The St Regis Residences (former Whiskey Priest site) | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

I would love to see renders of these two next to each other.

Get ready for some terrible image editing!

2rmb043.png


For context, here's the view last July:

2dvlxqw.png
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

^ Nice work! Thanks!
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

I don't know why everyone is ignoring what he's saying. The seaport has few remaining places that aren't obnoxious new and fancy restaurants. While these two places are detestable, mostly due to nighttime clientele, they are cheap, shitty places. They aren't dive bars and they may not have "character" but they lack the banality or swank or pseudo-swank of everything that replaced places like jimmy's. I miss the old baseball tavern in Fenway - now that was a true dive but the point is that in similar fashion l, the Fenway area has done away with nearly all older establishments and replaced them with shiny new places where the drinks are a few dollars more and the entrees are all $16+. I don't really care all that much about the demise of the WP but ABG is ok for lunch and all stick is saying is these places are something different from the uniform new places that have sprung up. The niceness or architectural value of a building is very separate from the types of restaurants that will get put into any new development. This is a real problem that affects all areas of Boston: as the old places get swept away, where are the cheap, shitty eateries for people who don't want to spend 20 bucks on lunch or 9 bucks on a draft beer going to go?

Reverse snobbery is as unflattering as kmp's old-fashioned snobbery.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

Something needs to be done about that vent building; build around it somehow.

JSic, the "Sausage Parcel" building will go right in front of those, so it will at least be blocked from that angle.


As for the angle rendered from the harbor, maybe its just the render itself, but this building looks INCREDIBLY close to Pier 4. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but there must be at least enough space to drive a car between these buildings, right?
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

As for the angle rendered from the harbor, maybe its just the render itself, but this building looks INCREDIBLY close to Pier 4. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but there must be at least enough space to drive a car between these buildings, right?

According to Google Earth, the current Whiskey Priest is a little less than 24 feet from Pier 4 wall-to-wall. I think that the current building goes right to the property line.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

Reverse snobbery is as unflattering as kmp's old-fashioned snobbery.

I completely agree with FK4....I've just become complacent with the city pushing the middle class out so I give up beating the drum. I don't see how what FK4 said is reverse snobbery, he wasn't trying to keep Southie the way Southie used to be or glorifying gangsters and grit. He was just saying it was nice when the city had inexpensive places to go. Those will be all but gone very soon so don't worry you won't hear many more of those comments
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

I completely agree with FK4....I've just become complacent with the city pushing the middle class out so I give up beating the drum. I don't see how what FK4 said is reverse snobbery, he wasn't trying to keep Southie the way Southie used to be or glorifying gangsters and grit. He was just saying it was nice when the city had inexpensive places to go. Those will be all but gone very soon so don't worry you won't hear many more of those comments

The basic argument isn't reverse-snobbery and I hear him (and you and others...) on the quality points being made. Peppering the argument with disparaging comments about the establishments and people who patronize them is the issue. While one or two places in the Seaport might qualify as "banal" or "faux-swanky' (not exactly sure what that means, but I think I get the sentiment), they are far from "uniform" other than being more expensive than FK4 likes. Many of them are serving very good food and drinks and are packed in with satisfied customers. That seems like good business to me.

Being an expensive restaurant (or a patron of such a restaurant) alone shouldn't automatically earn disparaging remarks any more than being a cheaper joint (or a patron thereof) should. KMP is an asshole and he pops in here once a month or so with his nose stuck in the air. I hate to see this place devolve into a class-warfare pissing contest. You can be just as much of an ass even if your intent was to stick up for the common man.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

While one or two places in the Seaport might qualify as "banal" or "faux-swanky' (not exactly sure what that means, but I think I get the sentiment), they are far from "uniform" other than being more expensive than FK4 likes. Many of them are serving very good food and drinks and are packed in with satisfied customers. That seems like good business to me.

The average Seaport restaurant patron seems to be more and more likened to a rich guy from the Jersey shore. Ocean Prime, Strega, and Del Frisco's all have the same types of people roaming around. There is no need for 3 top tier steakhouses within 1 mile of each other (4 I guess with Morton's as well). Empire on a weekend night is almost entirely rich foreigners. Pair this with news that Big Night Entertainment wants to make a 3-story, 8 million dollar restaurant/club (link) and it just seems like Seaport Boulevard will become a douche consortium. Fort Point is really the only saving grace of the entire area.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

This could probably be a separate discussion but...

I've always found it interesting how these new large mixed-use developments always seem to need to go after the high-rent paying national retailer/restaurant players. If I were developing a residential tower, for example, I'd see the retail space as a building amenity to add value to the residential units, not as a profit center in itself. As such I'd be willing to subsidize an interesting concept at below-market rent if it would bring foot traffic and add both panache and livability to the address. A retail row with a florist, bookstore and independent coffee shop may not pay the combined rent as as Empire or Strega, but I'd see them as an asset all the same.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

Looks great and it is nice to see a developer want to make a significant visual impact.

Whiskey Priest and ABG were a lot nicer before the buildings blocking the view of downtown went up. Now the roof decks feel claustrophobic. I don't think either is a place that anyone will really miss.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

This could probably be a separate discussion but...

I've always found it interesting how these new large mixed-use developments always seem to need to go after the high-rent paying national retailer/restaurant players. If I were developing a residential tower, for example, I'd see the retail space as a building amenity to add value to the residential units, not as a profit center in itself. As such I'd be willing to subsidize an interesting concept at below-market rent if it would bring foot traffic and add both panache and livability to the address. A retail row with a florist, bookstore and independent coffee shop may not pay the combined rent as as Empire or Strega, but I'd see them as an asset all the same.

I think there's a subset of developers who do see things your way, maybe even a decently-sized subset. The lenders and the vast majority of equity investors? No. They want the maximum possible longevity and/or the maximum possible rent. That means things will skew towards big names and/or swanky/pricey places (I said skew, which is not an absolute word). Especially in restaurants, which have remarkably short average life spans all up and down the price scale.

I share the impatience with snobbery of either the usual sort (punching down) or the reverse sort (punching up). A city needs and its population deserves as wide as possible a diversity of restaurants and other retail too. However, given the immense wave of new investment to the Seaport, a dramatic shift towards upscale restaurants in the short term strikes me as inevitable, given what lenders and investors expect. And some developers will be only too willing to go along with that.

Over the longer term, we're all going to find out which specific spots out there are better than others for a restaurant. Since all restaurants, even the upper end ones, have relatively short average life spans, we will see devolution in some locations. There will be a greater variety of price points; wait for it. Some of the property owners will get there against their will, the market will force them there.

I can think of one scenario that would hasten it all along. Over the past few years we've had four storm events that just missed the needed timing to flood Boston badly (that is, they were offset from high tide by a bit instead of coinciding with high tide just right). If we had four such events hit the tidal timing just right, and were spaced out over a span of just a few years, the restaurant economy out there in the Seaport would get subjected to one wicked pissah stress test. (The real estate market more generally, too.) I bet there'd be cheaper places to eat thereafter, though fewer of them. Might be cheaper to buy one of those condos, too, once the insurance market adjusted.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

This could probably be a separate discussion but...

I've always found it interesting how these new large mixed-use developments always seem to need to go after the high-rent paying national retailer/restaurant players. If I were developing a residential tower, for example, I'd see the retail space as a building amenity to add value to the residential units, not as a profit center in itself. As such I'd be willing to subsidize an interesting concept at below-market rent if it would bring foot traffic and add both panache and livability to the address. A retail row with a florist, bookstore and independent coffee shop may not pay the combined rent as as Empire or Strega, but I'd see them as an asset all the same.

Unless they can charge more money for their apartments by having below-market retail, I don't see how it would add value to the owner of the building? Personally I wouldn't pay more to live in a building with a florist or bookstore. Though I suppose if every building had below-market tenants it would improve the neighborhood desirability and thus rents would go up. But that would require cooperation in an already cutthroat luxury market.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

The basic argument isn't reverse-snobbery and I hear him (and you and others...) on the quality points being made. Peppering the argument with disparaging comments about the establishments and people who patronize them is the issue. While one or two places in the Seaport might qualify as "banal" or "faux-swanky' (not exactly sure what that means, but I think I get the sentiment), they are far from "uniform" other than being more expensive than FK4 likes. Many of them are serving very good food and drinks and are packed in with satisfied customers. That seems like good business to me.

Being an expensive restaurant (or a patron of such a restaurant) alone shouldn't automatically earn disparaging remarks any more than being a cheaper joint (or a patron thereof) should. KMP is an asshole and he pops in here once a month or so with his nose stuck in the air. I hate to see this place devolve into a class-warfare pissing contest. You can be just as much of an ass even if your intent was to stick up for the common man.

Well, we're on it (and off topic) so I'll continue (and I think these discussions are often relevant to the developments themselves and the digressions never bother me unless they become uncivilized):
Fattony, I agree with the last sentence and I don't appreciate, by and the large, the often populist, anti-rich-at-all-cost attitude that pervades some of our liberal politics today. Wealth is wealth and expensive restaurants have something to contribute and certainly their owners shouldn't be pilloried or blamed for taking advantage of a situation that exists and making money off it.

But - Things in the city are changing too quickly and too uniform for my own liking. When the bar and sandwich shop in my neighborhood get turned into a luxury pet hair cutting business and expensive restaurant, I find it concerning - because there is nothing replacing these places. Long ago, when development happened with less restrictions, the cheap areas could migrate out and pop in new areas - but it is clear that just as luxury housing has been the massive majority of late, so have mostly higher end retail and restaurant spaces made up the majority of new businesses.

If this trend continues, the entire city will be more uniform, more expensive, and completely unavailable both to live in and to visit for large swaths of former residents. This is a very real concern and a complicated issue, the solutions to which are far beyond our architectural discussions here. But stick's point that one of the last remaining places in the seaport that is not shining, new, and expensive will soon bite the dust is one the resonates with me. In the end, I don't like those places and I like the new building, but we as a city, state and country need to figure out how to deal with the larger issue of keeping not just housing but retail and restaurants affordable - because diversity is what keeps a city interesting.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

The average Seaport restaurant patron seems to be more and more likened to a rich guy from the Jersey shore. Ocean Prime, Strega, and Del Frisco's all have the same types of people roaming around. There is no need for 3 top tier steakhouses within 1 mile of each other (4 I guess with Morton's as well). Empire on a weekend night is almost entirely rich foreigners. Pair this with news that Big Night Entertainment wants to make a 3-story, 8 million dollar restaurant/club (link) and it just seems like Seaport Boulevard will become a douche consortium. Fort Point is really the only saving grace of the entire area.

How about the Park Plaza area? Smith & Wollensky, Strip, Grill 23, Flemming, and Davio's. There is probably a street corner where you can see them all without moving your feet. Cast the net out "within 1 mile" and you easily hit a dozen or more steakhouses. And that's just steakhouses, don't get started on every other expensive restaurant and bar.

What does that say about the level of douchebaggery throughout Boston?I think nothing. I think those are kind of restaurants you find mixed in with the big office buildings of any major CBD in the world. Remind me again what kind of buildings are actually complete and occupied in the Seaport?

The point, which West speaks to very well in the post above, is that these new buildings in the Seaport are going to pull high-rent paying tenants for as long as they can get away with it. Nobody is going to leave money on the table just because it comes out of the pocket of a douche. Would you?

There is still a relative paucity of retail in the Seaport and it has the population density of Carlisle. It is going to take time for the place to become "real." Sorry for that. Do you have any ideas for how to change that?
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

Over the longer term, we're all going to find out which specific spots out there are better than others for a restaurant. Since all restaurants, even the upper end ones, have relatively short average life spans, we will see devolution in some locations. There will be a greater variety of price points; wait for it. Some of the property owners will get there against their will, the market will force them there.

I can think of one scenario that would hasten it all along. Over the past few years we've had four storm events that just missed the needed timing to flood Boston badly (that is, they were offset from high tide by a bit instead of coinciding with high tide just right). If we had four such events hit the tidal timing just right, and were spaced out over a span of just a few years, the restaurant economy out there in the Seaport would get subjected to one wicked pissah stress test. (The real estate market more generally, too.) I bet there'd be cheaper places to eat thereafter, though fewer of them. Might be cheaper to buy one of those condos, too, once the insurance market adjusted.

Sorry for the double but hard to respond to two things on phone - one of the big problems is that larger developments run by companies are less likely to create or allow the more affordable and hole in the wall type spots. The next market correction might indeed take out some of these new establishments but I am quite skeptical that this will result in truly cheap eateries ever returning to places from which they have been currently obliterated. This is part of the reason I actually like the low slung buildings and the "taxpayers" that get people so riled up for redevelopment - so again, the question is, how do we allow redevelopment and higher heights while also allowing cheaper places?
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

Sorry for the double but hard to respond to two things on phone - one of the big problems is that larger developments run by companies are less likely to create or allow the more affordable and hole in the wall type spots. The next market correction might indeed take out some of these new establishments but I am quite skeptical that this will result in truly cheap eateries ever returning to places from which they have been currently obliterated. This is part of the reason I actually like the low slung buildings and the "taxpayers" that get people so riled up for redevelopment - so again, the question is, how do we allow redevelopment and higher heights while also allowing cheaper places?

Inclusionary zoning that requires a % of affordable neighborhood retail (as in affordable price point) much like we require some % affordable housing. Essentially a form of luxury real estate tax.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

How about the Park Plaza area? Smith & Wollensky, Strip, Grill 23, Flemming, and Davio's. There is probably a street corner where you can see them all without moving your feet. Cast the net out "within 1 mile" and you easily hit a dozen or more steakhouses. And that's just steakhouses, don't get started on every other expensive restaurant and bar.

I think this proves another point though, which is that these types of restaurants are great for corporate card holders, but terrible for the neighborhood residents. Park Plaza is surrounded by Back Bay, Bay Village and the South End, and yet no one goes there besides Liberty Mutual employees or tourists staying in a nearby hotel. If the Seaport continues to attract these types of restaurants, it will suffer the same fate as Park Plaza.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

It's called progress and Boston is a much better city for it! I remember what the city was like 50 years ago and it was a dump, a wreak of a place, compared to today's Boston! You guys sound like Whiskey Priest was taken by eminent domain by greedy damn developers and the city! Got a complaint about losing WP, talk to the owners of the property. They're the ones who sold out and probably to the highest bidder! It happens.
 
Re: Whiskey Priest/Atlantic Beer Garden Redevelopment | 150 Seaport Blvd | Seaport

It's called progress and Boston is a much better city for it! I remember what the city was like 50 years ago and it was a dump, a wreak of a place, compared to today's Boston! You guys sound like Whiskey Priest was taken by eminent domain by greedy damn developers and the city! Got a complaint about losing WP, talk to the owners of the property. They're the ones who sold out and probably to the highest bidder! It happens.

Exactly. Does everyone forget that there is a major convention center two blocks away? Convention goers on corporate expense accounts are not going want to have food and drinks next to Whitey, Jimmy , Bobby, Johnny, Mikey and the rest of the local crew unless they are in a strip club.
 

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