South End Infill and Small Developments

curcuas said:
It is an absolute shame that a settlement house is selling its property for condos where the affordable component is welfare for the white and non-poor
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What compels someone to say something that logically twisted and racist?

It says one unit will be for artist housing.
Is that reason to rage against artist housing?
The set-aside says nothing about race; why do you assume this is "for the white"?
Finally, why should government exclude low-income white people from housing for low-income people? Do you really think the government should prohibit someone with the intended economic profile from receiving publicly subsidized benefits for low-income individuals solely because of their race?
 
Yea the idea that only black people make up the poor class and only white people the rich is pure ignorance based on 0 facts. When expensive housing is built there are black people that can afford it and when low income housing goes up there are white people that need it.
 
Jesus Christ. Can you guys at least please keep the sociopolitical commentary out of the development projects threads?

Start a new thread in General if you just need to score some politics on the internet points. Or better yet, take the discussion to City Data or SSC.
 
itchy said:
What compels someone to say something that logically twisted and racist?

It says one unit will be for artist housing.
Is that reason to rage against artist housing?
The set-aside says nothing about race; why do you assume this is "for the white"?
Finally, why should government exclude low-income white people from housing for low-income people? Do you really think the government should prohibit someone with the intended economic profile from receiving publicly subsidized benefits for low-income individuals solely because of their race?
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This was obviously a statement about disparate impact, and arguing that the fraction of artists that is white is higher than the fraction of BMR housing qualified people that is white is extremely plausible.
 
FitchburgLine said:
This was obviously a statement about disparate impact, and arguing that the fraction of artists that is white is higher than the fraction of BMR housing qualified people that is white is extremely plausible.
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Not only logically plausible, but studied!

http://www.startribune.com/housing-...tly-serves-white-people-study-says/380333711/

Look - I don't care who lives in affordable housing as long as they need it - let's focus on housing those that need the low rents first not a population that does not need subsidy.
 
curcuas said:
Not only logically plausible, but studied!

http://www.startribune.com/housing-...tly-serves-white-people-study-says/380333711/

Look - I don't care who lives in affordable housing as long as they need it - let's focus on housing those that need the low rents first not a population that does not need subsidy.
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I agree with what I perceive to be your underlying principle, which is that there are many things that public money gets directed to with very good intentions, but that unfortunately only end up reaching populations that don’t really need them. I don’t know what the solution is, but one of my deepest worries is that we as a society are growing so intolerant of anything we disagree with that we just wipe out whole entities and concepts without actually considering the consequences. I believe society should support artists and that to not do so would represent another step toward a sterilized, inhuman and unhumanized civilization. It certainly should come as no surprise that more advantaged groups are going to be more adept at taking advantage of subsidies of any kind, but that’s no reason to get rid of the subsidies themselves. Likewise, even if it were the case that the vast majority of artists were white, that’s not a reason in and of itself to halt subsiding artists... that’s ridiculous. At any rate, while the government can be a crude and blunt instrument, that article does refer to a NYC project that was successful in attracting a diverse population to subsidized artists housing, and surely there are ways to implement that here… If both art and diversity are things that are actually valued.

Also, don’t forget that the article you posted only studied housing projects in Minneapolis-St Paul, which together have a much higher percentage of whites and a much lower percentage of Hispanics (and somewhat smaller black population) than Boston. So I don’t think you can point to the findings of one city and simply say that the concept is a failure and should be discarded.
 
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The Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (BFIT) has named real estate giant Related Beal as the preferred buyer of the school’s South End campus, representatives of both parties confirm.
In late January, the small technical college on Berkeley Street announced its intention to sell the property it has occupied since 1908 and look for a new campus elsewhere in Boston. BFIT plans to relocate to Roxbury by 2021, with construction of its new facility financed through the sale of the South End location that the school has called home since its founding. Additional proceeds from the deal will be used to increase the college’s endowment.
Neither BFIT nor Related Beal have disclosed the terms of the deal, which was first reported by The Real Reporter. Yet the 1.2 acre campus’ prime location at the corner of Tremont and Berkeley Streets made the site a tempting target for developers. The sale is expected to fetch a price in the tens of millions.
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reverend_paco said:

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"BFIT’s officials say the school has no plans to preserve the hall or any of the campus buildings. With no local or national landmark status, there are few restrictions when it comes to modifying or demolishing the existing structure."
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Except for the fact that it's well within the South End Landmark District. That will be a pretty big hoop for any developer to try to jump through if they come up with any proposals to make major changes to the main building.
 
Roxxma said:
Except for the fact that it's well within the South End Landmark District. That will be a pretty big hoop for any developer to try to jump through if they come up with any proposals to make major changes to the main building.
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I'm a big fan of the building, it's style, scale, and attention to detail in particular. The beautiful masonry and stonework, the references to the Early Republic sprinkled across the facade, these are artifacts worth preserving. The corner of the building at Appleton and Berkeley appears to be sagging, though, which may point to real problems with uneven settling.

At the end of the day will it end up hollowed out and filled with a generic gray-on-darker-gray condo shed? Likely, but I have real hope the original facade will, thanks to the Landmark District and other cool heads, stick around for generations to come.
 
The Ebenezer Baptist Church on West Springfield Street in the South End (founded after the Civil War by formerly enslaved people from Virginia and built in 1887) had its last service this weekend. The church community can no longer maintain the building, so they are putting it up for sale in the next 30 to 45 days.

Hopefully they'll be able to get enough money from the sale of the building to set the church up with a new, more sustainable facility still in the city (as was the case with BFIT). And hopefully whatever gets built into the old church building will appropriately respect the building's history and legacy.
 
Beeline, lovely pix, per usual. We all thank you. Any idea who the architect was for that^? Really like it.
 
Haven't seen it posted here, but IBA has been seeking to demolish the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (former All Saints’ Lutheran Church, built 1898) at 85 West Newton St and replace it with a five-story contemporary build. Looks like they're going back to the SELDC on this next week.

Demolition proposal from last year (under 85 West Newton)
 
mssrro said:
Haven't seen it posted here, but IBA has been seeking to demolish the Villa Victoria Center for the Arts (former All Saints’ Lutheran Church, built 1898) at 85 West Newton St and replace it with a five-story contemporary build. Looks like they're going back to the SELDC on this next week.

Demolition proposal from last year (under 85 West Newton)
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Ugh, can we keep the church 122 year old church and bulldoze the nondescript single story commercial lot next to it ?
 
bakgwailo said:
Ugh, can we keep the church 122 year old church and bulldoze the nondescript single story commercial lot next to it ?
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The church is in severe disrepair and the steeple is structurally compromised. Too much work and money for IBA's budget.
 
Bananarama said:
The church is in severe disrepair and the steeple is structurally compromised. Too much work and money for IBA's budget.
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The steeple is already gone. I think they took it down in 2018? The entire site has been braced with scaffolding since 2018ish. But this is one of those times where it's like wait couldn't you have just done the most basic maintenance over the years? It seems a lot of damage was caused by a gutter blocked with debris (leaves). I mean, come on...
 
sm89 said:
The steeple is already gone. I think they took it down in 2018? The entire site has been braced with scaffolding since 2018ish. But this is one of those times where it's like wait couldn't you have just done the most basic maintenance over the years? It seems a lot of damage was caused by a gutter blocked with debris (leaves). I mean, come on...
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Top is off, but the rest of the tower and base are still in really bad shape and have compromised the rest. Trust me when I say it's really beyond any but a major rebuild.
(I've got photos, but probably not released to share)

But yeah, poorly maintained and should have caught these problems before they snowballed.

On the positive side, it's not the prettiest of churches and there are some much better examples just down the street. The loss isn't to great imo
 
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