Re: Longfellow Place (née Garden Garage Towers) | 35 Lomasney Way | West End
DZH and Orduntz dont live in reality, and they certainly dont live in the city. All they care about is shiny phallic objects to gaze at in pictures or their local suburban hill. 65 martha is no great shakes and that probably makes it very reasonable to live in. Regular people that actually live in the city welcome moderately priced apartments and dont want them replaced with ultra luxury nonsense that none of us can afford.
If you want to defend the Charles River Park developments then you are defending the worst of urban renewal in Boston. It's also the ugliest, most embarrassing eyesore within 5 miles of downtown (let alone RIGHT NEXT TO IT). I want the city to fix its mistakes. When we lose another Dainty Dot, Times Building, or the upcoming corner building in Kenmore... Well, at least we saved 65 Martha right guys?
1. Every apartment building in Charles River Park should be leveled to the ground.
2. The street grid should be restored as much as possible to actually integrate this area with the rest of the city.
3. 3-4 times as many residential units should be built to replace what was destroyed, including more apartments than were destroyed.
The area surrounding North Station is criminally underbuilt. Once this tower, both Hub towers, and both Congress Street towers are done, more will be built in this area. As it should. Most of you seem to agree with this except that you can't stand the messenger (Odurandina) nor the echoer (DZH) so you take your NIMBY positions, defending the worst that downtown has to offer, just to oppose us.
Frankly, if some of you weren't so gung-ho on protecting every blade of grass from an early morning sun in December, we'd get the biggest buildings in the Back Bay where they belong (particularly that garage where Kings is). Instead this seems to be the only area (around North Station) where it could possibly happen and both satisfy the FAA while not casting shadows on specific parks. At this point, it IS one of those things where every other city gets a shiny new tallest (even DETROIT is going 900'+, and NIMBY-town San Francisco went 1070') so why not one of the most booming, successful cities in the entire country? And if not here (by North Station), then where? It IS a thing of pride and Boston doesn't seem to have much pride in its architectural PRESENT and FUTURE. We are just content to have a great amount of historical structures, and even then we slowly demolish them and replace them with something worse.
I, for one, am pleased that the Longfellow Place tower is the first shot across the bow of Charles River Park. Urban renewal was the most anti-urban, anti-density, anti-aesthetics, low point in the history of architecture and urban planning in our city. Most of what was done should be repaired, not saved. We should be concentrating on retaining the pre-war structures and fixing the mistakes of the 1950's and 1960's.
