Viola | Mass DOT Parcel 13 | Boylston & Mass Ave | Back Bay

Blackbird said:
Haven’t people on this board argued in favor before of having the state or city build the actual decking over the pike to make it easier for the parcels to be filled?
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I am all for the government building the decking over the pike to make air rights parcels more attractive to developers. That said, I would also expect some sweet ground leases/air rights deals with said developers to recoup/profit off the investment in the decking.
 
bakgwailo said:
I am all for the government building the decking over the pike to make air rights parcels more attractive to developers. That said, I would also expect some sweet ground leases/air rights deals with said developers to recoup/profit off the investment in the decking.
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Yeah, at the very least, I'd expect some hefty leases to cover such a scenario. The State would be directly assisting private developers in making a LOT of money. They do that in other ways all the time, but this is a physical (and very expensive) handout for something that isn't the most demanding of issues we're seeing right now.
 
stefal said:
Yeah, at the very least, I'd expect some hefty leases to cover such a scenario. The State would be directly assisting private developers in making a LOT of money. They do that in other ways all the time, but this is a physical (and very expensive) handout for something that isn't the most demanding of issues we're seeing right now.
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Yeah, and the nice thing about the state stepping in for it is they can push that payback/profit over a pretty long time - 20, 50, 99 year ground leases as the state can afford to work on completely different time scales than private developers.
 

Taking full advantage of the "blame the T" moment we're in.

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The hotel-condo proposal included a maximum height of over 220 feet. The latest version shrinks the lab building height to 178 feet, while the residential building tops out at 120 feet. Developers also have to sort out competing transportation needs on Boylston Street. They’re proposing a new westbound lane reserved for Boston Fire Department vehicles, MBTA buses and bicyclists that would run for one block in front of the site.
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“Peebles Corp. is expected to submit project plans for a combination commercial-and-100 percent-affordable housing project to the Boston Planning & Development Agency in early fall. It’s targeting approval by year’s end, and groundbreaking in the first half of 2024.”

Awesome to see the housing being 100% affordable.
 
One of a few key quotes:
We want to have everything approved and all the funding commitments by the end of this year
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Unless anything has changed, those funding commitments include $500k per unit from the federal infrastructure bill, an unprecedented ask.
 
Why on earth would they make
curcuas said:
That's an insane subsidy. Why don't they just build taller buildings like originally proposed and fill them with housing?
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Agree. And why turn some of the most expensive housing to build (downtown real estate, platform over the Mass Pike) into a housing project? This is as boondoggly as it gets.
 
PNF: https://bpda.app.box.com/s/j9b7hgc3d180j42tzaks582owbwbbjru

Not sure if this is for me, but some here may see it as an upgrade. I've never been one for the "covered in bulbous boxes like a skin rash" look, but hey. What exactly is so hard about accepting that a building can just be a box and proud of it, particularly with a nice masonry/window pattern?

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I couldn't find a 3D rendering in the PDF. That's not a good sign. The elevation looks terrible in my opinion. What's with that Miami Beach Cambridge skyline in the background? LOL It's so hard to tell from the elevation the materials, quality, and depth. It just looks cheap.
 
PEEBLES: I want to keep this development parcel but I don’t actually want to develop it. How I keep this hackey sack in the air?
ARCHITECT: What if I come up with the most fucking stupid looking shit anyone has ever seen
 
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The rendering looks like it was made in one of those AI image generators you see on twitter. At a glance it’s a plausible building, but when you look closely you see strange non-Euclidean errors in both foreground and background.
 
Yeah, the half-assedness of the "architecture" here is pretty funny.
 
I like the design and the retail. Regardless, the jerry rigged scheme of cross subsidization and add'l spending on aff housing and parking suggests to me this is nowhere near pencilling yet.
 
On its side it looks like the old Middlesex County Courthouse and jail.
 
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