South Weymouth NAS Redevelopment | Southfield | Weymouth

stellarfun said:
This fire seemed to originate in, and was largely confined to the peaked roof. As a matter of general practice, are these sort of roofs sprinklered? They generally don't sprinkler cocklofts to my knowledge, which is why firestops are essential.
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Yes, attic/cockloft spaces with exposed combustible structure must be protected with heads in accordance with NFPA 13/13R. Typically, we put a dry system in attic spaces due to the fear of freezing, despite insulation, as attics & plenums are not typically conditioned spaces where freeze protection is guaranteed.
 
So I went by this yesterday. There is so much open space there. It's kind of creepy actually since what's been built is kind of in random places. Definitely get the vibe that this will only be somewhat completed before something happens like the developer runs out of money.

The CR is very close to this but it is only single track between the stop and Braintree.
 
The commons is apparently the first planned neighborhood of the new planned city.

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Union Point

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The Air Station

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The homepage has a video of the masterplanned city. This is a very smart idea, 20 minutes south of Boston, located on transit, and it will be a brand new planned city in a very old state with old cities and towns. It will be really cool to see how this integrates into the rest of the state.

http://unionpointma.com/


"Union Point developer Lstar Communities has teamed up with GE to be a high tech test site." -from Nov 4.

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"We’re building from scratch, so we can be one of the most innovative cities in the U.S. or the world."

http://weymouth.wickedlocal.com/news/20171104/union-point-makes-smart-move
 
So I wonder if this is why Kraft pulled the Revs out of the Boston proposal. Having the Revs as an anchor spots team for a brand new masterplanned smart city 20 mins from Boston for millennials who are watching more and more soccer would be huge. This all looks perfect. I would imagine Kraft knows all about this and probably sees that this would be the perfect place to put them and it also kicks the can down the road a decade or two. They have lacrosse shown so it could be mixed use for many different things and we have a few pro lacrosse teams in the state as well.


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Amazingly this has both better designs and scale than the entire North Point project. That twisty tower is bolder and "soars" more than anything in Cambridge. Kind of sad really. There wouldn't/shouldn't be demand for this complex, except our main urban area continues to drop the ball in the development department.
 
DZH22 said:
Amazingly this has both better designs and scale than the entire North Point project. That twisty tower is bolder and "soars" more than anything in Cambridge. Kind of sad really. There wouldn't/shouldn't be demand for this complex, except our main urban area continues to drop the ball in the development department.
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Mass needs to have more nodes so not everybody has to go to Boston. All of the cities need to be connected by transit, with express from Worcester-Boston and expansion to Springfield. Union city already has a station and I would imagine red will expand out past Braintree once this is built out a few decades from now giving it redline access maybe a couple downtown stops within the city and the commuter rail station on the outer edge of the city. They can just follow the commuter rail tracks until the edge of the city like red does to Braintree anyways and since the city is masterplanned just leave a way for an easy cut and cover or something like that to bring red right to downtown in the future. All of our cities are extremely old with messy roads. This is going to be pretty cool to see how a brand new masterplanned city works in MA and even in the US as there aren't many over here of any magnitude.
 
So hopefully this could be a spot for the revs but theres also a baseball stadium in the planning too. Imagine the revs and the pawsox both setting up shop here.
 
"Dutch robotics company moving to Union Point."

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Oct 18 2017-

"When you think of a “master-planned community,” what comes to mind? An exclusive, walled-off subdivision? A retirement village? What about an environmentally sustainable, high-tech “smart city”? That’s the vision for Union Point, a small-scale urban development currently under construction near Boston."

"As mayors across the globe grapple with how to incorporate green technology into aging city infrastructure, a real estate developer called LStar Ventures has landed the rare opportunity to build a sustainable community from the ground up ― on a 1,400-acre chunk of land in the South Shore region of Massachusetts. They’re hoping to sell their vision to innovative tech companies, people seeking an environmentally conscious but still urban lifestyle, and perhaps even Amazon."

"This is a long-term project, with early cost estimates of $5 billion, that will likely take 15 years or more to entirely come to fruition."


https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sustainable-smart-city-union-point_us_59dfd221e4b0a52aca16a5b4

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non ripped version without the lettering

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The use of "transit oriented" is a stretch unless by transit they mean single occupancy transit.
The commuter rail stop is barely attached, and not really "steps" from anything.

That train station is already a mess as far as traffic goes. Hopefully these condos are being built with lots of bike storage, because otherwise, everyone will be driving to the train who needs it. Or maybe they'll have shuttle buses when demand is there.

No against this development, and glad the density has increased over the previous designs. I still feel it does a poor job of integrating into the existing towns. Some of that is on the knucklehead towns (looking at you Rockland, for blocking the reconnection of union street).

But, unless the train is down town, I don't see a lot of people getting to or from here on mass transit only. The folks working in the new businesses will all undoubtedly be driving, and I'm sure it will be designed with enough (too much) parking to allow for them to.

I don't see a lot that I would call smart or sustainable at this point. But, we'll see I guess.
 
The silver lining I see here is this will be much easier to retrofit to be truly transit oriented in the future. It will have a connected street grid and a nearby commuter rail stop so even if it has too much parking and is a little less urban than it would be ideally that can be remedied in the future by removing parking and adding more development around it. I would say it is smarter... maybe not smart but at least getting smarter.
 
citylover94 said:
The silver lining I see here is this will be much easier to retrofit to be truly transit oriented in the future. It will have a connected street grid and a nearby commuter rail stop so even if it has too much parking and is a little less urban than it would be ideally that can be remedied in the future by removing parking and adding more development around it. I would say it is smarter... maybe not smart but at least getting smarter.
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Somewhat agree.
I give them points for the "purple pipe" system. This is. Separate reclaimed water system to supply all non-potable water usage in the buildings. I actually designed one of these systems for my senior project. (I based mine on a redeveloped downtown Brockton of course.) The problem is, I had to read thru the Amazon HQ2 proposal to find any actual smart design details. Otherwise it's just a bunch of eyewash.

My concern is 10M SF of commercial space with only 4,000 housing units on site. 10M SF equates to let's say roughly 75,000 FTE's. 4,000 units housing maybe 6-8,000 people on site is a lot of traffic. 18 is a mess that isn't going to get better. Rt. 3 backups start well before exit 16.

I'm not sure how upgradeable the area will be by the time they figure out they need to. Our local communities are not known for being forward thinking. We are by our nature, very reactionary.
 
Literally all you need is a couple bus loops and the commuter rail station is immediately within reach.


SeamusMcFly said:
Somewhat agree.
I give them points for the "purple pipe" system. This is. Separate reclaimed water system to supply all non-potable water usage in the buildings. I actually designed one of these systems for my senior project. (I based mine on a redeveloped downtown Brockton of course.) The problem is, I had to read thru the Amazon HQ2 proposal to find any actual smart design details. Otherwise it's just a bunch of eyewash.

My concern is 10M SF of commercial space with only 4,000 housing units on site. 10M SF equates to let's say roughly 75,000 FTE's. 4,000 units housing maybe 6-8,000 people on site is a lot of traffic. 18 is a mess that isn't going to get better. Rt. 3 backups start well before exit 16.

I'm not sure how upgradeable the area will be by the time they figure out they need to. Our local communities are not known for being forward thinking. We are by our nature, very reactionary.
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I agree that the housing is way off. I hope that this evolves a lot over the years as many things do. That many sq ft of office is going to bring a lot of commuters if they don't address the housing. When I look at the project they leave a lot of woods around the project and the windy roads waste a lot of space. I think they could have made a huge street grid over the entire site and fit way more people. We don't have a city in MA with a proper street grid this would have been the perfect place, then just fill it up. Make it so the downtown is office and ground level retail with some expensive housing to bring the CEO's. As you move away from downtown it becomes mixed use 5-7 story buildings and eventually fading out to 3 story townhouses from there to the edges of the site. Have it mostly wall to wall buildings including the townhouses and retail everywhere with corner stores out in the townhouses and a grocery store or 2. They can throw up a few condo/apartment towers downtown as well. Then they could have just knocked a piece of the grid out somewhere and made a park for everybody to enjoy in one spot, probably on the other side of the water from downtown next to the soccer stadium, but it could have also been between the offices and residential areas.

As far as the transit situation you literally just have to throw in a couple bus loops. A couple going to and from the train station and a couple going from the residential areas to downtown and transit is solved for a relatively small "city". If they do it right they could fit 30,000 people housed here along with all of that office space and maybe gotten a red line stop in the future in downtown. Transit oriented housing is needed so bad in Massachusetts they literally could have built and entire downtown Boston of apartments towers with a bus to the train stop and been successful if they were market rate if they wanted to. Since they're not though this still has the chance to add thousand and thousands of units of housing and I think thats too big to pass up, we need it. Office and residential are both extremely limited here and this can be a huge asset to the state if they do it right.

For the future red line stop just preplan with a road that can easily be cut and covered heading in the direction of downtown from the commuter rail station. The commuter rail tracks could be followed past Braintree like they already are and then it would just have to divert over to downtown here through this pre-planned cut and cover road route. Theres plenty of space and only a couple of at grade crossings. Also working with the surrounding towns to link up this street grid would have worked much better than the few roads that lead into downtown. Either way it looks promising and theres decades to work out a lot of the details as long as they don't make any huge mistakes.

Transit is for a whole other thread but we need express from Worcester to Boston, commuter rail service to Springfield, and the subway system needs to expand at least out to 128 in many places and also include Lynn, Waltham, Brockton, the Fairmount line...etc whether by regular subway or DMU. I think if this city is built to its full potential this could also be an option past Braintree on the redline and there could honestly be 30,000 transit oriented housing units added to the state if they play their cards right.
 
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These look like some pretty awesome plans for the south shore but I would urge people to temper your expectations.... they've been trying to develop the airbase for seemingly 20 years now and have failed more than once. These plans are pretty grandiose which makes me even more skeptical.
 
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