Skanska Office Tower | 380 Stuart Street | Back Bay

This was approved this week by BPDA:


I am disappointed this wasn't modified to be > 40 stories mixed-use, but this is a very stalled proposal to begin with IIRC
 
BCDC with minor changes: https://bpda.app.box.com/s/n8yie6t63yx66i0z0urlh0x7cpa6vve3

The jerks rendered in the Copley Place Tower ;)

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Does anyone else have a massive problem with the box site always crashing for certain projects? Some project pdfs work completely fine, many other times it only crashes if I try to zoom in, and then the other times it just crashes over and over whenever I scroll down a couple pages. This means its effectively impossible to view the document for many different projects. It only happens for certain ones though.

This happens when Im on my phone, I never use my laptop anymore so Im not sure if it would happen there but I doubt it. The phone is an iphone x and its the exact same case whether safari or chrome. It drives me friggin crazy because as Im sure some ppl can guess I like finding/viewing/collecting renders. Idk what to do about this problem does anyone else have this same problem or know of a way to fix it?
 
Does anyone else have a massive problem with the box site always crashing for certain projects? Some project pdfs work completely fine, many other times it only crashes if I try to zoom in, and then the other times it just crashes over and over whenever I scroll down a couple pages. This means its effectively impossible to view the document for many different projects. It only happens for certain ones though.

Yea I have this issue sometimes. Not sure what the deal is.
 
Does anyone else have a massive problem with the box site always crashing for certain projects? Some project pdfs work completely fine, many other times it only crashes if I try to zoom in, and then the other times it just crashes over and over whenever I scroll down a couple pages. This means its effectively impossible to view the document for many different projects. It only happens for certain ones though.

This happens when Im on my phone, I never use my laptop anymore so Im not sure if it would happen there but I doubt it. The phone is an iphone x and its the exact same case whether safari or chrome. It drives me friggin crazy because as Im sure some ppl can guess I like finding/viewing/collecting renders. Idk what to do about this problem does anyone else have this same problem or know of a way to fix it?
380 Stuart is a 40 meg file, which a laptop can easily handle, but a phone, depending on the strength of signal, may not. Strength of signal can vary by location and time of day. The fix, if you want to continue to use your phone, is to download the pdf file to your phone's internal storage, and view the downloaded version. Then erase the file from your phone to free up space in storage.

A 5G phone receiving a strong 5G signal should work okay. Verizon 5G Ultra has an advertised typical download speed of 300 megs per second, and an upper bound download speed of 1 Gig a second. Big caveat: the Box site probably does not support those download speeds, or close to it. Bandwidth is a two-way street.
 
Sigh. Boston continues lurching toward the grotesque, decimating its history.

This, the Arlington Building, the Huntington Theater project, the Simmons residential campus, 140 Clarendon Street (the glass anonymity that is to be "Raffles" - which, Singaporean background aside, sounds like a Frito-Lay brand). Pigs at the trough...
 
How exactly is 380 Stuart St going to "decimate" any of Boston's history?

It does lose a historical wall on Stuart Street. However if you look closely the rest of that particular building has already been completely decimated so it's not quite the loss that, say, the similar building next door would have been.
 
It's not. Grouches be grouching. Easy enough to ignore.

As I put right before you, it does demo this handsome wall on Stuart Street. It's just that the other 3 sides of that building were already ruined which is why the loss isn't on the same level as many other historical structures.
 
As I put right before you, it does demo this handsome wall on Stuart Street. It's just that the other 3 sides of that building were already ruined which is why the loss isn't on the same level as many other historical structures.

Here's the history of the street wall. The building was built roughly around 1927 by Pettingell - Andrews, an electric lighting company. The company was sold in 1928 to General Electric. The granite exterior is very handsome but it was a wholesale/ commercial store. The Edison building on the left side was torn down for a parking lot and the left was an open lot/ parking lot up until 1983.
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Yes, two sides lack, but the point remains. A handsome, historical (modestly, okay) piece of Boston gets sacrificed. A fine street wall changed. Cities grow. Change is inevitable. Yes, that's true. We are all grateful for Boston's good fortune. But loss is still loss, especially when it feels like a tipping point has been reached. Maybe passed. The list of Boston's recent losses are growing. Not every building has to be important to be saved. And neither does every new building have to be a superstar. The building proposed here - one more example of look-at-me-architecture - may please some as cool and modern, but it will feel dated the moment it opens. And a walk down Stuart will no longer feel the same. We love this city. We share a civic memory, no matter our taste - or we wouldn't frequent this forum. I fear we are slowly nibbling away at what makes our city so unique.
 
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Isn't the streetwall improving here? I thought the proposed building had some ground level activation included.

The current building (nice, masonry facade notwithstanding) is totally dead and uninteresting to walk by.
 
The current building (nice, masonry facade notwithstanding) is totally dead and uninteresting to walk by.
That has always been the issue with Stuart St. Some semi-nice architecture doesn't do much when the street level engagement is non-existent. I've always hated that stretch between Dartmouth and Berkeley St. because it is a really bad pedestrian experience. This will definitely improve that issue.
 
That has always been the issue with Stuart St. Some semi-nice architecture doesn't do much when the street level engagement is non-existent. I've always hated that stretch between Dartmouth and Berkeley St. because it is a really bad pedestrian experience. This will definitely improve that issue.

Not a horrible thing when you can gawk at the Hancock without really worrying about running into people. I also don't really agree with the "street level engagement" argument for actually removing this historical building, when you could just put a store or something in the ground floor of the existing structure. If it currently has no engagement it's probably because they plan on tearing it down, but it doesn't necessarily need the latter to achieve the former.

 

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