The recession is over, let's spend money! Boston Development 2010

Tighter zoning. Intervention to break up large parcels. Requirements akin to old setback laws that help fill out streetwalls. Intelligent distribution of public space by the city that seeks contributions from developers rather than trade-offs and incentives for the developers to build stupid plazas DIY.

Oh, did I forget the need for more transparent and consistent rules for development? With Menino at the helm, that might be the biggest challenge.
 
I don't understand people's attitude here of blocking highrise construction in order to create a more dense fabric of lowrises (which isn't happening anyways). Can't we strive for both? If the middle of Boston's downtown isn't "appropriate" for highrises, then where ARE they appropriate?

I for one am tired of seeing large-scale developments with proper funding continue to get indefinitely held up due to "height" and "shadow" concerns. The approval process here stinks. The BRA stinks. Why not allow some height instead of offering tax breaks so insurance companies can build a big fat block that they could have built anyways. If a developer wants to build something grand on their own dime, something that could benefit the city in terms of jobs/taxes as well as adding a visually striking new tower to our skyline, then why are we so adamant about preventing this?
 
DZH22 said:
I don't understand people's attitude here of blocking highrise construction in order to create a more dense fabric of lowrises (which isn't happening anyways). Can't we strive for both? If the middle of Boston's downtown isn't "appropriate" for highrises, then where ARE they appropriate?

I for one am tired of seeing large-scale developments with proper funding continue to get indefinitely held up due to "height" and "shadow" concerns. The approval process here stinks. The BRA stinks. Why not allow some height instead of offering tax breaks so insurance companies can build a big fat block that they could have built anyways. If a developer wants to build something grand on their own dime, something that could benefit the city in terms of jobs/taxes as well as adding a visually striking new tower to our skyline, then why are we so adamant about preventing this?
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The BRA sucks......Its depressing seeing what is getting developed in the city.
 
czsz said:
Not exactly a problem in theory...

paris_from_high_240951.JPG
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I would like to point out that i count about 5 public parks in this image, no building over 9 stories or so, and generality of similar architectural style across the image. This is exactly what quote NIMBY's unquote want, lots of parks, no shadows, architecture that fits in with the rest. They just go about trying to get this in a misguided way. Communities like this do not spring up all of a sudden, it takes a lot of time to create a place like this.
 
You think NIMBYs want this? Have you ever heard their knee jerk demands to all developments? I'd say its the exact opposite of this. And those streets most certainly have shadows cast on them.
 
found5dollar said:
I would like to point out that i count about 5 public parks in this image, no building over 9 stories or so, and generality of similar architectural style across the image. This is exactly what quote NIMBY's unquote want, lots of parks, no shadows, architecture that fits in with the rest. They just go about trying to get this in a misguided way. Communities like this do not spring up all of a sudden, it takes a lot of time to create a place like this.
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They want 5 public park WITH NO SHADOWS. As you can see, all of them are shaded and that's why the trees are turning into an unhealthy brown and orange colors every year during the fall.
 
Agreed. If I pulled out a follicle of hair every time I heard a NIMBY complain about a project being too dense, my theoretical great-grandchildren would be bald.

Take about about half of those buildings and enlarge the parks and you've got what NIMBYs want.
 
I know this has nothing to do with development. But this is a classic.
Bush was interview by Kudlow on CNBC last night.

"I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system." --George W. Bush,
 
Happy Turkey Day



"Well, based on this photo, things can change A LOT.

This is a photo from 1967 showing downtown Boston. It?s from 1967 but it is envisioning the city eight years from then, in 1975.

As you know from what Boston looks like, now, a lot of this didn?t come to pass while a lot of other things did.

If you open up the photo image in another window, you can use the legend below to read about what?s changed and hasn?t changed in the past 43 years.



Legend

A Government Center, John F Kennedy Federal Plaza, 1-2-3 Center Plaza - completed (for better or worse [my opinion, worse]). Included in the photo are several additional Gov?t Center mid-rises, across from City Hall Plaza, on the Blackstone Block. This is approximately where the Holocaust memorial is located and may have incorporated the Haymarket subway station / parking garage. (And, potentially, the Union Oyster House??!)

B This looks to be 28 State Street / Bank of New England / New England Merchants Bank building, circa 1969. The proposed construction of this prompted other banks in the city to start building, too.

C Most likely, this is The Boston Company Building / One Boston Place BNY Mellon Center, circa 1970. The final design was quite different, most-notably the huge black box that now sits on top of the office tower.

D I don?t know what this is. Its location looks to be near where the Devonshire apartment building stands now.

E Waterfront mid-rise (Marriott Long Wharf). The city seems to have proposed a mid-rise tower on what is now the site of the Marriott Long Wharf hotel. It would have abutted the Central Artery.

F Companion building to 255 State Street (Eaton Vance building). It looks as though a companion building was proposed for the lot next to this mid-rise building (it has a Legal Seafoods restaurant in it, now).

G No garage / additional building. Sadly, for Don Chiofaro, the city never proposed a high-rise for this section of the Waterfront. If it had, perhaps he could claim historical precedence for his plan to build a 60-story tower (est.) here.

H Third Harbor Tower (furthest to the right). There are two forty-story (est.) residential (condo) towers here. In fact, they originally proposed three towers for this site. These were considered ?historic? in their time, given they were designed by I.M. Pei. Let?s just say, his architecture style is better left for dead, at this point.

I Rowes Wharf. Controversial in its day, this mid-1980?s building is now the location of a hotel, office space, and condominiums. Some thought it would forever block off the waterfront from residents (well, it has) but it?s now considered iconic and any photos of the waterfront now include it as part of the cityscape.

J InterContinental / Atlantic Wharf (next to Independence Wharf). These two towers are additions to the 2000?s skyline.

K 125 High Street. Now the site of an office building and glistening and attractive fire station.

L No Federal Reserve Bank of Boston (1977, third-tallest), no One Financial Center (1983). Apparently, plans to give the Federal Reserve a new building in Boston hadn?t been discussed when this photo was created. Diagonally across the street, the One Financial building stands. It?s less attractive, don?t you think?

M High-rise (part of South Station development?). Nothing was ever built here, I don?t think. Perhaps the two towers mentioned above are on this site?

N New Dewey Square development (part of South Station development?). What was this?? It looks like a long, low-rise building.

O New South Station. Apparently, there was a major plan to build on Dewey Square, around (in place of?) South Station. The photo shows a massive amount of low-rise construction and several mid-rise office buildings. The architect in charge was apparently Josep Lluis Sert (Search for Folder: B056a). You can check out his designs at the Harvard libraries.

P Chinatown / Albany Street / Hudson Street. It looks as though the original plans for the Central Artery did not include a surface road from Dewey Square down to the Southeast Expressway. It looks from this photo as if there was going to be open land. Tragically, this did not come to pass, I don?t know why. Forty years later, the streets remain.

Q New England Medical Center / Tufts. In this photo, many of the structures that were built here did not exist, yet. You can see the empty land where it will eventually be built. At one point, the Washington Street El entered the ground around there.

R Wang Center / Metropolitan Theater? I can?t place the theater in this photo. Were they planning on tearing it down? There?s a theater space in the photo but I?m pretty sure that?s the stage at the Wilbur, not the Metropolitan, further up the street. Instead, there?s this monstrous low-rise that takes up more than a city block.

S W Hotel. Across the street from the Wilbur are two mid-rises. This is now the site of the W Boston Hotel and Residences. The two mid-rises were never built, to my knowledge. Instead, the land remained empty for many years, with street (and below ground) parking on-site.

T One Charles. In the bottom of the photo is new construction near what is now the site of the One Charles condo project. For many years, there was nothing here but two uninteresting buildings, which many thought were vacant and abandoned. A statue of Abe Lincoln was here, too. As were male prostitutes.

U Four Seasons. This looks to be the site of the Four Seasons Hotel and Residences. The Four Seasons is much denser and perhaps taller?

V Park Plaza. Just pointing it out so you know where you are in the photo. That?s the parking garage that still exists, today. It?s been sheathed for aesthetics but it?s still there. Legal Seafoods and Magianno?s is on the first floor.

W State Department of Transportation building. Built in the mid-1980?s, this building completely destroyed life along that block. There?s now some good restaurants on the first floor but I don?t know if the foot-traffic is ever enough to offset the ugliness of this Death Star of a building.

X Hinge Block. Details on this can be found on the ArchBoston.org website; it was a fascinating proposal to completely redesign that area, between Chinatown and the Theater District. Some of the buildings proposed were simply monstrous. The advantage was, the entire block would have been built with mixed-use buildings that would have housed new live theaters and performance spaces. It was just one of several ?cultural district? proposals to come out and just one of several that were DOA.

Y Tremont Street / Common. Tremont on the Common was there, then, and it?s here, now (it was apartments first, then turned into condos). Nothing of any significance seems to be proposed here.

Z Washington Street / Liberty Tree building. The city apparently proposed tearing down this historic (300 years old?) building and replacing it with several mid-rises, presumably residential. There were several theaters on that block that ended up showing porn during the 1970?s and 1980?s, the Pilgrim Theater was torn down and was an empty lot for a decade. The Archstone Boston Common apartment complex is now on this site. (Much taller than the low-rises proposed in the 1960?s.)

AA Ritz Carlton Towers. Now the site of the Ritz Carlton Hotel and Towers, SportsClub LA, and movie theater megaplex. More dense and taller than what was originally proposed. Mostly, no one goes down Avery Street except people who live in the condos. The block is kind of dead.

AB Washington Street corridor. Just pointing it out.

AC No Filene?s / One Franklin. I think the long building is Filene?s. I can?t place it, today. If so, this is the site of the proposed One Franklin multi-use project that was proposed a couple years ago. The city of Boston pulled the permits approving construction when the developers couldn?t find financing. There?s a big hole in the ground here, you may have heard of it?

AD Towers at 45 Province? It looks as though the city was proposing residential housing on this site? The 45 Province condo project is now here and a developer has proposed an apartment complex called One Bromfield for this area but presumably the economy has delayed his plans.

AE No sign of One Beacon? (circa 1972). Where is One Beacon? Perhaps it hadn?t been proposed yet? This tower was built with the assistance of tax rebates given by the city and state.

AF First National Bank of Boston / Fleet Bank / Bank of America building (circa 1971). I think this is the BKB building, not sure. The actual building, of course, is more distinct than what is drawn here. The actual building is known as the ?Pregnant Building? due to its mid-range bulge.

AG 225 Franklin Street (State Street building) (circa 1966). At least I think this is what this is.

Here?s the photo without the letters.



If you see anything I?ve labeled incorrectly, don?t hesitate to leave a comment or send an email.

[I mention Ed Logue because he was the city?s main planner from 1961-1967, during the ?urban renewal? phase Boston went through, mid-century. Without a doubt, many of his decisions forever changed Boston during the second half of the 20th-century, and into today.

Friends of his have a website set up to honor his legacy.]

Click to see a list of Boston?s tallest buildings, courtesy of Wikipedia."


http://news.bostonherald.com/blogs/news/getting_real/?p=348&srvc=home&position=recent
 
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Hmmm... I'm not sure if the author of that would be ok with his words being posted on this site.
 
I'm fine with it, thanks. I posted it myself in a different thread.

If anyone sees corrections, please point them out, here or at the Herald.
 
JohnAKeith said:
I'm fine with it, thanks. I posted it myself in a different thread.

If anyone sees corrections, please point them out, here or at the Herald.
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Good stuff Mr. Keith, Sorry for the copy & paste..... I just wanted to bring topics to the website.


Going forward I will be extremly carefull what we copyright to the website.

Titles & Links?
 
It won't be long until there's more BCEC than city it "serves".

It's already larger than several neighborhoods.
 
Our country is becoming second rate,



China's skyscraper boom buoys global industry

By JOE McDONALD, AP Business Writer Joe Mcdonald, Ap Business Writer ? Sun Dec 5, 6:02 am ET
BEIJING ? The 121-story Shanghai Tower is more than China's next record-setting building: It's an economic lifeline for the elite club of skyscraper builders.

Financial gloom has derailed plans for new towers in Chicago, Moscow, Dubai and other cities. But in China, work on the 2,074-foot (632-meter) Shanghai Tower, due to be completed in 2014, and dozens of other tall buildings is rushing ahead, powered by a buoyant economy and providing a steady stream of work to architects and engineers.

The U.S. high-rise market is "pretty much dead," said Dan Winey, a managing director for Gensler, the Shanghai Tower's San Francisco-based architects. "For us, China in the next 10 to 15 years is going to be a huge market."

China has six of the world's 15 tallest buildings ? compared with three in the United States, the skyscraper's birthplace ? and is constructing more at a furious pace, defying worries about a possible real estate boom and bust. It is on track to pass the U.S. as the country with the most buildings among the 100 tallest by a wide margin.

"There are cities in China that most Western people have never heard of that have bigger populations and more tall buildings than half the prominent cities in the U.S.," said Antony Wood, executive director of the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

China is leading a wave of skyscraper building in developing countries that is shifting the field's center of gravity away from the United States and Europe.

India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia have ultra-tall towers under construction or on the drawing board. In the Gulf, Doha in Qatar and Dubai ? site of the current record holder, the 163-story Burj Khalifa ? each has three buildings among the 20 tallest under construction, though work on all but one of those has been suspended.

The shift is so drastic that North America's share of the 100 tallest buildings will fall from 80 percent in 1990 to just 18 percent by 2012, according to Wood. He said by then, 45 of the tallest will be in Asia, with 34 of those in China alone.

"So 34 percent of the 100 tallest buildings will be in a single country. That has only happened once before, and that was with the USA," he said.

In China, skyscrapers are going up in obscure locales such as Wenzhou, Wuhan and Jiangyin, a boomtown north of Shanghai. It is building a 72-story, 1,076-foot (328-meter) hotel-and-apartment tower that will be taller than Manhattan's Chrysler Building.

China's edifice complex is driven by a mix of demand for space in a crowded country with economic growth forecast at 10 percent this year and local leaders who want architectural eye candy to promote their cities as commercial centers.

Dozens of midsize Chinese cities are building new business districts to replace cramped downtowns. They look to the model of Shanghai's skyscraper-packed Pudong district ? China's Wall Street ? created in the 1990s on reclaimed industrial land.

"Governments are encouraging these iconic buildings in order to give a very clear message to the outside world: Please pay attention to our city," said Dennis Poon, managing principal of Thornton Tomasetti, the Shanghai Tower's structural engineers. The New York-based firm also is working on the 115-story Ping An International Finance Center in Shenzhen, near Hong Kong, and other Chinese projects.

China has four of the 10 tallest buildings under construction, versus two for the United States ? and work on one of those, the 2,000-foot (610-meter) Chicago Spire, has stopped.

The Shanghai Tower will be China's tallest office tower, surpassing the neighboring Shanghai World Financial Center in Pudong. The 2-year-old WFC passed the Jinmao Tower, also in Pudong, for the title.

China accounts for 65 percent of Gensler's worldwide revenues from projects that involve buildings 35 to 40 stories and above, according to Winey.

The firm is working on some 50 projects in China that total 80 million square feet (8 million square meters), the equivalent of San Francisco's entire stock of commercial office space, he said. China revenues are rising by 30 to 35 percent a year and its staff of 140 people in offices in Beijing and Shanghai should expand to 500 in the next seven years.

The boom has drawn a Who's Who of star architects and given Chinese firms their first shot at designing a skyscraper.

Shenzhen's Ping An tower was designed by Kohn Pedersen Fox; the New York firm's other projects include the 116-story East Tower of the Chow Tai Fook Center in Guangzhou, also near Hong Kong. Chicago-based Skidmore Owings & Merrill designed Beijing's tallest building, the 75-story China World Tower III, and the 76-story Tianjin World Financial Center in Tianjin east of Beijing, due to be completed next year. Jiangyin's Hanging Village of Huaxi was designed by China's A+E Design.

Tianjin, a port and oil-refining center with ambitions to be a finance and tech hub, is building four towers of at least 75 stories. One of them, the Goldin Finance 117, will be 117 stories and nearly 2,000 feet (600 meters) tall.

Instead of Western-style single-use office or apartment towers, many developers diversify their revenue sources by making buildings a mix of hotel and office space, with a shopping mall in the base and luxury apartments at the top.

The new space is hitting the market just as Beijing tries to cool a boom in construction of luxury housing and shopping malls. Regulators warn that a supply glut could leave lenders with unpaid loans if developers default.

But demand for high-end office space is so strong that the skyscraper market should face no such problems, said Danny Ma, director of China research for real estate consulting firm CB Richard Ellis. He said the new buildings should fill up quickly because many are the first in their cities to offer high-quality facilities required by foreign and major Chinese companies that are expanding there.

"More and more tenants are keen to move to such buildings," Ma said. He said developers are signing up tenants in advance for 50 to 60 percent of the space in new projects, enough in many cases to make them profitable.

China is helping to propel development of skyscraper design and urban planning as developers face government pressure to make buildings environmentally friendly and integrate them into busy cities.

The Shanghai Tower will have a double-layer glass exterior to insulate it and cut heating and cooling costs, an advanced feature that might be rejected as too costly in the U.S. or other Western markets, Winey said.

"You can do a lot more experimentation here," he said. "It's an amazing place to be, because you can do things here that you can't do anywhere else in the world."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_china_skyscraper_empire
 
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