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

This rainy evening (moments before downpour):

st-bfc1.jpg
 
Big change proposed for the rest of Bulfinch Crossing.

The developer enveloping Government Center Garage with a cluster of high-rises is revising plans for a key piece of the project, proposing a large block of laboratory space where it had planned a hotel, retail stores, and conventional offices.
...
“Honestly, I think we’re in the midst of something that’s really fascinating in Boston right now,” said Tom O’Brien, managing director of HYM Investment Group, the developer at the helm of Bulfinch Crossing. “This industry has really become a strong employer . . . primarily because of the institutions that are located here, but now continued by the fact that these really strong scientists and employees want to be here.”
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HYM said it intends on Tuesday to file new plans, including for a 410,000-square-foot life-sciences building, with the Boston Planning & Development Agency.
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https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07...ill-now-include-life-sciences-building/[/url\
 
stellarfun said:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/07...ill-now-include-life-sciences-building/[/url\
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This should probably go in the other thread.

Bulfinch Crossing | Congress Street Garage | West End

Those are some retro 80s bus shelters.
archboston.com

And don't lie, Mr. O'Brien:

One structure would have been constructed over the busy bus terminal at street level above the Orange Line tunnel near Haymarket. The transit authority agreed to move the station to accommodate construction, but only for three years. Building atop the tunnel, in a tight time frame, was too complicated.

Now the bus stop, which HYM will rebuild by 2024, will be across the plaza from the new building.

“You could work for a long, long time trying to figure out a way to build a building that effectively works over that tunnel — but it would take too long,” O’Brien said.
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The amount of time you worked on how to build over that tunnel was exactly the number of seconds it took to confirm that the BPDA would let you switch to lab space. In this case, it removes from the project the only public area - a retail plaza that would have had a feature multilevel store at one end - and replaces it with yet another freaky deaky lab.
 
That doesn't look like a desirable lab floorplate. And it's looking like a major letdown from the original so far...
 
stefal said:
That doesn't look like a desirable lab floorplate. And it's looking like a major letdown from the original so far...
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The article does say, " In the revision HYM plans to file Tuesday, the plaza remains, but there would be just one building, with ground-floor retail and lab space above."

So hopefully there will be some shops at the ground level.
 
So HYM is attempting to shoehorn a Kendall Square building into downtown Boston. Perhaps they should swap with the Flower Exchange team.
 
Noooooo. You cant be serious, this is sooooo much worse than what was approved. The link doesnt work, how far along are they in making this change? That building looks disgusting, imagine how terrible that will look plopped in front of bulfinch crossing, doesnt flow at all. It was all going so well… What was there was fine, this is the worst news ever.
 
stick n move said:
Noooooo. You cant be serious, this is sooooo much worse than what was approved. The link doesnt work, how far along are they in making this change? That building looks disgusting, imagine how terrible that will look plopped in front of bulfinch crossing, doesnt flow at all. It was all going so well… What was there was fine, this is the worst news ever.
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Just read the article in the actual paper. It's as bad as it sounds. Scrapping hotel, stores and offices. Will build one building for life sciences and that dumb building render, is the one.

We are so lucky state street signed that anchor lease before the pandemic. This whole project could have been an utter distaster.
 
I assume they have an anchor tenant for the building if they’re making the shift. I have a few choice words for them.

I would rather HYM finish demolition on the garage and button up the site with a temporary park, to ride out the cycle until the market can absorb the planned hotel.
 
BosDevelop said:
Very disappointing to see them ditch the retail and hotel. Now there is zero reason for anyone not living or working in these buildings to visit this entire development.
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^I share yours & other posters' substantial disappointment with this move, but note that the Globe article states that retail will be included at the bottom of the lab building.
 
There should be some sort of rule that we don't build lab buildings downtown. We already have Kendall, Longwood, the Seaport, Assembly, and all sorts of other lower-height areas to build this stuff. I know we weren't going to get a tall tower right here but this was supposed to be 3 buildings with mixed uses. They (generic, forget which developer) want to put that other squat lab by South Station too, where we were hoping to see a 600' residential. Lab buildings don't belong intermixed directly downtown and there is an overabundance of areas to build them already!
 
The currently approved plan brings the scale down to the finer-grained scale of the North End and the Bulfinch Triangle. The proposed lab building is a slab that walls off the North End and Greenway from the rest of the project. The only reason to approve the change is to accept HYM’s money grab.
 
I cant access the article. What's going on? They changed the development around one congress???
 
RandomWalk said:
The currently approved plan brings the scale down to the finer-grained scale of the North End and the Bulfinch Triangle. The proposed lab building is a slab that walls off the North End and Greenway from the rest of the project. The only reason to approve the change is to accept HYM’s money grab.
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Exactly. Plus it had a court yard that lined up with canal st that would have eventually created a pedestrian corridor all the way from north station to the public market in the future where canal is pedestrianized. This is a HUGE loss.

Another huge loss is that there is no more gap to see the custon house tower from hub on causeway/ canal st area. What a disaster. I cant believe this, how could they do this at the last second! The buildings were tailered over many iterations to create these sight lines and ped corridors and now theyre just going to plop down an ugly slab on top of all of it. Terrible.
 
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