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Re: South Station Tower

Brad Plaid said:
The tower scenarios in the other renders are superior to it.
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If you are refering to the CBT designs linearly along the channel, I completely agree. Could that still happen though?
 
Re: South Station Tower

type001 said:
If you are refering to the CBT designs linearly along the channel, I completely agree. Could that still happen though?
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It certainly should happen. But given the dearth of political sophistication here, who knows. Bloomberg will be looking for work soon. Anyone have his cell number?!
 
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Re: South Station Tower

Not to get too off-topic, but I always wonder if Bloomberg favors his hometown positively and how he talks about it to those in his inner NY circles. I'm sure I could find out in one of his many biographies. No doubt that he is currently living in the city he is going to die in.

Assuming that the BRA prepared the latest rendering for the Globe, I wonder if they are currently working with CBT again on it. There is no "new" news on their site.
 
Re: South Station Tower

Brad Plaid said:
It certainly should happen. But given the dearth of political sophistication here, who knows. Bloomberg will be looking for work soon. Anyone have his cell number?!
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Bloomberg is a total douche. I still can't believe that he's passing ordinances on soda.
 
Re: South Station Tower

choo said:
Obviously this vs. the eventual will have major differences, but I hate the trend of roofs being shown in renderings as a green park on top of a building. I'm all for efficient design and properly incorporating open space, even on roofs, but the green fill that has become the norm is lame. (a more general than specific critique)
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It probably helps shut the NIMBYs up a little, though.
 
Re: South Station Tower

This will end up a 28 story stump completed in 2025. Next.
 
Re: South Station Tower

Brad Plaid said:
The station is indeed a beauty, a little bit of Dubai or Beijing on the channel. The rest though is status quo provincialism: timid underdevelopment vs. a game changing boldness. The tower scenarios in the other renders are superior to it.
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Agree on all counts 100%.
 
Re: South Station Tower

czsz said:
It probably helps shut the NIMBYs up a little, though.
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Green roofs are not 100% about activating space or open space requirements. If all roofs were plain green (grass or whatever) it would be a marked improvement over white roofs, which are a marked improvement over black roofs when it comes to all things related to the inside and outside environment. If they were all plain green instead of white or black, most would never know just like most don't know what's on most roofs now. Only in these renderings do you see it, and then they can use it as a quick talking point.

Making them usable is even better. But each step costs more. White costs more than black, but this is not a huge gap, green costs more than white, but this becomes a huge gap as structural needs increasing, more expensive drains are provided, plus all the materials and membranes for the green roof. Add landscaping to that, and it's grwing more costly.

Of course I'd love to see all new roofs be green to help mitigate heat island, battle smog and green house gases, etc.

I know it was general, just pointing out it's easy to change the color of the roof from white to green and catch the eye in an aerial rendering, but you won't see it from the street.

A thought occurs to me though. Would active green roofs become like lobby cafeterias that are subsidized by companies to keep their employees close? Would they start killing the street life similarly?
 
Re: South Station Tower

Making them usable is even better. But each step costs more. White costs more than black, but this is not a huge gap, green costs more than white, but this becomes a huge gap as structural needs increasing, more expensive drains are provided, plus all the materials and membranes for the green roof. Add landscaping to that, and it's grwing more costly.
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Does anyone know what impact green roofs have on replacement cost? Seems like it would be an absolute nightmare to go up there with a small piece of equipment, strip the soil/subbase, move the dirt off the roof, and then you've got the membrane replacement. And what about small leaks in the membrane that can typically be patched to extend a roof's useable life. I guess those are out too?
 
Re: South Station Tower

Dukakis opposed.

This project does nothing for North Station, which is almost at capacity,” said John Businger, vice president of the National Corridors Initiative today during a public scope session about the multi-year project with state Department of Transportation and Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs officials at South Station. “The north side is getting cheated by this project and I think over the coming months and years, before this ever gets done, the opposition is only going to grow.”

Businger also spoke on behalf of former Gov. Michael Dukakis, who is currently in Vietnam, calling the project “unnecessary and irrelevant and a colossal waste of money.”
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http://bostonherald.com/business/re...y_to_derail_850m_south_station_expansion_plan
 
Re: South Station Tower

unnecessary and irrelevant eh? Is he short sighted or narrow minded? Look at the big picture.

South Station for all intents and purposes is the Northern terminus for Amtrak and the northeast corridor service. Not much north of the city besides commuter rail and downeaster service. Not to short the importance of North Station, but it pales next to South Station. The North-South Link is also very important in my mind, particularly for expanding national rail service, and less so for commuters. If you're commuting from North and you work in Southie it'll help you out. But if you work downtown or in the back bay, no real impact for commuters.

However, I'm sure there will be plenty on the collossal wasting of money. Just as in the Big Dig (a Dukakis initiative btw.)
 
Re: South Station Tower

So they are opposed because they want to spend billions more for a tunnel instead? :eek:

Please, I'm all for the NS Link but even if that was ready and funded TOMORROW it would be a decade away. We have capacity issues NOW and this is the best thing for them.

So stupid.
 
Re: South Station Tower

Stupid question I'm sure, but the $850m obviously does not include the tower right? (which is not even mentioned in the article).
 
Re: South Station Tower

SeamusMcFly said:
unnecessary and irrelevant eh? Is he short sighted or narrow minded? Look at the big picture.

South Station for all intents and purposes is the Northern terminus for Amtrak and the northeast corridor service. Not much north of the city besides commuter rail and downeaster service. Not to short the importance of North Station, but it pales next to South Station. The North-South Link is also very important in my mind, particularly for expanding national rail service, and less so for commuters. If you're commuting from North and you work in Southie it'll help you out. But if you work downtown or in the back bay, no real impact for commuters.

However, I'm sure there will be plenty on the collossal wasting of money. Just as in the Big Dig (a Dukakis initiative btw.)
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The real impact for commuters from the North-South Rail Link is being able to deadhead out-of-service trains coming through from the south to BET instead of having them chew up our limited quantity of available platforms because sending things over the Grand Junction on a regular basis isn't a real solution and we can't effectively move trains into and out of Readville Yard from South Station, nor can we effectively continue to use Widett Circle as a de facto yard.

More platforms are necessary in the long term, but the short term effect of this is negligible compared to what we could be getting if we threw down an extra number of tracks off the side of South Station as an afterthought and directed the rest of the money into solving our yard/layover space capacity crisis instead. Spending money on a "new passenger concourse and amenities" (read: overwrought glass palace abomination) helps nobody.

As an aside, by the way, I'm pretty sure the Rail Link isn't being adequately provisioned for in the expansion plans, which may or may not open us up to huge problems down the line when we get around to building it.
 
Re: South Station Tower

And rest assured, there will be substantial cost overruns and completion delays if (when) unions are involved with any aspect of the construction.
Lots of union hacks got nice houses on the cape and up in the mountains after getting rich off taxpayer dollars during the big dig.
 
Re: South Station Tower

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Union hacks, political hacks, Wall Street hacks, corporate hacks...hell, they all got nice homes on the backs of the rest of us but at least we got something out of those union hacks! The Big Dig was and continues to be one of the best things that ever happened to Boston!! And after watching Data's video post, posted under Boston videos, it only reinforces my opinion!
 
Re: South Station Tower

The Big Dig fiasco was mostly created by political hacks. The original B/PB cost estimate was approximately $13-14 billion. That's remarkably close to the actual cost (before interest). They were told to find a way to bring it below $8 billion to sell it to the public.
 
Re: South Station Tower

buju b said:
And rest assured, there will be substantial cost overruns and completion delays if (when) unions are involved with any aspect of the construction.
Lots of union hacks got nice houses on the cape and up in the mountains after getting rich off taxpayer dollars during the big dig.
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Jesus buju, that's not even an anecdote. That's just thowing shit against a wall. Look at the big union companies that worked on the Big Dig:
  • Modern Continental went out of business.
  • Perini stopped bidding civil work in the state.
  • Cashman has almost completely stopped bidding jobs in the state.
  • Dimatteo went out of business.
JF White and McCourt Still bid work. That's about it. The notion that everyone got rich off the Big Dig is silly. When the project was wrapping up contractors were getting paid something like 70 cents on the dollar.

Matthew said:
The Big Dig fiasco was mostly created by political hacks. The original B/PB cost estimate was approximately $13-14 billion. That's remarkably close to the actual cost (before interest). They were told to find a way to bring it below $8 billion to sell it to the public.
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This.
The construction cost did not exceed what B/PB estimated. It exceeded what politicians were willing to put on paper.
 
Re: South Station Tower

A. a company going out of business has nothing to do with whether Union workers made boku bucks off the big dig. Part of it is a shell game, and part of it is the company name taking the heat. The people who worked there are by and large still doing just fine.

B. If I recall correctly, the price floated to us the taxpayers was much closer to 2 billion, and not 8 or 14-16.

The amount of OT workers were getting on the dig was insane at times, and the amount of screwing off during that time is legendary. I am not a Union fan nor have I ever been, but I have many Union workers as friends who have verified much of this, and they did very well during that time. Not just hearsay or speculation.

70 cents on the dollar of their overinflated hourly rates? Boo-hoo, so by the end they were getting paid closer to non union rates? Cry me a river.

I know you can't believe everything on Wikipedia, but this was a good synopsis.

The project was originally scheduled to be completed in 1998[5] at an estimated cost of $2.8 billion (in 1982 dollars, US$6.0 billion adjusted for inflation as of 2006).[6] However, the project was completed only in December 2007, at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)[6] as of 2006.[7] The Boston Globe estimated that the project will ultimately cost $22 billion, including interest, and that it will not be paid off until 2038
 
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