The Ipswich | 2 Charlesgate West | Fenway

Scape recently filed plans with the city for its first building, a 15-story, 553-bed complex on Boylston Street near Fenway Park. On Friday, it closed on the $39 million purchase of the Trans National Building next to the Massachusetts Turnpike and across from the Fens parkland, according to county deed records. And on the opposite side of Fenway Park from the first two, Scape has an agreement with Boston Children’s Hospital to acquire a 1.1-acre parking lot off of Beacon Street, according to people in the real estate industry with knowledge of the deal.
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Scape's bigger plans are $1 billion in student residence halls, and housing 7,000 students. Nimbys are rising from their slumber with respect to the first of Scape's projects, alleging the Boylston project doesn't provide affordable units for the students, though none is required. Samuels also isn't keen on these dorms.

https://www2.bostonglobe.com/busine...ent-housing/hH5NSooXFwuFNpm53NXPCM/story.html
 
BeeLine said:
No!!!, IT's Belkin. He has never pulled off any of his pipe dreams.
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Exactly.

Regarding the commenter, he was trying to do that typical annoying cute and ignorant thing.
 
FK4 said:
Have nimby’s been slumbering?
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Not according to the article. Typical veiled ageist BS: "the schools should build this stuff on campus... I can't see how 1,500 units of housing will help with the housing crisis..."

As the Globe notes, this is intended for grad students with families, not frats. Pipe down.

But throwing down three buildings in quick succession within a few blocks is bound to change the character of the Fenway. For the better, I think. A couple thousand new residents looking for resident amenities and enlivening the place at all hours (since grad students rarely work 9-5) can't possibly hurt.

On a logistical note, should we keep having the general Scape conversation here or in the 1270 Boylston thread? I don't feel the need to start a third one for the David Ortiz Way site.
 
i assume accommodating students into efficiently designed dorm/co-op style space is the better method to getting the density the City desires without forcing (undesirable) height close to Fenway?

So; why not propose 20 floors knowing the real height is 15 floors (w/ John Henry obviously in on it). Do the built in concession to neighborhood troublemakers, etc, etc.....
 
FK4 said:
Have nimby’s been slumbering?
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The pitchforks were kept in the barn when blocks of new residential went up earlier this decade, but now, egad, these future hordes of sybaritic, drunken students living off campus will drive down property values. Aux armes, citoyens!! To the barricades!!
 
stellarfun said:
The pitchforks were kept in the barn when blocks of new residential went up earlier this decade, but now, egad, these future hordes of sybaritic, drunken students living off campus will drive down property values. Aux armes, citoyens!! To the barricades!!
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Sybarites. Nice.
 
Blowing my own horn, I tweeted about this a day before B&T got around to putting up their article, plus several others that beat what you read in the papers.

http://www.twitter.com/bostonhbd

Equilibria said:
Banker and Tradesman tweet (which is cryptic and any useful information is locked behind B&T's corporately-priced paywall) suggests this parcel has sold to Scape (the student housing people behind last week's Boylston project) and that presumably this proposal is fully dead.

Confirmation: https://www.bldup.com/posts/scape-acquires-fenway-property-for-39-million
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Scape's massive PDF Project Impact Report (349 pages, 169 mb) for 1252-1270 Boylston includes a re-booted proposal for this project. Working title is "The Ipswich."

Since the 1252-1270 Boylston doc is so large, I've pulled the Ipswich-specific info below.

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Ipswich 1.JPG


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This project should sail through the approval process. I love the nod it gives to the existing apartment blocks next door, and I love the stairs connection to Ipswich (a connection that currently does not exist anywhere). And the affordable housing and significantly scaled-back height should melt away neighborhood opposition, including likely that from the folks over at 4 Jersey Street.
 
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Cool that the 2 Charlesgate W site thread continues in perpetuity.

You all know how much i decry the sacking of 2 Charlesgate W--which if judging by hundreds of posts in the Globe, had been met quite favorably by the residents of Boston, the Fenway, and Back Bay--of course, with the one notable exception: the owner of the Globe himself.
That ended any new updates in the Globe, and a key project literally vanished from public view as though it had never existed (how convenient). All that, under the bridge, it's nice to see some density being added that ascends to Upper West Side proportion/s. So, not a terrible outcome for 2 Charlesgate W. Boston is urbanizing toward SF density, albeit at a much slower pace.

i have a thought about what one Globe poster said recently about out of control development: The population was 802,000 in 1950. So what about a City topping 700,000 for the first time since slightly before or after 1960? What have we actually done in sixty years? We've given people more space.... stretched the city upward................ outward (slightly), provided cleaner, safer living spaces with (hopefully) improved egress--with height and density that still falls well below Parisian or even SF scale--over a mere fraction of sq miles--buffered by water, wetlands, and parks, casting hardly more shadow where it ostensibly matters, w/ restraint for the future.
It seems the "problem thing" we've added--are cars, and given not enough love and attention to the T. The SE expressway renders of SST aren't particularly flattering: it looks like Atlanta or Houston.
 
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Median household income for Fenway-Kenmore is $41k, so units built for those making 80-120% of median income will have to be very reasonably priced to meet this stipulation, no? Even at the high end, I fail to see how a household earning $49k/yr could afford anything above the smallest of studios.
 
"Affordable" units in Boston arent really that affordable. 120% AMI is basically market rate for low end luxury units in Boston yet the city says its affordable. 2800 for 1 bed?
 
HarvardP said:
Median household income for Fenway-Kenmore is $41k, so units built for those making 80-120% of median income will have to be very reasonably priced to meet this stipulation, no? Even at the high end, I fail to see how a household earning $49k/yr could afford anything above the smallest of studios.
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Affordable unit prices are set based on city-wide data, so the median HH of a 1 income household is $79,350. More here: http://www.bostonplans.org/housing/income,-asset,-and-price-limits

Fenway-Kenmore averages are a bit skewed because of the colleges. I'd like to see the distribution of the incomes that leads to the $41k average.
 
They are horrendously skewed in fact. The poorest census tracts without students in Boston (eg housing projects) have median HH incomes in the mid 30k's. That 41k number comes from massive numbers of students. It's very hard to get accurate data without students...you can try extrapolating from ACS, but they only give you quantiles. Some rough estimation is that the AMI for Boston excluding students would be close to 100k.
 
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