The Hub on Causeway (née TD Garden Towers) | 80 Causeway Street | West End

BosDevelop said:
just closer in proximity, no?
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The answer is really both. This is 115' taller than the Longfellow twins, 496' vs 381'. The twins will fade further into background-building obscurity with the 510' Hub office tower and ~485' Garden Garage tower.
 
The front sidewalk on the office side, pedestrian tunnel, main entrance and elevator from outside to the tunnel are open!
 
Got a good look at the whole smash yesterday morning on my flight back to LA..... The entire area doesn't look like Boston/Something else anymore. It just looks like a big city.

If East Cambridge could just get a few ~600' peaks it would be ____ing epic.
 
yeah!!

but don't worry.... there's a bunch of towers that should be u/c – but aren't – that i'll soon bitch about.
 
I went to the Celtics game Friday night and it was a total cluster fu#@k getting out of the Garden after the game (and it was a blowout and a ton of people left before the game ended). They were funneling everyone along a narrow passage way and then out onto Causeway. Took about 15 minutes to get from outside the building to Causeway (maybe a distance of 200 yards). Hopefully just temporary because it was pretty bad. I imagine it would be a lot worse for a concert with everyone leaving at the same time.
 
BosDevelop said:
I went to the Celtics game Friday night and it was a total cluster fu#@k getting out of the Garden after the game (and it was a blowout and a ton of people left before the game ended). They were funneling everyone along a narrow passage way and then out onto Causeway. Took about 15 minutes to get from outside the building to Causeway (maybe a distance of 200 yards). Hopefully just temporary because it was pretty bad. I imagine it would be a lot worse for a concert with everyone leaving at the same time.
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Before the Hub on Causeway started, people were funneled down that walkway to a North Station headhouse which led to a tunnel that stretched under Causeway Street, which has been demolished for the Hub.

For the past 3 years, the "clusterf#ck" you describe has been the temporary fix /detour. It's been aggravating to say the least. Yesterday, they opened the tunnel that directly connects North Station CR and the TD Garden to the subway, without the need to go outside. However, the new tunnel is just as narrow as the outdoor passageway, and there is a single set of stairs and a single escalator. It was rather slow this morning with the commuter rush, so I imagine it will be very crammed tonight with the Celtics game again...
 
I've done the outdoor cattle chute for most of the last three years.

Initially I was really disappointed to hear that the new tunnel is slow / crowded..

...but then it occurred to me that it may be a blessing in disguise, and may in fact be an intentional choice:

Because a crowd of 20,000+ people is always going to move very slowly and take a long time to clear out. Would much rather have that bottleneck be in the spacious, above grade NS lobby than on the OL and GL platforms, or at the turnstiles there (and backed up hip-to-hip all the way up the ped tunnel...especially if people are trying to get OFF the trains).

Even the peak CR crowds need to be smoothed out a bit to avoid a crush at doors of the first orange line train that arrives after the 835 express from Salem shows up, etc.

For comparison - ever been in the mezzanine at Kenmore after a Sox game? It's miserable. And it's not too scary for me because I'm a relatively large healthy male, but if I were old or young and/or small/frail, it would make me a little nervous to be stuck in a big drunk crowd in a tight underground space.

Its about the same number of people, and NS / The Garden would have an even tighter peak because the Red Sox crowd has a couple blocks of Brookline Ave to spread out before it gets to Kenmore, while the NS / Garden crowd is literally just coming downstairs.

If this means that some of the savvier local fans end up walking from NS to Haymarket or Science Park (or even to MGH) to catch a train instead of crowding into the NS tunnel ... that's probably a good thing.

Tl;Dr - its probably safer and more comfortable to have the crowd happen at the top of the stairs than on the edge of the platforms (and backed up through the ped tunnel)...
 
BosDevelop said:
I went to the Celtics game Friday night and it was a total cluster fu#@k getting out of the Garden after the game (and it was a blowout and a ton of people left before the game ended). They were funneling everyone along a narrow passage way and then out onto Causeway. Took about 15 minutes to get from outside the building to Causeway (maybe a distance of 200 yards). Hopefully just temporary because it was pretty bad. I imagine it would be a lot worse for a concert with everyone leaving at the same time.
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I wonder if they had some final touch work going on in the Hub that closed it off, because when I went to the Bruins on Thanksgiving weekend they were using the new exit (see my photo a few pages back).
 
This architecture is so fucking bland man. The powers-at-be don't have a clue when and what to push developers to do

On a positive note I'm sure at night it will look decent and the street level activity is nice but anything couldve done that
 
Interesting that they are advertising tenants that are going to be opening but only with an instagram handle, not an actual website.
 
Suffolk 83 said:
This architecture is so fucking bland man.
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The only fucking bland building I see in DZ's pics, which are awesome by the way, is the Garden itself which looks like crap next to the new podium, and in the pic with Lovejoy Wharf. It screams for an exterior makeover. A little dark gray paint (plus a bit of brick red) over that dated beige to match the upper section and The Garden be a stunner once again.
 
The WWW trusses on the eastern part of the facade are awesome and everyone knows it.

Ditto the "loft look" and the "old Garden homage" and the "tower-on-Jetsons stilts." The building is both good looking and distinctively-Boston (enough).
 
atlantaden said:
The only fucking bland building I see in DZ's pics, which are awesome by the way, is the Garden itself which looks like crap next to the new podium, and in the pic with Lovejoy Wharf. It screams for an exterior makeover. A little dark gray paint (plus a bit of brick red) over that dated beige to match the upper section and The Garden be a stunner once again.
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Repainting and recladding can go a long way with an arena. In Minneapolis, they turned this:

target-center.jpg


Into this:

7ASLIVE-TARGET%20CENTER%20REOPENS_00.01.39.26_1508197358920_4365715_ver1.0_640_360.png
 
atlantaden said:
The only fucking bland building I see in DZ's pics, which are awesome by the way, is the Garden itself which looks like crap next to the new podium, and in the pic with Lovejoy Wharf. [...]
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Agreed. But the way to solve that is putting buildings around the garden so there's no blank wall visible ;)
 
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