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Re: South Station Tower

The auto became massed produced.

There sure is a lot of confidence out there about why things are the way they are.

IMO, the development of the car was a significant factor. Over the past 30 years, this City deserved better planning in public transit -- as an example, there is and was no excuse for CAT/Tunnel not creating a North Station-South Station rail link along a portion of the tunnels.

My #1 issue with the BRA (under the Mayor's direction) is that it has pushed Boston far in the direction of being a work and entertainment destination for suburban residents rather than ensuring residential growth to coincide with the trend toward development of new office space and destination commercial.

This "destination City" and car-centric approach was entirely a political decision at the Mayor's office and City Council (predominately fear of demographic shifts caused if large blocs of new residents moved in) and has been hastened by the advocacy of organizations and agencies including the Chamber of Commerce, NAIOP, Artery Business Committee (defunct), BCEC, et. al. The result has been a loss of street life -- particularly on nights and weekends.

The excuse that developers were hamstrung by the economics of financing is a load of BS. We've gone through decades of bullish and bear markets. There was plenty to be made building residential towers considering the margin between land purchase price and zoning changes available if some progressive planning had been done by the BRA with the Mayor's support, but we've seen offices and hotels. That is predominately what was built, and that is what will be built.

And in the small pockets where a modicum of residential was built -- Millenium Place for example, the area is thriving far better than say, Downtown Crossing closer to Summer Street.
 
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Re: South Station Tower

Also, I'd bet that "throngs of people" were not found in 1903 on Boylston and Newbury streets, as they are now.

For the record - I'm pretty sure then "throngs of people" photo depicts a special event; if my memory serves me right, I think it is a visit by president McKinley to Boston ( note then parade of horses at center). Using this photo as an indication of street activity a century ago would be like referencing a picture of the red sox victory parade in 04 to assess street activity in Boston in the 21 st century.
 
Re: South Station Tower

There could be congestion before the auto.

Speedway1899_Lo.jpg


1902^^^^

More typical of a Boston shopping district

Scollay1880s.jpg


pre-1890 ^^^^

002527.jpg


^^^^Circa 1900. Must be a Sunday.
 
Re: South Station Tower

I've seen throngs of people in modern Boston. Try Brookline Ave. before or after a Sox game -- 81 days out of the year we have at least one neighborhood as congested with people as presented in that picture. Furthermore, Dewey Square itself gets pretty congested between 8 am and 9 am, and between 5 pm and 6 pm.

Then one thing in the first picture that saddens me is the El. I wish we still had rail rapid transit running along the waterfront.
 
Re: South Station Tower

Check out this for relevance: South Station gets $32.5 million


I don't pretend to know too much about construction costs, especially for rail expansion, but $32.5 million simply for designs costs seems exorbitantly high to me.
 
Re: South Station Tower

I don't pretend to know too much about construction costs, especially for rail expansion, but $32.5 million simply for designs costs seems exorbitantly high to me.

you don't even want to know how much it has cost to study/design the south coast rail to date!! (Hint: $32.5m x 3 + 2.5)
 
Re: South Station Tower

$32.5 million does seem high, but some of the cost may be for engineering a complex re-alignment of trackage, interlockings, and catenary wire.

This expansion of south Station may also force Hines to crap or get off the pot with regard to the SST. IMO, it will become more difficult from a staging abnd site access standpoint, and more costly to build SST after the station is expanded then it would if Hines were to build concurrently with the expansion.
 
Re: South Station Tower

you don't even want to know how much it has cost to study/design the south coast rail to date!! (Hint: $32.5m x 3 + 2.5)

I know nothing of the whole design process of anything, with that being said there is no way in hell it costs a hundred million dollars to study and design a 40 mile rail line. That is just paying a few people way more money than their service is worth.
 
Re: South Station Tower

Where other countries take a 100 million to build stuff, we just keep studying them....
 
Re: South Station Tower

Has anyone heard so much as a peep? My father thinks he heard about the project to build over the platforms recently, but he doesn't know much else. I'm not sure if maybe he heard a glancing reference to it in a South Station expansion/Postal Annex leaving report, or if he's getting it confused with the expansion and Fort Point development or what. If there is anything going on, maybe they scaled it down, made it a little fatter? WikiPedia article shows no updates and a Google search turned up nothing.
 
Re: South Station Tower

EDIT: This is all I can find referencing a tower at South Station:

Speaking at a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce breakfast event, Boston Redevelopment Director Peter Meade specifically identified the city’s South Station and Winthrop Square area near Downtown Crossing as particularly ripe locations for potential new towers. He said areas could easily “embrace more height” without delivering any long-term disruption to the existing layout.

- http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/real_estate/2011/09/bras-meade-eyes-new-tower-space.html
 
Re: South Station Tower

I hear this is scheduled to start construction as soon as One Franklin, the TransNational and Columbus Center are completed.

So pretty much any day now.
 
Re: South Station Tower

When was this first proposed? Back in the 90s? It is going to be a long time before anything rises here... if at all.
 
Re: South Station Tower

This project was proposed within the past 10 years.

http://www.hines.com/property/detail.aspx?id=144

I'm pretty sure this project has gone as far as having the MA State legislature pass provisions in a recent Transportation Bond Bill exempting it from oversight under Chapter 91 (environmental laws requiring some public benefit for developments on tidelands). Since that exemption, I haven't heard more.

In the most recent iteration of the propsed project (3-5 years ago?), the entrance to the office tower was on a second level above the tracks. As proposed, an escalator would enter the middle of South Station's grand atrium, bisecting the space into two smaller areas. This may have changed.
 
Re: South Station Tower

I saw the BRA actually built this into their scale model of the city. But then again so are two PoMo towers by the Garden
 
Re: South Station Tower

IIRC, about at the time they electrified the tracks, they built the stumps for the steel that would some day rise above.
 
Re: South Station Tower

Then:

/QUOTE]

There must be several decades between the "busy pic" at the top and the one in the center -- the Atlantic Ave El has either not been built or has already been removed by the time 2nd pic was taken -- then again either the El has been built or its not been removed for the 3rd

I think the order of the pictures in time is [before, before, with the El];

so_station2.png


so_station3.png


so_station1.png
 
Re: South Station Tower

I don't pretend to know too much about construction costs, especially for rail expansion, but $32.5 million simply for designs costs seems exorbitantly high to me.

Bos --- check-out the following:
http://app1.massdot.state.ma.us/southstationexpansion/Documents.html

There is quite a bit of stuff on the South Station project which includes [as well as ofher stuff];

7 new tracks [20 total]
4 new platorms [12 total]
mid-platform "flying-bridge" interconnects tying all of the platforms together [I presume that this means escalators and elevators or at least stairs and elevators on each platform]
lots of track and interlocking reconstruction
a layover place for trains
a glass shed & new headhouse / waiting room on re-opened Dorchester Ave
pedestrian harbor-walk reconstruction of Dorchester Ave and Fort Point Chanel edge
re-locate the USPS -- perhaps no-longer needed?

total price tag is order of $1B
 
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Re: South Station Tower

Wasn't Tufts University originally planning to build the South Station tower? I'm not sure why, as this is not especially close to their medical campus.
 

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