The Ipswich | 2 Charlesgate West | Fenway

Hell yes, that's hot. I question the restaurant though, not an area with a lot of foot traffic. They basically need some rock star chef to bring people in otherwise nothing will survive there.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Hell yes, that's hot. I question the restaurant though, not an area with a lot of foot traffic. They basically need some rock star chef to bring people in otherwise nothing will survive there.
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Question is if they can pull nightlife from Lansdowne, plus lots of foot traffic on game days from people who park off Boylston.
 
People will be able to the restaurant from the Pike, so if they are going to the Lansdowne area, it may anchor the place in their mind. Also, the people in the building will eat there. Finally, there are 80 baseball home games to sell pre-game booze.
On that note, will Boston ever allow happy hour?
 
On that note, will Boston ever allow happy hour?
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Very unlikely. The restaurants don't want it and Happy Hour is a state issue. No politician is going to support it so if you really want it back start collecting signatures for a referendum.

Back on topic: This thing looks great. I wonder what else could be converted to night life on that street? It could become a restaurant / bar district.
 
They should build a tower where the Machine Nightclub currently stands and move the nightclub to this location.
 
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If the foods good people will go. People most definitely including myself go all the way to east boston to go to santarpios even though its a pain in the ass for most people to get to. Its worth it though. This will be built right next to fenway park with a tower on top people will go here.
 
stick n move said:
People most definitely including myself go all the way to east boston to go to santarpios even though its a pain in the ass for most people to get to.
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There's another Santarpio's on Route 1-N in Peabody. Probably less of a pain than East Boston if you live or are regularly in the North Shore suburbs. I finally tried it and it deserves the hype.
 
dwash59 said:
Question is if they can pull nightlife from Lansdowne, plus lots of foot traffic on game days from people who park off Boylston.
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Ban parking from ipswich, rezone the whole street particularly the part heading toward boylston to restaurants, and then make the former parking spots a food truck zone.
 
Red Sox pushback has begun.

Neighborhood opponents are lining up against a condo tower that entrepreneur Steve Belkin wants to build along Charlesgate in the Fenway. Batting cleanup is the Boston Red Sox.

Newly-released documents show the baseball team filed a five-page comment letter in October with city officials complaining that Belkin’s proposed 340-foot tower, two blocks away at Charlesgate and Ipswich Street, would loom too closely over its beloved stadium and “significantly transform the iconic views of the city skyline that fans now enjoy.”
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There is a new PDF on bostonplans.org with public comments posted last week, but I couldn't find the exact letter by searching the quote from the newspaper.
 
Oh, go @#$% yourselves, Sawx! Nobody looms larger over the whole of the Fenway neighborhood than the public largesse that ownership has accepted, taken, and driven by force over everyone in Ye Lyric Olde Bandbox's shadow. And now they have the gall to be the ones complaining about shadows???
 
Wow that is surprising...I'd say this project is DOA.

At least in its current iteration.
 
617 said:
Wow that is surprising...I'd say this project is DOA.

At least in its current iteration.
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How is this surprising?

Many of us have been making this point since rumors of this project first started circulating. Flip back to pages 3-5 of this thread and there's a whole bunch of discussion/debate over this exact issue.

The Red Sox are all for a more developed Fenway, and will generally support projects that make the neighborhood a denser, more active, and more interesting place to spend time. But they are also fiercely protective of "The Fenway View" (basically, the view from the press box out over the playing field and beyond), and will oppose projects that threaten to compromise that.

This is why they've supported all the Samuels projects down Boylston (including Van Ness, the Pierce, etc.), as they add density and vitality to the area while being largely invisible from inside the park (and completely invisible along the sightlines that matter). This is also why they support the current incarnation of Fenway Center, but vigorously opposed earlier versions that included development on Lansdowne Street (which would have compromised "The Fenway View"). The Sox have been involved in the that project since day one, and played a large part in shaping the plans to where they sit now. This is also why I have a hard time believing they'd oppose the rumored hotel replacing the Citizens Bank in Kenmore. It's actually pretty easy to put yourselves in their shoes... They want their neighborhood to be on the upwing, but they don't want new buildings looming over their field. This project would clearly disrupt "The Fenway View" and loom over the field, and so they're opposing it.
 
In other words, the Boston RedSox basically just dashed any hopes that we'll see anything of considerable height built on some 12~15 parcels near Fenway, and the High Spine expanding a little in the coming years. Pathetic.
 
JumboBuc said:
but they don't want new buildings looming over their field. This project would clearly disrupt "The Fenway View" and loom over the field, and so they're opposing it.
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Haha,what a joke, how bout all those HUGE billboards which loom over their field?? If John Henry wants to stop this building, fine, then let him pay the yearly property taxes that Charlesgate West would bring into the city of Boston! Such an arrogant jerk he is to even suggest such a thing.
 
The question is how much political capital do the Red Sox really have. Do they have more power than other NIMBY's?
 
tysmith95 said:
The question is how much political capital do the Red Sox really have. Do they have more power than other NIMBY's?
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Oh God yes. They were the tail that wagged the dog through the entirety of the Menino years. Stuff like annexing Yawkey Way from the city. It was embarrassing how much the city slobbered over their every whim to the exclusion of all other Fenway residents and businesses.

They have made enough changes of their own to "The Fenway View" from the Monster seats to the luxury boxes to bigger/better jumbotrons to ad spam covering every corner of the ballpark that it is frankly a crock of shit for them to invoke that on the rest of the neighborhood. They control--or more accurately, run roughshod over--the neighborhood when they want to do something for themselves. Height decisions, especially ones that many blocks from the ballpark in a place you can barely see without panning way the hell over the right field bleachers and ignoring the giant jumbotron and light-up Budweiser sign distractions, should be the purview of the whole neighborhood. The Sox--and their owner who controls the largest media outlet in town--should not be granted a de facto veto power over a whole neighborhood kingdom. If they want to meddle in other streets' affairs...give the city its fucking abutting streets back so the neighborhood gets its voice to meddle right back at their politically loaded strongarm moves.


I have no opinion on whether the height is truly needed here. I frankly don't care enough one way or the other to wave that bloody shirt like some (*cough*) already have in the first hours of the day. But this bullshit with the Sox being their own mini-me BRA has to stop. Show some sack, Walsh, and roll back this power grab greased by your predecessor.
 
tysmith95 said:
The question is how much political capital do the Red Sox really have. Do they have more power than other NIMBY's?
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Red Sox owner owns the Globe.

The view from the park isn't that special since Buck sign gone.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Oh God yes. They were the tail that wagged the dog through the entirety of the Menino years. Stuff like annexing Yawkey Way from the city. It was embarrassing how much the city slobbered over their every whim to the exclusion of all other Fenway residents and businesses.

They have made enough changes of their own to "The Fenway View" from the Monster seats to the luxury boxes to bigger/better jumbotrons to ad spam covering every corner of the ballpark that it is frankly a crock of shit for them to invoke that on the rest of the neighborhood. They control--or more accurately, run roughshod over--the neighborhood when they want to do something for themselves. Height decisions, especially ones that many blocks from the ballpark in a place you can barely see without panning way the hell over the right field bleachers and ignoring the giant jumbotron and light-up Budweiser sign distractions, should be the purview of the whole neighborhood. The Sox--and their owner who controls the largest media outlet in town--should not be granted a de facto veto power over a whole neighborhood kingdom. If they want to meddle in other streets' affairs...give the city its fucking abutting streets back so the neighborhood gets its voice to meddle right back at their politically loaded strongarm moves.


I have no opinion on whether the height is truly needed here. I frankly don't care enough one way or the other to wave that bloody shirt like some (*cough*) already have in the first hours of the day. But this bullshit with the Sox being their own mini-me BRA has to stop. Show some sack, Walsh, and roll back this power grab greased by your predecessor.
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Meh. We'll see how it all plays out. Every single project has neighbors and neighborhood groups that voice conerns, and this is no different. As the Globe article states, the Sox are just one of many groups with concerns about this building, but due to who they are they're the only one anybody is talking about. And frankly, even for all their faults, I think that Sox have more valid concerns about this tower than most NIMBYs do about most towers. This building will be, without question, the park's biggest, closest, and most prominent neighbor. And by "that many blocks from the ballpark" I think you mean "two blocks from the ballpark" (or is it one-and-a-half?). You won't have to "pan way the hell over" to see it; it'll be right there prominently in your view. Now this doesn't mean that I think the Sox are on the right side of the issue, or that they should get their way, but they do have some valid concerns and are perfectly within their rights to make them heard. It's disingenuous to frame this as "the Red Sox running over the neighborhood and setting all the rules", as feedback like this is 100% par for the course with every single project ever proposed in this city since the end of urban renewal.

Again, we'll see how it all plays out...
 
Ridiculous. Marty Walsh needs to grow a pair and lay down the law.We cannot grow horizontally so we need to grow vertically.Before we know it more projects will be strangled like the Copley Place tower after years of push back.Development is being driven by selfish aholes like in the Harbor Towers and now in the tired area east of Fenway.Sick of this shit.
 
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