not transpired.
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Fine. But the Seaport is still 128 with oceanfront property
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

mdd said:
I work in the seaport. I walk around a lot. I can assure you that it is not.
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I work right next to 128 in Waltham and agree with this. Not much within walking distance here, or in the forseeable future.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Bashing the seaport is like saying a blank piece of paper is boring and plain right before a painter starts painting on it.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

tjrileymass said:
I work right next to 128 in Waltham and agree with this. Not much within walking distance here, or in the forseeable future.
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trilleymass -- that's to generic an address -- there are places in Waltham along Rt-128 such as the future home of Clark's and former home of Polaroid which is withing walking distance of a whole lot of functional shopping [Market Basket, Starbucks, and several restaurants & bars - -what are you looking for a movie theatre [Ok missing]

There are other places such as the former USPS facility and such where there is next to nothing on that side of Rt-128 unless you walk all the way to Winter / Totten Pond

Going all the way back to the early stages of both -- the Seaport / Innovation district was never Rt-128 with an Ocean View -- it used to be essentially nearly abandoned space with a few old derelict piers and some derelict {however quaint} brick and beam warehouses. Pioneers colonized some of the old buildings and also built a few new buildings and that in turn launched the transformation which is still on-going

Rt-128 started off as a highway with farm land circa 1950 -- it rapidly became a highway passing among industrial parks -- America's Technology Highway -- long before Silicon Valley was anything except farm land.

Rt-128 is now mature but instead of becoming moribund its once more evolving. Some significant parts of Rt-128 are trying now to emulate aspects of the Seaport / Innovation District without the Ocean View or the Silver Line by adding retail and residences and reconfiguring / rebuilding the old industrial / warehouses into office / lab buildings as well as building many new state-of-the-art lab / R&D office structures.

Overall the flippant statements by some on the AB Forum about Rt-128 and the Seaport or Kendall and the Seaport and Rt-128 are mostly ill informed. Many of the posters don't have any experience with the Rt-128 environment except for the causal glance while driving by some development. Those kind of comments do a disservice to the history of industrial / commercial property development in Greater Boston and the technical industry that it supported and in which in turn supported the developers and the overall economy for several decades.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

As someone who lives in Seaport and has worked along 128, this is LAUGHABLE. They aren't even in the same stratosphere.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Seaport is underwhelming development especially with the amount of Tax incentives & dollars used to coddle this development.

That is the point.

Seaport never evolved on its own. It was given the Kendall Square Model once the Mayor/BRA gave the Greenlight for the VERTEX tax breaks to lower Fallon construction costs.

This area was primed for Greatness but planning got too political.
Should have let McCourt do whatever he wanted to the area back in the day.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Question you have to ask:
Route 128 vs Seaport/Innovation District buildings architecture.
Kendall Square vs Seaport/Innovation District architecture

I think the architecture is more a Kendall Square Look but some of the buildings built at Fan Pier are very underwhelming in my opinion.

Anything built on near the city and on the Ocean is a nobrainer for being a positive area.

The Seaport never got its own Identity. Besides Ex-mayor Menino calling it the Innovation District.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Whigh,
Being able to walk to a Market Basket, Starbucks, or the Olive Garden does not constitute "walkable" to most people - plus even this is heavily dependent on which 128 site we're talking about. I spent plenty of time commuting to work in the heart of 128 tech country before moving/working back in the city. My personal data is a couple years old now, but that area is a disastrous suburban parking lot during rush hour. Yes, Data General (& etc.) was built in the woods 40+ years ago, but the semi-suburban office park model is a serious environmental/commuting/housing challenge. You provide compelling examples that it is staying alive (e.g., employers are continuing to use the 128 office capital), and to each his/her own, but there's nothing glorious about the 128 model now that metro-Boston suburbia is choking on itself.

Either way, there's enough business in metro boston for the 128 belt and the urban workplace areas to both thrive. Like I said, to each their own. I decided to save myself from premature commuting heart attacks and tossed my car keys in exchange for the T.

I agree with falcon, though I will heavily asterix that with "provided you have a decent way to get there, either by living there / car/ silverline/whatever!":
falcon42 said:
As someone who lives in Seaport and has worked along 128, this is LAUGHABLE. They aren't even in the same stratosphere.
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Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

falcon42 said:
As someone who lives in Seaport and has worked along 128, this is LAUGHABLE. They aren't even in the same stratosphere.
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Falcon -- why not contribute something of substance -- if you disagree point out specifics - saying this and that and laughable contribute the equivalent of "well, I once passed through the airport at Karachi -- Pakistan is heap of ...."

Well I did once pass through the airport in Karachi on a flight from Dubai -- the plane landed we had an hour and then we were off to Singapore -- but I can't fairly comment on Pakistan from that transient impression

On the other hand taking off and landing from Mumbai several times -- each time I was confronted with the sea of blue tarps. These "Tent cities" house encampments of "semi homeless" people well in excess of the population of either the Seaport or Waltham or perhaps both together. Yet even that observation doesn't tell much overall about a city whose population is in excess of 22 million and which in the past 5 years added a population of Metro Boston inside Rt-128.

I also once spent 2 hours in the Airbräu open-air, under glass roof biergarten in the midst of the Flughafen München [it sits between the two main terminals] during the Oktoberfest. Re-entering the terminal I passed through passport control and was asked how long did you spend in Germany -- and I replied -Zwei Stunden in Deutschland
die Festbier des Airbräu war wunderbar würzige -- but I don't consider this experience as a qualification to comment on all of Bavaria or all German Beer
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

bigpicture7 said:
Whigh,
Being able to walk to a Market Basket, Starbucks, or the Olive Garden does not constitute "walkable" to most people - plus even this is heavily dependent on which 128 site we're talking about. I spent plenty of time commuting to work in the heart of 128 tech country before moving/working back in the city. My personal data is a couple years old now, but that area is a disastrous suburban parking lot during rush hour. Yes, Data General (& etc.) was built in the woods 40+ years ago, but the semi-suburban office park model is a serious environmental/commuting/housing challenge. You provide compelling examples that it is staying alive (e.g., employers are continuing to use the 128 office capital), and to each his/her own, but there's nothing glorious about the 128 model now that metro-Boston suburbia is choking on itself.

Either way, there's enough business in metro boston for the 128 belt and the urban workplace areas to both thrive. Like I said, to each their own. I decided to save myself from premature commuting heart attacks and tossed my car keys in exchange for the T.

I agree with falcon, though I will heavily asterix that with "provided you have a decent way to get there, either by living there / car/ silverline/whatever!":
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Bigpicture -- the telling statement is a few years old -- have you seen the development around Wegmans in Burlington,
have you seen the process of converting the "New England Executive Park in Burlington" to the 'District Burlington"
New England Executive Park to Transform into The District Burlington

The owners of New England Executive Park in Burlington announced recently that they will be rebranding the 13-building complex as The District Burlington, a highly walkable and mixed-use destination in Burlington.

The District Burlington is in a prime position right off of Route-128, walking distance from The Burlington Mall, Tuscan Kitchen and Market, Tavern on the Square and other retail and dinning options. The planned redevelopment will introduce new amenities that include a hotel, restaurants, retail and a 350-car parking garage, and will also include upgrades and renovations for select existing buildings to create new, state-of-the-art workspaces.
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http://www.districtburlington.com/]

https://vimeo.com/128168322

Or that the largest Pharma Company in Greater Boston [Shire] has its HQ located in Lexington on the corner of Rt-2 and Rt-128 -- the former Raytheon HQ site

So you could live in Lexington or Lincoln or Sudbury and be technical or corporate Exec at Shire and never need see the Seaport except when you were flying out of Logan

Greater Boston is not Southern California or Houston -- it never was and indeed never could be because of patterns of settlement and development that have been underway for nearly 400 years

So when you are talking about the now-inner cluster of dense suburbs of Greater Boston [aka along Rt-128], part of a integrated economic region that is very large in area, diverse in all manner, and with 5 million people -- buzz words such as suburban sprawl -- are "ill suited" or at least ill-matched to the surroundings -- that kind of spraw just doesn't fit.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

What are you talking about? That was the most bizarre thing I have ever read. Is passing through spending 8+ hours in the 128 corridor each weekday and living in the Seaport for 2 yrs? Where do you live in work? My guess is in neither of these places.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Yes. Considering how geographically small Boston proper is, notions of "suburban sprawl" are grossly miss applied to areas inside or along rt 128.

If you have two maps of Boston and New York side by side at the same scale, then the City of New York would approximately fill the Rt 128 area.

Notions of suburban sprawl should really only be applied to the Rt 495 belt.

That said, Assembly Square/Row is probably more comparable to the type of mixed use development that is going on in the Seaport than anything going in along Rt 128. Waltham Center and Moody street might also be something to look at for comparison, but unfortunately all the bigger office buildings are far away from the downtown area.

The district in Burlington is interesting, but still you see islands of development with 3rd Ave being too far to walk to/from the District and the Burlington Mall is itself isolated from the District with very few pedestrian connections. Not at all a walkable city-like development. Burlington has one of the worst percentages of sidewalks in the metropolitan Boston area so try walking a couple blocks to get anywhere else and you end up walking on the road or trampling on the landscaping.

By comparison, Seaport/Fort Point has a lot of bigger city attractions beyond restaurants with the Children's museum, harbor walk, Art museum and even the convention center.

I'd certainly give the edge to seaport and fort point for the quality of the development along with the integration of a more vibrant mix of attractions and amenities. But echo the sentiment that really everything going on in and around Rt 128 is "Boston" and not some inherently negative suburban sprawl.
 
Re: Innovation Dist. / South Boston Seaport

Just throw up some pictures of New England Executive Park and the current Seaport and let the public decide.
 
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