State Street HQ | One Congress | Bulfinch Crossing | West End

[atlantaden]

Re: Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Holy Crap!! This is great news!!

 

[Equilibria]

Re: Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Guess the signage is coming off of One Lincoln... end of an era for that name being on the skyline, since I doubt it's going on this building (it's not in State Street's own renders).

 

[Equilibria]

One Congress | West End

https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...jr1yyEVDs8hiLQ25F76M/story.html?event=event25

Breaking this off now, since the building is a go.

Cost was a factor, too. One Congress, O’Hanley said, was priced substantially less than other proposals that developers and property owners presented to the company. State Street remains under pressure from shareholders to contain expenses; just last week, O’Hanley announced some 1,500 job cuts from high-cost locations around the world.

WTF? How could this possibly have been the lowest-cost option?

The deal with HYM includes signage rights for State Street. The company’s name sat atop 225 Franklin, a previous headquarters, for nearly 40 years. And then it had a logo atop One Lincoln in 2005 after it moved there. The Walsh administration is more willing to accommodate corporate names on office towers than previous administrations, with some parameters attached. The Boston Planning & Development Agency still needs to approve any tower sign.

And correcting myself from the previous thread, they are actually going to try to sign this building, though it might be on ground level.

 

[Lrfox]

Re: One Congress | West End

Responding here:

Guess the signage is coming off of One Lincoln... end of an era for that name being on the skyline, since I doubt it's going on this building (it's not in State Street's own renders).

I don't know about that, there's this in the article:

The deal with HYM includes signage rights for State Street. The company’s name sat atop 225 Franklin, a previous headquarters, for nearly 40 years. And then it had a logo atop One Lincoln in 2005 after it moved there. The Walsh administration is more willing to accommodate corporate names on office towers than previous administrations, with some parameters attached. The Boston Planning & Development Agency still needs to approve any tower sign

*edit*

Nevermind. Beat me to it. Hopefully they do it tastefully. This building deserves to be relatively unaltered.

 

[FitchburgLine]

Re: One Congress | West End

WTF? How could this possibly have been the lowest-cost option?

I'm confused by this too, but since there aren't enough contiguous blocks in existing buildings, maybe the huge size of this gave it an advantage over other new construction?

 

[Equilibria]

Re: One Congress | West End

I'm confused by this too, but since there aren't enough contiguous blocks in existing buildings, maybe the huge size of this gave it an advantage over other new construction?

That, or maybe the price gets jacked up for the higher floors now that HYM has a tenant to start?

 

[Lrfox]

Re: One Congress | West End

what happens to the garage during this phase of construction? Will any of it remain on the side of the Merrimac where the Residential and Office tower are located? It looks like the office tower will run all the way along New Chardon to Bowker, so I assume they'd at least need new entrances/exits. The Globe piece implies that the garage over Merrimac is being removed as part of the office tower project.

 

[Pheldy34]

Re: Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Guess the signage is coming off of One Lincoln... end of an era for that name being on the skyline, since I doubt it's going on this building (it's not in State Street's own renders).

From the article: "The deal with HYM includes signage rights for State Street. The company’s name sat atop 225 Franklin, a previous headquarters, for nearly 40 years. And then it had a logo atop One Lincoln in 2005 after it moved there. The Walsh administration is more willing to accommodate corporate names on office towers than previous administrations, with some parameters attached. The Boston Planning & Development Agency still needs to approve any tower sign."

 

[jklo]

Re: Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

O’Hanley said State Street considered staying put at One Lincoln. But the interior layout isn’t ideally configured for the open-office concept that executives want for the next headquarters, he said.

Eww.

 

[HalcyonEra]

Re: One Congress | West End

I'm confused by this too, but since there aren't enough contiguous blocks in existing buildings, maybe the huge size of this gave it an advantage over other new construction?

It's possible too that their other lease contained pricing options that were way too expensive and the landlord wouldn't budge. A company I worked for was in a similar situation with a long term lease with locked renewal rates for a large entity we acquired. It was like 120K square feet. The tower owner would not entertain any discussions on the current or renewal rates until the very end, and only after we decided to move to a the tower next door. We told them to go screw. Landlords can get overly comfortable with established tenants and totally misjudge the situation.

 

[HalcyonEra]

Re: Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Eww.

Ah, just saw that..... I agree. Eww is right.

 

[odurandina]

Re: One Congress | West End

they are actually going to try to sign this building, though it might be on ground level.

How about some type of cool lighting scheme for after dark,

and leaving the tower clean during the day!!

 

[kz1000ps]

Re: One Congress | West End

In case anybody needs a reminder of where the State Street logo sat in the skyline for 40 years, here's an ancient shot of mine from Patriot Day 2005, probably no more than a couple months before the logo was moved to One Lincoln:

 

[chrisbrat]

Re: One Congress | West End

ive said it before but 225 franklin is - to my mind/eye - the building most impacted (negatively) by the removal of signage.

99 high street was also much more visually compelling with the old keystone sign, but as a building/shape it at least has some interest, whereas 225 franklin w/o "STATE STREET" up there is just aggressively boring.

 

[itchy]

Re: One Congress | West End

In case anybody needs a reminder of where the State Street logo sat in the skyline for 40 years, here's an ancient shot of mine from Patriot Day 2005

Great photo, KZ! I'd totally forgotten about State Street's name on that building.

The other thing that struck me when seeing your picture was: "So, this looks like a relatively contemporary picture ... but ... where are all the raised arms with smartphones foisted out to take pictures? Are those people really just letting the marathoners run by without taking 30 photos a minute? How will they REMEMBER this?!"

That then turned to, "This must be before 2007 ... how happy we were then."

 

[CSTH]

Re: One Congress | West End

what happens to the garage during this phase of construction? Will any of it remain on the side of the Merrimac where the Residential and Office tower are located? It looks like the office tower will run all the way along New Chardon to Bowker, so I assume they'd at least need new entrances/exits. The Globe piece implies that the garage over Merrimac is being removed as part of the office tower project.

The garage goes over Congress, not Merrimack. There is already a new entrance/ exit opened up on bowker, served by new internal scissor ramps. b

The existing garage entrance and the barrel ramp.will go away. I believe the section of the garage over Congress will remain in place after this phase of construction is complete - it's slated.to be removed in a subsequent phase in the fitiew.

 

[datadyne007]

Re: One Congress | West End

Recommend thread title be updated to:

State Street HQ | One Congress | Bulfinch Crossing | West End

 

[stick n move]

Re: One Congress | West End

Get these all in 1 spot on pg 1.

[/QUOTE]

 

[Charlie_mta]

Nice, almost too nice for Boston's tastes I hope it all gets built.

 

[chrisbrat]

Nice, almost too nice for Boston's tastes.

cmon now dude...

nobody disagrees that boston is far from being the most adventurous or cutting-edge when it comes to architecture and urbanism, but that assessment of yours is more than a little misleading.

while brutalism has fallen from favor, it was a bold (very) movement and boston embraced it more than... well, possibly more than any urban environment, globally. in and of itself, that's telling.

frank gehry's stuff, the JHT, ICA are all pretty iconic and forward-thinking.

i agree this would be a nice, elegant edition to boston's otherwise (mostly) boxy and conservative skyline, but let's not paint the city, as a whole, as some tasteless backwater that's done nothing of merit since 1890.