South Station Tower | South Station Air Rights | Downtown

From the Globe article: "The BPDA on Thursday will vote to give Hines until April to start work, though the developer says it aims to begin site preparation before the end of this year."

Cross your fingers, toes, eyes, all of it, this might be happening.
 
Massachoicetts said:
Investors as in investors for office/retail or for the residential part?
Click to expand...
According to the Globe, the two new investors are in for the entire project. For whatever reason, the new investors must be approved by the city before construction can start.
 
www.bostonglobe.com

Work on long-delayed South Station tower may finally start - The Boston Globe

More than a decade after it was first proposed, construction of a 51-story tower atop South Station could soon start, now that its builders have lined up deep-pocketed new investors.
www.bostonglobe.com www.bostonglobe.com

Also implies that these investors are willing to build a billion-plus tower on-spec:

Perry has said that because he expects it will take four years to build, Hines probably won’t lease office space prior to construction, as large office projects in Boston typically do. That makes the tower a relatively risky proposition, should the economy turn and demand for high-end office space downtown dry up. Apparently, that’s a risk that APG and Dune — which recently raised a $1.25 billion investment fund — are willing to take.
Click to expand...
 
Wow, those 1966 and 1974 proposals are truly horrifying.
 
This is gonna take 4 years? I figured it take a while to rise out of South Station with operating over the platforms and whatnot, but 4 years worth?
 
meddlepal said:
Disable JavaScript in your browser and you can read it. The gist is previous Chinese investor is out and two newinvestors are in. Asking for extension until Dec 31. Construction is not imminent.
Click to expand...
What happened to the Chinese Investors -- Did Hunter Biden get all the money? :love::LOL::unsure:

But it is a good sign that there is a deep pocket investor now such as a Dutch Pension Fund -- Dutch have been investing over here since the 1600's
 
“which will take four years to build and would be one of the most complex and expensive projects in Boston’s ongoing development boom.”

Huh? The foundations already exist, how is it one of the most complex... and 4 years? Are they building everything or just the tower? Its technically already at ground level and then once you get... 1 floor up, your then past the tracks and pedestrians and everything, and theres now separation between the construction site and the station. Kinda confusing..

If this was starting from scratch and they had to pile drive the entire foundation with the busiest station in new england still working at capacity around them, then I can see 4 years until occupancy as the foundation would take a year alone. But the way it is now on day 1 youre building up from ground level and again once floor 1 is complete theres already separation. Idk..
 
Last edited:
stick n move said:
“which will take four years to build and would be one of the most complex and expensive projects in Boston’s ongoing development boom.”

Huh? The foundations already exist, how is it one of the most complex... and 4 years? Are they building everything or just the tower? Its technically already at ground level and then once you get... 1 floor up, your then past the tracks and pedestrians and everything and theres separation between the construction site and the station. Kinda confusing..
Click to expand...

I imagine getting that first floor is going to take a while. There's going to have to be a good amount of safety precautions and coordination with the MBTA, and likely a lot of low-pick overnight shifts for highly dangerous lifts/maneuvers (though that hasn't dramatically slowed down other similar projects). Aren't there also a number of renovations/updates going on at South Station as part of this project? Still - 4 years is quite a long time for this.

And they're rather vague about the phasing, whether everything's being completed or just Phase I (the tower).
 
stick n move said:
If this was starting from scratch and they had to pile drive the entire foundation with the busiest station in new england still working at capacity around them, then I can see 4 years until occupancy as the foundation would take a year alone....
Click to expand...

Just a year? It took 1 Dalton a whopping 23 months. It has taken Winthrop Square almost a year and a half so far post-demolition and God knows when that one will start going vertical. It wouldn't surprise me if it took longer to do the foundations in Boston than a similar-sized building would take in any other city on the planet.

I heard somewhere (here, this thread, good luck finding the needle in the 105 page haystack) that it will still take SST almost a year to start going vertical once construction commences. It seems like everything in Boston takes approximately:
2 years longer for approval than anywhere else.
6-12 months longer from approval to the beginning of construction than anywhere else.
6-12 months longer on the foundation stage than anywhere else.

So basically, projects get going almost 3 years later than they should, and then the complexities of building here add upwards of another year. This is why somebody like odurandina comes across as unbelievable impatient. We are all growing old waiting for some of these projects here! I remember when the SST design with the ridiculous spire was slated to become Boston's tallest. Since then I went from an excited/ignorant high-schooler to pushing 40! My personal impatience is that I can see myself dying of old age before some of these are sorted out. (Aquarium Tower, SST still, or the long-shot possibility of getting a new tallest building even though it's been almost 50 years and we've been one of the most in-demand cities in the country for a couple decades)

If this gets out of the ground, then we can say this cycle has been absolutely awesome (despite no Copley, chop-down at North Station, chop-down at Winthrop Square, and so many other failures). If it doesn't, the boom is still good, and yet somehow unfulfilling at the same time.
 
Yea, but the point is that the foundations were already done a long time ago, so theyre not starting from scratch and dont have that 1-2 years of foundation work before it starts to rise like other towers.
 
Last edited:
stick n move said:
Yea, but the point is that the foundations were already done a long time ago, so theyre not starting from scratch and dont have that 1-2 years of foundation work before it starts to rise like other towers.
Click to expand...

And yet if you search this thread long enough you'll see that they do have probably 9-12 months of... something... before it starts to rise.
 
Isn't the tower portion of this project actually sitting over the current SS waiting area? That's what it look like from renders. I don't think people are giving the complexity of this project the credit it's due.
 
meddlepal said:
Isn't the tower portion of this project actually sitting over the current SS waiting area? That's what it look like from renders. I don't think people are giving the complexity of this project the credit it's due.
Click to expand...


Its hard to tell, but it looks like the front face is and the rest is over the tracks. But yea its absolutely not going to be easy by any measure. Thank god they did do the foundations already or theres no way this is even on the radar today.

 
Last edited:
^^Great shot Stick. That would seem to settle it.

stick n move said:
“which will take four years to build and would be one of the most complex and expensive projects in Boston’s ongoing development boom.”

Huh? The foundations already exist, how is it one of the most complex... and 4 years? Are they building everything or just the tower? Its technically already at ground level and then once you get... 1 floor up, your then past the tracks and pedestrians and everything, and theres now separation between the construction site and the station. Kinda confusing..
Click to expand...

This is a good point. i posted the same up in the Globe earlier this afternoon. But i imagine there's going to be less day work--and a lot of night work for a while, equipment on site, overall for an extensive timetable, adding complexity and expense.

DZH22 said:
If this gets out of the ground, then we can say this cycle has been absolutely awesome (despite no Copley, chop-down at North Station, chop-down at Winthrop Square, and so many other failures). If it doesn't, the boom is still good, and yet somehow unfulfilling at the same time.
Click to expand...
Yes: procedurally, this and Winthrop share the podium as the demarcation lines, the 2 definitive projects of the Cycle imo. When you look across the entirety of Downtown, it will significantly tall, far spanning, and big: The old + new + re-cladded 150~180m buildings (incl the eventual arrival of Central Wharf), the Greenway, Bulfinch Triangle, and height spanning from the North Station area to DTX will be impressive. But the 150, 180~210m towers that span from South Station to DTX in contrast to the tired, reticent, sleepy Boston of a 1/2 century ago will be a striking landscape: The 4 new towers (incl MT) will edify the older highrises as well. The Mayor and BPDA want Central Wharf to rise. Despite the noise from a few obnoxious residents and activist leaders, there's a good chance a single, 600' tower gets approved.

Copley, the Seductive One got away. 1 Brom, and 1000 Boylston set back a decade by planning failures, & the airspace over Columbus Ave is still yet to be filled--huge losses. But, MT, Winthrop Square, GCG, SST & the North Station area are huge gains that many of us never would have believed were possible just a few years ago. Solid infill ballast, great highrises & mid-rises, and the marketplace adding the office and lab space the world wanted to buy.

If SST goes u/c, and not only will we have some great real estate to watch--there won't be much reason to bitch anymore. i thought of a tall, dense built environment 30 years ago. This sure is a lot closer to what i thought might someday be possible. Latter era Menino's BRA & Walsh's BPDA blew down the doors.
 
Last edited:
Pardon me for any redundancy but the ‘foundations’ were done when? And they were done for a building with these specs or even this size? that’s no where near my area of expertise so I have no clue but I’m just curious how much that is really crossed off the to do list...
 
>Yea, but the point is that the foundations were already done a long time ago, so theyre not starting from scratch and dont have that 1-2 years of foundation work before it starts to rise like other towers.

who funded the "foundation work" when it was done a long time ago ... when this project was still in flux or perhaps didn't even have the required approvals?
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top