South End Infill and Small Developments

Hits and misses. True enough. It's just hard to ignore Kenmore...
 
nm88 said:
Hits and misses. True enough. It's just hard to ignore Kenmore...
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There's an excellent Globe reader in that comments section taking Rachelle Cohen to task for hyping Related Beal in the face of the Kenmore Tragedy.
 
JumboBuc said:
Related Beal also did Lovejoy Wharf and Congress Square / Quaker Lane. They have hits and misses.
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nm88 said:
Hits and misses. True enough. It's just hard to ignore Kenmore...
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and they did Whitney, and Quinn, and are doing Channelside. should the 'miss' be plural or treated as a 1 off and not used as a reason not to support BFIT?
 
I think it's important to note that these projects have their own design architect that Beal just works as the developer with.
Kenmore is by Roger Ferris & Partners, LoveJoy was designed by Robert AM Stern, and the Berkley St project is by Hacin + Associates.
 
The Sahara in the South End. This sign was out front. Apologies if this has already been posted here or elsewhere.
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Neon said:
The Sahara in the South End. This sign was out front. Apologies if this has already been posted here or elsewhere. View attachment 15346
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As posted on FB, most likely an old sign when they replaced the broken front stairs. When the owner died ownership went to the 'family, who rumor says can't agree on a disposition, so it remains in the family, unused.
 
Suffolk 83 said:
I like the infill adding condos, but you do this and there will never be inexpensive, neighborhood restaurants here ever again.
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The Gallows was not exactly cheap and basically the same price range as most places in the South End, including in new-ish buildings (eg Myers + Chang, Estragon). The neighboring building is in bad condition and attracted some very low rent tenants. Building lots of high quality commercial space is how you get cheap neighborhood restaurants, not by preserving old, crummy taxpayers along major corridors.
 
curcuas said:
Building lots of high quality commercial space is how you get cheap neighborhood restaurants, not by preserving old, crummy taxpayers along major corridors.
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Im tired of this simple supply and demand analysis like we haven't seen for YEARS, DECADES even that this is not true in Boston. There's loads of commercial space in the seaport how's that working out? How about fenway? One could definitely argue it's a policy problem as well, but it sure isn't being solved by luxury buildings with retail on the street level
 
Suffolk 83 said:
Im tired of this simple supply and demand analysis like we haven't seen for YEARS, DECADES even that this is not true in Boston. There's loads of commercial space in the seaport how's that working out? How about fenway? One could definitely argue it's a policy problem as well, but it sure isn't being solved by luxury buildings with retail on the street level
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Maybe its simply a reflection that the market (the neighborhood) does not want dumpy, seedy, low-rent commercial?
 
Suffolk 83 said:
That's a highly uppity comment, and incorrect
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I don't know about that. I live a couple hundred feet away from this. It is impossible to justify a one story building in this neighborhood for ANY reason. The building is shabby at best, and quite honesty, public housing aside, it's a million bucks for a new two bedroom around here and climbing, and any landowner would be foolish not to see that opportunity. There is nothing "uppity" about realizing that the building is a piece of junk and that nobody's gonna die when that restaurant closes.
 
Cortes said:
I don't know about that. I live a couple hundred feet away from this. It is impossible to justify a one story building in this neighborhood for ANY reason. The building is shabby at best, and quite honesty, public housing aside, it's a million bucks for a new two bedroom around here and climbing, and any landowner would be foolish not to see that opportunity. There is nothing "uppity" about realizing that the building is a piece of junk and that nobody's gonna die when that restaurant closes.
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I am pretty sure what you are saying here is not what Suffolk83 is objecting to above. Suffolk doesn't appear to be attacking the notion of striving for optimal utilization of land; rather, at least how I read it, they're pushing back on (and critiquing the word choice of) the claim that no one wants "dumpy, seedy, low-rent commercial." There's multiple instances of potential miscommunication here. Underutilization and high retail vacancy in shiny, fancy new construction is NOT ideal...nor is only having 1-story structures in a dense city looking for more space utility. But, yes, I agree with Suffolk that there are likely a lot of people looking for cheap street level commercial real estate (and who want to patronize such); you can't just look at supply and demand on those cases, because powerful banks finance the fancy new buildings and then have the ability to intentionally keep retail slots vacant holding out for high rent. The power asymmetry there keeps the population's "voting with their feet" from indicating true individual demand for retail formats. Suffolk may be correct that there are a lot of people who want cheap rent for locally owned small businesses. (And you and others are probably also correct that 1-story structures aren't in the greater best interest here).
 
Cortes said:
I don't know about that. I live a couple hundred feet away from this. It is impossible to justify a one story building in this neighborhood for ANY reason. The building is shabby at best, and quite honesty, public housing aside, it's a million bucks for a new two bedroom around here and climbing, and any landowner would be foolish not to see that opportunity. There is nothing "uppity" about realizing that the building is a piece of junk and that nobody's gonna die when that restaurant closes.
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Yea I lived a block away from this for 5 years until recently as well- obviously I'm barking up the wrong tree on a message board full of pro development fanboys but someday people might want to wake up and see what is gradually taking place. The city is slowly becoming a soulless corporate hellscape and everyone is lulled to sleep.

Harry-O's- while no great shakes was a decent neighborhood pizza place that was doing fine- until the landlord doubled the rent. I'm sure the same goes with the 100+ year old Morse Fish. The Gallows probably suffered the same fate but cried COVID. Black Jack Pasta wasnt amazing but it was good cheap meal- I'm sure they couldnt survive the high rent. Who knows what will become of Union Park Pizza. -- and to boot if you read the South End Gazette or whatever it calls itself you will hear people crying about not having a "tuesday night meal spot". Yea "no one is gonna die" but if you want to stay in the city long term and don't make 250k- you might find yourself SOL to find a reasonably priced meal in the city.

The point is- while its not on one singular land owner to give away property and rents for pennies on the dollar- people in the city should take note of just about every mom and pop establishment in the city disappearing in front of our eyes and urge city officials to do something about it. We should be problem solving to set up funds to help these businesses that sew the city together. POC have been crying about it for decades and nobody listened to them- pretty soon its going to be all the rest of us.
 
The permanent vacancies at the low rent tax payer across Washington slightly towards downtown points to the fact that these dumpy spaces are not exactly what is in demand right now.
 
Neon said:
The Sahara in the South End. This sign was out front. Apologies if this has already been posted here or elsewhere. View attachment 15345View attachment 15346
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My parents say that place was awesome, back in the old days. They lived on Montgomery Street, now the heart of swankiness, in the mid to late 70s. There was still a neighborhood watch and plenty of petty crime. And in the book, Building a New Boston, the author says the people that built the (Pei) Hancock Building were told no Jody would work there because it was too close to the crime-ridden South End. Hard to believe.
 
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