South Station Tower | South Station Air Rights | Downtown

Looking like an arch taking shape! Its scale is so crazy when you notice the guy up in the scaffolding in the upper right.

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Aren't there two Four Seasons residences a mile from each other in the Back Bay?
 
BosDevelop said:
Aren't there two Four Seasons residences a mile from each other in the Back Bay?
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Yup. Last time the Ritz Boston moved, they didn't keep the name on the old one, but there's nothing to stop them having both, and precedent for Four Seasons doing so. (Four Seasons specifically refers to "One Dalton" to distinguish between that property and the original Four Seasons Boston, one imagines something similar with South Station Tower could be done.)
 
While they would be a mere mile apart, the locations offer completely different settings that likely wouldn’t see them in direct competition with each other.

Ritz also chose to move out of the Newbury Street location as the building no longer was able to compete with luxury hotel amenities starting to enter the market in the early 2000s.
 
bdurden said:
While they would be a mere mile apart, the locations offer completely different settings that likely wouldn’t see them in direct competition with each other.

Ritz also chose to move out of the Newbury Street location as the building no longer was able to compete with luxury hotel amenities starting to enter the market in the early 2000s.
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You're not at all wrong, but by that logic the Waldorf Astoria (and others) should have vacated their OG locations years ago. The Newbury/Arlington Ritz-Carlton was (hate the overusage of the word, but here it goes...) iconic. Bad move (literally) to leave.
 
chrisbrat said:
You're not at all wrong, but by that logic the Waldorf Astoria (and others) should have vacated their OG locations years ago. The Newbury/Arlington Ritz-Carlton was (hate the overusage of the word, but here it goes...) iconic. Bad move (literally) to leave.
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By what logic, as you say, was it a bad move? It would be worth explaining (at the bare minimum).
 
bdurden said:
By what logic, as you say, was it a bad move? It would be worth explaining (at the bare minimum).
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I think the logic is something like arguing that the bad move is in abandoning the old, iconic location (and its historic qualities and ambiances that you can't get back), just as would be the case for the other "iconic" hotels mentioned if they were to trade their historic premises for, perhaps, more generic modern ones (I at least would rate the "New Ritz" as thoroughly nondescript, at least on the outside...and the location's rather less grand.)

For me, personally, I think there's a trade-off. There's no point sticking to a historic building just because it's historic if staying there means you're not going to be able to offer a worthy product/experience. Seeing as how the old Ritz building has continued to function as a luxury hotel/residence, though, I wonder to what extent it was "no longer able to compete" versus "competing would require more expensive renovation than we want to bother with", which would be a grubbier reason for abandoning a historic building.
 
Brattle Loop said:
Yup. Last time the Ritz Boston moved, they didn't keep the name on the old one, but there's nothing to stop them having both, and precedent for Four Seasons doing so. (Four Seasons specifically refers to "One Dalton" to distinguish between that property and the original Four Seasons Boston, one imagines something similar with South Station Tower could be done.)
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So I know a bit about this. First, both Ritz's co-existed for a bit - closing the old one wasn't a foregone conclusion for the Hotel or Residences when the new one was opened. Bit of truth in the thread that it was essentially sold due to the building just not being up to snuff - things like the parking situation often came up where they had to rely on multiple garages, including Motor Mart many blocks away. However, there were also millions spent on what was supposed to be a full re-had/bringing the building up to full modern tear that the management essentially got taken to the cleaners on and it ended up being little better than painting over all of the problems that management/the manager really dropped the ball on big. That rather set the ball rolling to the dining room closing and it ultimately being sold off. I think if they hadn't screwed up the reno we might still have two Ritz's, especially given the history of it being pretty much the last 'original' Ritz in the country.
 
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