Suffolk Downs Redevelopment | East Boston/Revere

So theres no chance to get the dammn stadium somewhere within hundreds of open acres close to the city and transit...
 
stick n move said:
So theres no chance to get the dammn stadium somewhere within hundreds of open acres close to the city and transit...
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Given the height restrictions here (Logan runway 15R / 33L flight path), the soccer stadium makes huge sense as part of the buildout. High value use in a mid-rise structure.
 
stick n move said:
So theres no chance to get the dammn stadium somewhere within hundreds of open acres close to the city and transit...
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Something tells me Bob Kraft is going to be too busy to build a soccer stadium for the next little while...
 
JeffDowntown said:
Given the height restrictions here (Logan runway 15R / 33L flight path), the soccer stadium makes huge sense as part of the buildout. High value use in a mid-rise structure.
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The new soccer stadium for DC United is on a 14 acre site. I am skeptical that turning over a similarly-sized land parcel at Suffolk Downs for an occasional use venue would represent a high value use. If you built on seven of the 14 acres, with buildings averaging seven stories, that's 2 million square feet of building.
 
stellarfun said:
The new soccer stadium for DC United is on a 14 acre site. I am skeptical that turning over a similarly-sized land parcel at Suffolk Downs for an occasional use venue would represent a high value use. If you built on seven of the 14 acres, with buildings averaging seven stories, that's 2 million square feet of building.
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Well, I have to think the venue would get a lot more use than just soccer. Good size stadium with T access close to the city would be ideal for many concerts.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Well, I have to think the venue would get a lot more use than just soccer. Good size stadium with T access close to the city would be ideal for many concerts.
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Right, but compared to the amount of housing or workplace or retail that could go on a site that big, a stadium is simply a waste of space. That's actually true of Fenway and the Garden, too. No sports facility is the highest and best use of land.
 
Equilibria said:
Right, but compared to the amount of housing or workplace or retail that could go on a site that big, a stadium is simply a waste of space. That's actually true of Fenway and the Garden, too. No sports facility is the highest and best use of land.
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But they generate crowds and economic traffic in ways other uses do not. It is a balancing act, but you really don't think our sports venues pay for themselves in collateral economic effect?
 
JeffDowntown said:
But they generate crowds and economic traffic in ways other uses do not.
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An office building generates more. The Partners HQ at Assembly Square was discussed for a stadium, to the extent that I still think it's on "Revolution Drive" as an artifact of that plan. Think FRIT or Somerville are upset they got 2,000 workers on-site every day, instead of 10,000 people 10-20 evenings per year?

Since you amended your post... stadiums don't create zero economic benefit, but they don't generate more than boring uses.

Fenway isn't booming because of Fenway Park, it's booming because of Longwood.

And to further add... I'm not saying we should never build venues. They can be catalysts where development would not be occurring otherwise - Polar Park in Worcester is a good example of that, as was Camden Yards, Capital One Arena, etc. Suffolk Downs has a developer willing to spend big on housing, jobs, and retail, so there's no need to catalyze it with a soccer stadium.
 
Equilibria said:
An office building generates more. The Partners HQ at Assembly Square was discussed for a stadium, to the extent that I still think it's on "Revolution Drive" as an artifact of that plan. Think FRIT or Somerville are upset they got 2,000 workers on-site every day, instead of 10,000 people 10-20 evenings per year?

Since you amended your post... stadiums don't create zero economic benefit, but they don't generate more than boring uses.

Fenway isn't booming because of Fenway Park, it's booming because of Longwood.

And to further add... I'm not saying we should never build venues. They can be catalysts where development would not be occurring otherwise - Polar Park in Worcester is a good example of that, as was Camden Yards, Capital One Arena, etc. Suffolk Downs has a developer willing to spend big on housing, jobs, and retail, so there's no need to catalyze it with a soccer stadium.
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So then our challenge in Boston is that we don't actually have any in-city undeveloped real estate that needs a catalyst for development. So we'll never get a soccer stadium.
 
JeffDowntown said:
So then our challenge in Boston is that we don't actually have any in-city undeveloped real estate that needs a catalyst for development. So we'll never get a soccer stadium.
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Pretty much. City has a housing crisis not a soccer stadium crisis. I can't think of a large parcel of land that I wouldn't rather see housing on at this point. Unfortunately for Kraft he missed the boat.

I'd rather see this stadium out in Worcester near the new Polar Park. Poach the Providence Bruins as well at an updated Centrum or whatever its called now and voila you have a non-Major sports league complex going on in a place that could probably use the economic activity.
 
JeffDowntown said:
So then our challenge in Boston is that we don't actually have any in-city undeveloped real estate that needs a catalyst for development. So we'll never get a soccer stadium.
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The only site that I think works is Widett or some similar highway/railroad-walled location like Boston Sand and Gravel or Inner Belt. The Boston Tow Lot solution that has the most momentum is actually not a bad one. Not much desire to live or work in a place sandwiched between the SE Expressway and an MBTA maintenance yard that you can only walk to by going under said expressway, but it's transit accessible and would work for folks once in a while.
 
The former Wonderland Dog Track, just up the road a bit from Suffolk Downs, is 28 acres. The dog track once had more area than that because IIRC there was a large parking lot across the VFW Parkway from the track that was converted into a strip mall.

More than enough space for a soccer stadium.
 
Its nice to see these job centers developing further out from the core. The model of jobs downtown housing in the outer neighborhoods is outdated and obviously causes transportation nightmares. Many smaller cores scattered around throughout each neighborhood with both jobs and housing is much better. Northpoint, Suffolk Downs, Assembly, Harbor point, Andrew sq, Seaport, Allston yards, Boston landing, theres a pattern here and its a good one. Eastie wasnt far from downtown anyways, but each of these areas will allow people to both live and work within the same neighborhood instead of everybody piling downtown, back bay or kendall. Its a great shift to watch happen and its gonna have a huge impact. It also allows people to live a bit further out and still have a reasonable commute if they only have to travel to an outer core vs downtown say medford to assembly, watertown to allston yards etc.
 
stick n move said:
Its nice to see these job centers developing further out from the core. The model of jobs downtown housing in the outer neighborhoods is outdated and obviously causes transportation nightmares. Many smaller cores scattered around throughout each neighborhood with both jobs and housing is much better. Northpoint, Suffolk Downs, Assembly, Harbor point, Andrew sq, Seaport, Allston yards, Boston landing, theres a pattern here and its a good one. Eastie wasnt far from downtown anyways, but each of these areas will allow people to both live and work within the same neighborhood instead of everybody piling downtown, back bay or kendall. Its a great shift to watch happen and its gonna have a huge impact. It also allows people to live a bit further out and still have a reasonable commute if they only have to travel to an outer core vs downtown say medford to assembly, watertown to allston yards etc.
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I strongly agree. Interspersing jobs and homes spreads the transportation load and creates more dense urbanized areas. It creates an argument too for a more network oriented transit system. When all jobs are centralized and all trains/buses lead to downtown, then connections/transfers matter less. As we build out along transit lines away from downtown, we need to improve those transfers.

Specific to Suffolk Downs, that means Red-Blue. More broadly though, I'm very excited for the upcoming bus network redesign. I'm hoping (probably naively) for a full overhaul with a shift away from one-seat rides and rail-feeders to a bus network that provides significant crosstown service that our rail system lacks.
 
https://www.bostonglobe.com/busines...ffolk-downs/KcWz5yacTUChK4cq9sYnJM/story.html

Long article in the Globe by Tim Logan.

.... “This is the largest project we’ve evaluated in the history of the BPDA,” said Jon Greeley, its director of development review. “It’s this huge blank spot on the map, and we have the opportunity here to knit the community back together.”
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For example, they say it’s unclear whether all that open space would be privately managed — a common arrangement in development-financed parkland — or truly public, like a city park. The same question applies to the streets, which HYM will pay to build.

Also, only 50,000 square feet of the 16 million-square-foot project would be set aside for civic space. That doesn’t leave much room for sites such as a fire station, clinic, or school.

Then there’s the mix of housing. Of the 7,100 units that would be in Boston, two-thirds would be studios and one-bedrooms, and fewer than 500 would have three bedrooms.
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