Volpe Transportation Center Development | Kendall Sq | Cambridge

Well, I think the point has been made. The MIT area will never have a truly iconic, short building.

killian%20court.JPG
 
Silicon Valley and San Fran don't have any iconic buildings that represent their tech prowess so while it would be nice it's hardly a necessity or common practice.
 
Meh. It's fine and an icon.

I do like the idea of something that shows you where Kendall is from a far (aside from a map or T sign.)

Growing up, Kendall was just a stop on the way to Central or Harvard heading out, and nothing on the way in. Unless you work in the field, their is still no reason to go to Kendall, unless your kid is hoping to get into MIT. Other than that, I see no reason for anyone to visit or tour MIT. I still consider it a very sub par campus, particularly for it's importance and prestige.

Something that draws the eye, and you can point from a mile or two away to say "Kendall is there". Similar ot the Hancock for Copley, the Pru for, well the Pru. A citgo sign that has nothing to do with anything for Kenmore/Fenway. Downtown can't be missed, but as mentioned, the new Avalon next to the Garden is a great new landmark.

The South Station tower will be much less "iconic" than the station it will be a beacon for, but it will become part of that icon for better or worse.

Wanting height + better than good (is great hoping to much) architecture at Volpe is a goal that should definitely be pursued. For being a landmark/icon for Kendall's importance/wayfinding not being last among the reasons why. Because density is needed here, and cramming as many residents in is a worthy cause too of course.
 
617 said:
Silicon Valley and San Fran don't have any iconic buildings that represent their tech prowess so while it would be nice it's hardly a necessity or common practice.
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I think part of the extra push here is that Boston is too afraid to do it itself. San Francisco just topped off a 1070' building and has a 900'+ (and an 801') under construction. Unfortunately for SF, the 1070' looks like a giant uncircumcised penis about to blow its load all over the city. However, the point stands that they are absolutely changing the face of that city while we go to war over a building 300+' SHORTER casting a few minutes of early morning shade on the common.

If Boston can't go tall in the heart of downtown, maybe Cambridge/MIT can be the ones around here to show a little guts. The John Hancock Tower is really nice, but it doesn't have to be our tallest building FOREVER, does it?
 
Gameguy326 said:
Well, I think the point has been made. The MIT area will never have a truly iconic, short building.

killian%20court.JPG
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Good point... then again you said "MIT area" instead of "Kendall Square". If you want to establish Kendall Square with its own identity (Killian Court and the dome are nearly a half a mile away walking) then you are going to want a different postcard picture. Maybe the MIT museum can do it, but I think you really want Kendall Square to have its own iconic buildings and picture worthy perspectives.
 
DZH22 said:
I think part of the extra push here is that Boston is too afraid to do it itself. San Francisco just topped off a 1070' building and has a 900'+ (and an 801') under construction. Unfortunately for SF, the 1070' looks like a giant uncircumcised penis about to blow its load all over the city. However, the point stands that they are absolutely changing the face of that city while we go to war over a building 300+' SHORTER casting a few minutes of early morning shade on the common.

If Boston can't go tall in the heart of downtown, maybe Cambridge/MIT can be the ones around here to show a little guts. The John Hancock Tower is really nice, but it doesn't have to be our tallest building FOREVER, does it?
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i wuz gunna post something similar to this but i knew i'd get crucified for it. a new tallest ain't gonna happen anywhere in the Back Bay during our lifetimes. You can count on it. West End or bust. And a new tallest would have fierce opposition due to putting a new shadow on the Esplanade and the North Point area.

It's one thing to put a shadow on your own city. but a whole nuther matter to cast a shadow on a neighbor's village, by God.
 
DZH22 said:
I think part of the extra push here is that Boston is too afraid to do it itself. San Francisco just topped off a 1070' building and has a 900'+ (and an 801') under construction. Unfortunately for SF, the 1070' looks like a giant uncircumcised penis about to blow its load all over the city. However, the point stands that they are absolutely changing the face of that city while we go to war over a building 300+' SHORTER casting a few minutes of early morning shade on the common.

If Boston can't go tall in the heart of downtown, maybe Cambridge/MIT can be the ones around here to show a little guts. The John Hancock Tower is really nice, but it doesn't have to be our tallest building FOREVER, does it?
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I think this has more to do with the Salesforce tower being driven by a large corporation, i.e. SalesForce. The same goes with Philadelphia with Comcast filling up TWO tall towers. Boston's lack of height is most likely driven from the lack of large tenants, not really the NIMBYs (trust me, a developer facing no NIMBYs would still not build a tall tower if there are no tenants). Tall skyscrapers are often time driven by large corporations and not necessarily the size of a city, i.e. Devon Tower in OKC and US Steel in Pittsburgh.

Unfortunately, most of the office demand are of the small chunk varieties that are being fulfilled in the Seaport. Boston is gonna need a large chunk in order for it to support a large tower and so far, the demand isn't there. Your only hope is that some startup company somehow makes it really big in Boston and decides to quickly expand. Maybe one day we will see a 900 ft Hubspot/TripAdvisor/Brightcove/WayFair Tower.
 
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SF has also historically greatly limited office construction, giving it a bigger demand backlog than Boston.
 
The Salesforce tower, and other transbay towers were always planned to be big, even before Salesforce signed on as the anchor tenant though.
 
Scalziand said:
The Salesforce tower, and other transbay towers were always planned to be big, even before Salesforce signed on as the anchor tenant though.
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Yes, but it helps if you have a track record of major corporate players asking for trophy towers.

Note that GE did not go that way in their move to Boston. We don't seem to have that kind of corporate player here anymore. Even our local consumer brands like Converse and New Balance have been more restrained, not looking for trophy towers. Rather choosing other kinds of prominent, iconic buildings instead.
 
excerpts;

....to build up to 1,400 apartments and condominiums, along with office, lab, and retail space. ....pay $750 million to buy the site from the federal government and build a new transportation research lab on the 14-acre parcel, filed zoning plans with Cambridge city officials Wednesday, providing the clearest picture yet of what it has in mind for one of the Boston area’s most desirable development sites.

“The potential to redevelop the Volpe site is a unique and transformational opportunity for our entire community,” wrote Israel Ruiz, MIT’s executive vice president, in a letter to the City Council.

Before it can build... MIT must replace the existing federal research lab. In the meantime the school is pushing ahead with rezoning for the broader project, which will probably take a decade to complete.

....22-page proposal outlines a series of buildings across the property, a mix that would tilt toward office and lab space, but could include up to 1,400 units of housing. It would also mandate at least 3.5 acres of open and community space and require street-level retail designed to create a “memorable Main Street” experience along Third Street and Broadway. Preliminary renderings show a central grassy corridor and promenades lined with stores, designed to bring pedestrians into the site, which today sits behind fences and is mostly surface parking lots and lawns areas. ...to make the booming but sterile Kendall Square feel more like a fully-fledged neighborhood, Ruiz said.

20 percent of units will be set aside for low- and moderate-income residents, as well as for local businesses. Twenty-five percent of street-level storefronts will be set aside to small independent stores. It also requires that MIT contribute $10 for every square foot of nonresidential, nongovernment space — a sum that will likely total millions of dollars. The money will be evenly split between community needs and improvements to transit in Kendall Square.

Under the zoning regulations, building heights are limited — one residential building of up to 500 feet is allowed. Other buildings would be capped at 350 feet, and no nonresidential building can reach more than 300 feet.

MIT plans to unveil the proposal next week at a community meeting, and then begin the zoning review process with the city.
 
Good project. Some numbnuts in the Globe comment section was whining about traffic, which his quickly becoming the "shadows" argument of this generation of NIMBY's. Isn't this right near a T station? Was last time I checked which was on Friday as I was heading into work....
 
Rover said:
Good project. Some numbnuts in the Globe comment section was whining about traffic, which his quickly becoming the "shadows" argument of this generation of NIMBY's. Isn't this right near a T station? Was last time I checked which was on Friday as I was heading into work....
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Traffic is not something this generation of NIMBYs invented as an argument, it's the second-oldest NIMBY complaint of them all, and has never gone away as far as I can tell. The shadows thing is a quirky upstart complaint that may have elbowed traffic aside in one or two cases, but traffic is the doggedly stubborn age-old stand by. I can distinctly remember hearing people whine about traffic impacts of new developments during the Nixon administration, and I also distinctly remember my dad in those days assuring me that people had been making such anti-development traffic arguments for decades before I had been born. And the counterargument all the way back then was "a lot of traffic is the sign of a thriving city, if you want traffic-free streets, move to rural West Virginia."

The oldest NIMBY complaint is race/class, as in "what if a bunch of [those people] move in?" I'm pretty confident there were pre-automobile NIMBYs using that one back when traffic was all horse-drawn. Still around, though more often camouflaged these days.

I actually think younger generations of urbanites are, on average, less likely to jabber on about traffic, whether as a component of NIMBYism or even just in general conversation, since more of them don't own a car and don't want to. I think the traffic-averse NIMBY is more likely to be older, and though we can't tell the age of Globe commenters, when I see those sorts of traffic arguments, they always have the sound of an older person. I obviously cannot back that up, I'm stating an impression.
 
My biggest issue with this project continues to be the location of the park in the site plan. The initial proposal (Example 1 in the slides) had the green space in the middle of the site along Broadway, blocking view corridors toward the clock tower with buildings and instead directing the eye into the dead facade of the Marriott parking garage (see the Globe's rendering). Also, having the park across the street from the dead wall deactivates that segment on both sides, as it is today. Example 4 is the best, but others fix this issue as well.

As I said yesterday, I hope the Globe just picked the first render they saw. This one is the better plan:

Volpe.PNG
 
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