South Bay Center Expansion | Dorchester

It was early Sunday morning before most of the shops were open. A lot of the photos are of the section of this large (phased) project where construction is still underway.
 
This seems impressively urban (narrow streets, reasonable job hiding parking) for an area that was previously 100% auto oriented. Hopefully more projects are on the way
 
FitchburgLine said:
This seems impressively urban (narrow streets, reasonable job hiding parking) for an area that was previously 100% auto oriented. Hopefully more projects are on the way
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There is a lot of potential for adjacent areas, too, if this style continues. South Bay could open up thousands of new residences.
 
Yea over time hopefully it works its way to both Boston st and Mass ave. The entire parking lot could be replaced with a garage and the retail integrated ideally.
 
greenlinetobrooklyn said:
There are literally zero people in the last of Beeline's photos. Where is everyone!?
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Are we looking at the same photos?

I see not yet occupied apartments/spaces, traffic cones and chain link fenced off sidewalks still under construction around half of those corners.

I think your answer lies there.

Assembly Square looked like that for a few years.
 
This is coming out great. Its still a bit awkward, but only because of what they had to work with, not whats been built now. I think if successful (spoiler it will be) they need to commit fully. Replace the enormous parking lots with a garage or 2, buy up some lots on Boston st, bring it over to Mass ave, demo the stuff next to transit and do a “city target” like fenway integrated into lots more housing, connect the street grid from mass ave to southampton and all in between, big things can happen here. For now its a nice start for sure though.
 
^ Same I looked around and its not listed anywhere. Just this project. They have to have a longer term plan than just this though.
 
Looks like an apartment complex in anywhere USA. Assembly has more character.

Anyway, it's good considering the location.
 
stick n move said:
This is coming out great. Its still a bit awkward, but only because of what they had to work with, not whats been built now. I think if successful (spoiler it will be) they need to commit fully. Replace the enormous parking lots with a garage or 2, buy up some lots on Boston st, bring it over to Mass ave, demo the stuff next to transit and do a “city target” like fenway integrated into lots more housing, connect the street grid from mass ave to southampton and all in between, big things can happen here. For now its a nice start for sure though.
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Gotta push back just a but. I think Home Depot and Target (maybe Stop and Shop) should be left mostly untouched, or else a bunch of people from surrounding (poorer) neighborhoods are going to get deprived of a relatively convenient place to shop for large items that is car convenient. I don’t envy anyone trying to lug a TV or home supplies up into a parking garage.

Yes, overall, this plaza can and should be more pedestrian focused, but lets not throw the current population under the bus in pursuit of that.
 
Yea.. Im one of those ppl that lives in the surrounding (poorer) area, uphams corner. All I was saying is to replace the parking lots with a garage or two to be able to build more housing and still have parking and for Target maybe they could do a fenway type city target.. where its still a target but it just takes up the bottom couple floors of a bigger development vs just a huge stand alone 1 story warehouse. I wasnt saying what you think I was, I see a need in my neighborhood for more affordable housing and the huge parking lots next to transit, jobs, and shopping is a great place imo and vast parking lots in dense neighborhoods near transit can and should be replaced with garages. Thats all.
 
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The whole "City Target" concept is something of a misnomer. Target locations in cities come in a variety of sizes, and just because a Target is in a city that doesn't necessarily mean it's smaller than one in the suburbs. This is part of why Target stopped using the "CityTarget" and "TargetExpress" labels back in 2015.

The Target in the Fenway, by my measure, has about the same floor area as the one in South Bay, it's just spread over 2+ floors instead of one. And with direct elevator access from the store to the garage (with validated parking), there is no need to "lug" anything "up into a parking garage."

Also, just generally, traditional big box retail complexes use space extremely inefficiently. Just about any time those sorts of sites are densified there is a lot of progress that can be made before things start getting crowded.

All that being said, in the case of South Bay, Target corporate owns its building as well as the land that the store and parking lot sit on. It looks like the same goes for Home Depot next door. Those stores are not tenants of South Bay's developer like other stores are, and Target and Home Depot aren't exactly in the business of mixed use development. That's not to say that those parcels will never be redeveloped, it just pushes the timeline out and means that eventual redevelopment of those parcels would go down very differently than the rest of South Bay.
 
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I used to shop at the Home Depot at 59th St & 3rd Ave in Manhattan - worked fine with basically no parking at all.
 
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