Re: South Station Tower
I dunno. The 3 alternatives for South Station Expansion all show a program for the post office site as a plan. The SSX has some renders of a possible headhouse and as I recall, they include the tower.
EDIT: add link -
http://www.massdot.state.ma.us/Portals/25/Docs/Presentation_DEIR201411.pdf
This air rights build was pre-provisioned way back in 1989 when the station renovation started, and kicked around as a concept way back in '78 when the BRA sold the station to the T with a clause in the sale contract retaining lifetime air rights.
Every proposal and master plan kicked around for the last 35 years for anything on-site, adjacent to, or expanding-upon SS has provisioned for this. Legally, it's been a mandatory condition this whole time for pitching any transit or redev proposals that touch the parcel. Legally, provision for future air rights revenues were a necessity for sealing the deal that secured federal money for restoration of the historic station building and permanently ending any threats from a wrecking ball.
We don't have to worry about whether they're going to dot all their i's to make SSX compatible with a tower. SSX legally could never have been proposed, much less have its design kick-off federally funded 6 years ago, unless it were 1000% design-compatible with an air rights tower. Read nothing into the various glass headhouse concepts circulated by the feasibility study, because those are just study concepts begetting more study concepts. The only thing that had real engineering money spent was the track + platform schematic, which is set in stone by available geometry: +7 tracks, +4 island platforms. No more, no less, fixed costs for the on-the-ground construction, no consequential design changes that could ever pinch a penny saved if they get in a jam. And all of it must be able to interface with a future air rights tower. All of their budgetary fallback positions for SSX cost-cutting involve punting the aesthetic niceties on-top to TBD's, not changing a thing at track level.
It's just...exactly as with the Pike air rights...no planning body in their most pessimistic imagination thought it was going to take 4 frickin' decades to get a decking redev proposal that had so much as a shade more substance behind it than a quickly-dissipating vaporware fart. They thought they'd be topping off a spire in 1993, not 2021. And that the tower would be the catalyst that got USPS to move and pave the way for that track expansion...not public money needing to go it alone kick-starting that process from complete inertia of rest.
If you want a grand train station entrance sooner than later serving the new Dot Ave. side, this development is the most timely thing imaginable for priming that pump. We know what we're getting on the transit side for SSX; that's locked-and-loaded the second USPS can be dealt with and the base costs funded. If the headhouse concept has to be radically reconceptualized because some big-pocketed developers are now fronting money for a design that suits their tower, fronting money for the interface that suits the (also yet-to-be conceptualized) row of Dot Ave. buildings, and fronting money to help create a public boating interface with the Channel that fuels their real estate's value...then throw those feasibility study glass edifices in the trash and radically reconceptualize the whole fucker. We get something grander, sooner, and less-costly that way. All the basic functionality of the expanded station and all the air rights provisions are long-settled issues nobody has to pay any mind. This is purely about what architectural chops the developers and BRA are floating, and how committed they are to staying out of their own way to get it done right. Nothing's going to get outright harmed if the results moderately disappoint; the intrigue is all about how close-to-target they can nail this once-a-century opportunity to do something truly great.
