Vision for the South Boston Seaport

Peripheral is what you'd want for an area that includes a convention center and sports venue that are only filled cyclically (if these were downtown, imagine how quiet it would be). I tried to fix this issue of the BoA Pavillion by adding a hotel, and an 'amusement pier' to give some life during off hours of events. By including shopping and residential, you guarantee some more 'life' daily, residents coming and going, shoppers shopping (be they residents, tourists, conventioneers, fans, business people, or just regular people coming to the city), and offices assure some security of people coming in on a daily basis.

And, although it seems I've created some awful superblocks, I meant that those particular areas be dedicated to certain uses, not single developments.
 
Damn computers! I just typed a whole response to why or why not city hall should be relocated!

To restart:

I only really put it there because I wanted to fill that spot, and it seemed like a good location for a government building. I had a really neat design in my head (modern, ribbon-like lighthouse sort of building, maybe I'll sketch it and put up a copy). It would have been a good location because it was so easily connected to the WTC and BCEC, and built over the highway-so it would be all compatible-like. I guess I really liked the spot, and it needed something iconic (more so than the BCEC entrance), and I thought-what better for an iconic building than a government building? And plus, Menino had already said he didn't like his lifetime office in a concrete box. Furthermore, if City Hall were relocated, I think that the current City Hall would find a wonderful second life as a museum, or office, or any sort of adaptive reuse, really. A new tenant might show some more love to Brutalism, and that concrete expanse around it.
 
Wow. Lot's going on here.

First, Boston's arts scene is not in Fort Point Channel and it's certainly not dead. Second, there is no way that the Rat will be reopening in the SBW. This will be an extension of Downtown/Financial District any way you cut it. Asking for the Rat here is like asking for the Rat on Wall St. If you want to see good Punk/Hardcore/Metal/Indie, go to the Middle East, the Midway, O'Briens, the Milky Way... don't go downtown (which is what this area will be) and expect anything other than Bankers and Finance types.

A brand new ground up neighborhood is not the place for college kids, hipsters, hippies, and artists. There's just no way that's going to happen. Name a financier who's willing to construct Jackson Square or Central Square part II on the most expensive open land in the city and I'll change my tune, but I don't think it's going to happen. However, what we can hope for is a situation like when the Back Bay was constructed. Ritzy people left the North End, West End, Downtown, and to a lesser extent Beacon Hill, moved into the new ritzy neighborhood, and opened up space for our oi palloi ancestors to move into their old spots. Hopefully, the SBW will open up space in the North End, Jamaica Plain, etc, or at the least stop the spread of the Back Bay into areas like Kenmore Sq (or god forbid, Allston), so that the rest of us can go see Unholy Goat F**cker (it's one of Boston's best metal bands guys, come on) play in some dude's basement.
 
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Somehow I don't think a mass migration of that sort will ever happen...the wealthy have become categorically biased toward Boston's older neighborhoods in a way that would preclude them from switching over from the North End et al. In the 19th century, they moved around because they wanted to participate in urbanism that was new and fashionable. This mentality isn't totally dead, but it's severely weakened. And it would take design a lot more ambitious than anything close to the current plans for the area to attract any serious attention.
 
^If that's the case, then who do you see moving here? What gets built on this land will not be triple decker rentals for the middle class; it's just not financially workable. Personally, I don't see how this is going to be anything less than luxury (or "luxury-esque") condos.
 
Are there any cultural attractions being planned for this area or is the ICA it?

I wonder if Boston could support a real Opera House (a'la Sydney)?

We seem to have enough trouble keep our current theaters lit up, I doubt there is much call for any new ones.

Maybe a few galleries showing the works of the Fort Point resident dirty, useless hippies, er, I mean, "artists".
 
Why is Symphony Hall not a real Opera House?

I agree with czsz when he says he doubts a mass exodus will ever happen, and I doubt that Boston will ever need much more room to grow, in terms of residents. More likely, any growth in residence will be in areas already built out, or in the areas surrounding Boston (Dorchester, Somerville, Cambridge, Allston, Brookline, Eastie).

That is why I believe this area will largely be inhabited by tourists, businessmen, and day trippers. Of course, I want some areas to be residential-Fan Pier is already looking that way. Fort Point, of course, should be largely residential, I feel it should emulate an artsy 'style' because I like it. It would definitely be a more vibrant area if it were filled with hipster shops, galleries, hole-in-the-wall/basement clubs, and loft apartments.

I know you are all convinced that if someone lives in Fort Point and calls themself an artist, they must be a fake, but how can where someone lives define how good an artist they are? I noticed a post someone made earlier that all these trust-fund folks are making crap art, while the 'real' artists are starving and cold in a condemned building. As far as I know, there is no direct correlation between talent and being poor. But I guess that's just me.

Back to who will inhabit SBW. In Fort Point, there'll be quite a few graduates in their twenties just chilling out, going to coffee shops at 2am, visiting galleries, and seeing shows in the clubs. At Fan Pier, the people who made a good living in the financial district, now in their thirties and forties. The shopping would be used by the residents, and the tourists combined. Tourists who couldn't stay at Long Wharf or Custom House, or in the Back Bay. Business people and conventioneers patronizing decent, kind of tacky restaurants (ESPN Zone, for the umpteenth time), and day trippers, who after seeing all there is to see at Fish Pier, maybe see a show at BoA Pavillion, go to dinner or shop before heading home. A modern (not financial businesses-think biotech), dynamic, mixed-use business district, will see lots of life, fit growth in Boston, and not detract from the rest of Boston.
 
kennedy said:
Why is Symphony Hall not a real Opera House?
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Because it was designed for Symphonies and not Operas?

I'm not too into either but I'm pretty sure they are different things with different stage requirements.

I could be wrong, do they stage Operas at Symphony Hall?
 
Yeah, I've seen guests perform Opera at Symphony Hall, but I think you're right-it's primarily for orchestra, not opera. I just don't think that an opera house would get a whole lot of attendance. Maybe if it were incorporated into a larger music venue, but for some reason, I never hear a lot of hype about people going to operas...
 
Symphony Hall was always for orchestras; it doesn't have the right acoustics or equipment for full-stage opera. There used to be a massive opera house down Huntington; it was demolished in the 50s.

An opera house would be lovely, of course, but there aren't any major companies left in Boston to perform in it. The Boston Lyric could only manage to pull off one major show on the Common, I recall, before retreating in shame to sporadic performances in small houses. A proper house (preferably with dramatic architecture that took advantage of the waterfront) would also require major philanthropy. I wonder if Boston's wealthiest have the capacity to support a new major cultural institution long term - one that's a fairly elite and esoteric art form even for this city, and that's been on the decline in the US for decades.

Plus, does Boston really want to ape Sydney, anyway? (Taking a smoking break at intermission is far easier on Sydney Harbor during the winter opera season than on Boston's...)

If that's the case, then who do you see moving here? What gets built on this land will not be triple decker rentals for the middle class; it's just not financially workable. Personally, I don't see how this is going to be anything less than luxury (or "luxury-esque") condos.
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Honestly, I'm not sure it will ever attract anyone it hasn't so far. The condos to the east of the WTC are owned by a lot of local corps. who use them to stash visiting or newly relocated staff. There are the hotels that do spillover from downtown. The offices are filled with tenants who either couldn't afford an equivalent space downtown or initially bought into the hype/image of what the Seaport would become without thinking too hard about it.

This neighborhood has always been about warehousing. First it warehoused shipped goods, now it's warehousing people.
 
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czsz said:
Plus, does Boston really want to ape Sydney, anyway?
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Well, one of our sister cities is Melbourne...which is also in Australia, so they've got some stuff right. History is similar-Australia was a bunch of British convicts, who rebelled. We were a bunch of British outcasts who rebelled. We're both ports...and we both have accents? We've got some similarites, at least.

I doubt that the elite would want to support, or attend an opera house. Maybe if it were added to the MFA or a small one were built in the theater district...it would almost definitely need to be part of a larger, more 'regular' institution, otherwise it would just go out of business and be a big waste.
 
These are general comments, not directed at anyone in particular.
(Okay, I'm lying. Check out my shifty eyes.)

My reference, as always, is Oakland, which has Jack London Square (JLS). It has been an erratic venture, for its intended purpose and, ultimately, a failure, forty years on, as a commercial venture.

'They' continue to reinvent it. Well, good for them. Who knows what mix will make it 'right.' The locals go. The tourists don't. The locals get pushed out. The tourists still scoff at it. The tourists are forced into it (don't ask; just trust me), and the locals think, 'oh, there's something better there now; let's go back.' Then the tourists ... ummmmm ... Hold it. Oakland has tourists?! Oh, right. They ship them over from SF or they make a stop here en route to a Napa Wine Tour because Oakland International Airport is 'the gateway to Wine Country.' (Brilliant marketing campaign, btw.)

Anyway, what has JLS become--primarily chains. Yet, even some of those chains have pulled out. Or were forced out by the management who wanted to alter their vision again. (The details remain sketchy.)

What Oakland wants IS a touristed-version of a small, convention-attracting, entertainment zone where the locals and tourists alike can intermingle in a controlled setting that doesn't threaten or challenge any of them too much. (Which JLS was before the management and the paranoid city leaders messed it up some more.)

What have they (well, I) learned from all this?
There is NO magic formula! (I knew that.)
(This goes for much of anything that humans like to believe they can control.)
No, I will not apologize to the branders/marketing trolls/demographic junkies who inhabit this forum. Sometimes ideas work; sometimes they don't. Sometimes in the same place, simultaneously. Sometimes in one place and not the other. Crunch all the numbers you want. Meaningless.

Simply, somebody had a vision. It wasn't fulfilled. The vision got muddled. The 'visionaries' got lazy. The management sucked. (Easiest explanation of all.) Who knows?

So, back on point--Boston's Seaport District? Chains, mom-and-pop, locals, yokels, rentals, condos, monied, poor, artists with or without trust funds--bring on the cranes and let the developers have their way. They'll be fiddling with their best laid plans for decades after we are gone, trying to figure out why x worked and y didn't even though they both should have complimented each other. Meanwhile, Ellard from Ellington in town for the E-ware convention will probably opt for the Appleby's in the lobby of the yet unbuilt, but sure to appear, MoPo-Hotel 6--the first mid-rise, modular, pod (capsule) hotel of its kind in the US. And everyone will come, locals and tourists alike, because everyone will want to try it out, until they build them elsewhere. Then the Seaport will have to invent or discover some other fleeting, novel attraction to entice some industry's convention planner to book something there.

Edit: This is also a relevant rant for the BCEC expansion thread.
 
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Thanks. I came back here to reply, but by that time, you had edited.
 
Sydney's Opera House is not solely a venue for opera, it is a large theatre complex comprised of various-sized performance spaces. I think Boston could benefit from something like this and the area near the ICA would be about the only real opportunity for a project of its size, but it isn't a very original idea.

Personally, I think the Seaport should be two-thirds resident-oriented space (meaning housing and retail for the locals, groceries, markets, local cultural institutions, schools, etc.) with densely constructed apartments, small street patterns, a real subway link to the red line and across to Logan and a handful of small parks. Restaurants and entertainment options would organically reorient themselves to address this neighborhood. The rest of the Seaport should be convention and office space and related hotel projects.
 
aquaman said:
Personally, I think the Seaport should be two-thirds resident-oriented space (meaning housing and retail for the locals, groceries, markets, local cultural institutions, schools, etc.) with densely constructed apartments, small street patterns, a real subway link to the red line and across to Logan and a handful of small parks. Restaurants and entertainment options would organically reorient themselves to address this neighborhood. The rest of the Seaport should be convention and office space and related hotel projects.
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Maximum one-half land area for residential, that way it forces residential projects to be built upwards rather than outwards. Likewise for hotel, retail, and office space. Does anyone have a good example of a 'vertical mall'?
 
I have a bad example of the 'vertical mall': the A&S Plaza, later called Manhattan Mall, in the former Gimbel's. Its anchor stores repeatedly failed or left, and the whole thing occupies far fewer floors than it started out with.
 
kennedy said:
Maximum one-half land area for residential, that way it forces residential projects to be built upwards rather than outwards. Likewise for hotel, retail, and office space. Does anyone have a good example of a 'vertical mall'?
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The Seaport is very limited in terms of height, anyhow, so other than a very small number of taller residential towers, any considerable % of residential space would be somewhat spread out.

A vertical mall... what's the one in Toronto...? Maybe that one's not even much bigger than Cambridge Galleria, I don't know.

I'd think that vertical malls would be tough for people to adapt to, we're so used to long, flat malls. A vertical mall would have have a fairly small floorplan, perhaps no more than a dozen stores per floor, and would require awful lot of interior space dedicated to moving large numbers of people vertically. I'm not sure it would be all that viable, economically, once you factor in elevator and escalator space, fire stairs, plus an open atrium center (unless you want then entire thing to feel enclosed like Lafayette Place... and look at how successful that was!! Plus you'd have to battle against user frustration (waiting for crowded elevators, etc.). The Atrium Mall is small, but I can tell you, I hate waiting for an open elevator to bring me back down to the garage. Imagine that on a 15 story vertical mall... I'd pass.
 
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