Waterside Place 1A | 505 Congress Street | Seaport

[NIMBOB]

Those solutions are more feasible, but still very costly. Between Gillette and it's surrounding residential neighborhood, the Post Office facility, the WTC, the Boston Fish Pier and all of the businesses down by Harpoon Brewery, they had to thread several needles just to put the road where it is. I don't think the taxpayers should have to pay for the taking of expensive land just so we can avoid having a mall.

If the extension was built deeper, would it be too low to link-up with the Ted? The grade of the link connecting the 2 roads would probably be too steep to meet highway standards.

 

[briv]

Part of the spaghetti includes the I-90 extension. How would you divert the extension and still be able to connect the Mass Pike, an I-90/93 interchange and Logan Airport without leveling half of South Boston and Dorchester? The whole point was to minimize eminent domain.

OK. I left that second hairpin in there just so they both had a common terminus, for illustrative purposes. Theres plenty of room to soften the first one. But, of course the route wouldve been straighter. As far as your contention that building underwater costs exponentially more, I dont know about that. Did the Sumner cost billions and billions? Whats the cost-per-mile ratio of the Chunnel? Lets call it about $500 mil, a bit less? Far far cheaper than the Big Dig. But, sure, they used that cheap third world European labor and engineering. Still, it spanned the wide and tumultuous English Channel while our Big Dig spanned the minuscule and murky but quite placid Fort Point Channel.

Go figure.

As far as homes destroyed in my plan, there are none. Unless you count the homes of Jonah crabs and flounder.

 

[lexicon506]

And how do you propose getting the tunnel sections and the huge barge needed to place them all the way up Fort Point Channel? Not to mention placing the thing on top of a long stretch of ancient subway tunnel.

 

[stellarfun]

Speaking for Potsdamer Platz: I've occasionally compared SBW unfavorably to it, but I think that in both design and architecture it's emerged the far superior development. The most unfortunate aspect of its design is its seeming isolation from the rest of the city, but the architects and planners couldn't help that it was cut off by the Kulturforum or the Landwehrkanal...and who was going to raise the hue and cry against the Holocaust Memorial putting yet another institutional barrier between Potsdamer Platz and the Brandenburg Gate area? Leipziger Platz's completion should help alleviate the disconnect.

And yeah, I really would prefer to have the convention center out on 128 with a 15 minute S-Bahn-equivalent connection. The only things that make that impossible are the fact that the Boston metro isn't one consolidated metropolis as is Berlin and that the North American convention business is predicated on outside-the-front-door access to the city, although this is already somewhat of a joke in Boston's case as the new convention center is isolated on a SBW overpass with nothing interesting in sight other than the hotels and upcoming mall built to serve it. Come to think of it, there's no reason anything on the SBW right now (except for maybe the courthouse, ICA, and the BoA pavillion) couldn't be part of some completely self-contained, suburban development. There's no relation to Boston whatsoever.

I don't want to hear any more boitching about the Marriott Renaissance hotel. This is the Ibis hotel, built in 2004, in Potsdamer Platz.

This is the Marriott in Potsdamer Platz.

Lets look at some of the detail in the 'cacophony picture:

At frame center top, is the 'colonnade'. Kind of hard to see in the haze. Here is what it looks like in a clearer. closer light.

In the very center of the platz, to the right of the glass-walled Sony building, they built what I call the bookend buildings. I mean, why?

(The above picture is from 2003, from cityscape's construction webcam archives of Potsdamer Platz.)

At upper frame right of the cacophony picture, you can just see the start of the cultural section of Potsdamer Platz. Below are pictures of about half the main buildings there.
National Library

Art Library

Philharmonic Hall

At the bottom center of the cacophony picture, there is a row of five square peg buildings, distinguished by each having a different hat (which is not visible from street level). What a cookie cutter assemblage that is.

Google has a street level 360 of Potsdamer Platz here:
http://www.panorama-cities.net/berlin/berlin.html

I doubt that Potsdamer Platz will turn out to be superior to the SBW at all.

 

[stellarfun]

The spaghetti ramps on I-90 are to provide ready access to and from South Boston and downtown.

The city and commonwealth can't even agree on an I-90 slingshot ramp for the Copley Square area, so you go all the way to Allston on I-90 before turning around to get back to center city.

 

[castevens]

Did the Sumner cost billions and billions?

The problems with this one were more because of the fact that:

a) The soil was so weak. They literally had to freeze the ground for 3 years, making the largest man-made iceberg ever.

b) They had to keep the things they were working under (Commuter rail, roads etc) operational, as well as the things they were working on top of (Red Line)

c) They couldn't just barge the pieces in from Baltimore like they did for the Ted Williams tunnel, they had to be made on site, or destroy the bridges on the Fort Point Channel, which required the creation of a make-shift construction site with a dam and a basin.

d) Because there were other things going on around the site where the tunnel was to go (unlike the Chunnel/Sumner), they had to reinforce the areas where the tunnels came within (literally) inches of the other forms of transit, like the Red Line in the FPC, and South Station itself. Extra airtight doors had to be placed in case the tunnel crushed the Red Line. They couldnt just put it in the bedrock like they do a lot of tunnels

so in summary, it was so expensive because of the soil, such a "remote" area that a barge couldnt get to, and because there was so much going on around it that couldn't be affected during the construction.

 

[castevens]

And by the way, the two most costly and time consuming areas of construction were under the commuter rail/South Station and the Fort Point Channel. Your plan still has the whole SS/CR stuff, and extends the Fort Point Channel tunnel.

 

[Ron Newman]

Filling the channel might have been the least expensive option, but I recall that the water in it is essential to Gillette's operations.

 

[stellarfun]

Part of the spaghetti includes the I-90 extension. How would you divert the extension and still be able to connect the Mass Pike, an I-90/93 interchange and Logan Airport without leveling half of South Boston and Dorchester? The whole point was to minimize eminent domain.

OK. I left that second hairpin in there just so they both had a common terminus, for illustrative purposes. Theres plenty of room to soften the first one. But, of course the route wouldve been straighter. As far as your contention that building underwater costs exponentially more, I dont know about that. Did the Sumner cost billions and billions? Whats the cost-per-mile ratio of the Chunnel? Lets call it about $500 mil, a bit less? Far far cheaper than the Big Dig. But, sure, they used that cheap third world European labor and engineering. Still, it spanned the wide and tumultuous English Channel while our Big Dig spanned the minuscule and murky but quite placid Fort Point Channel.

Go figure.

Current costs for tunneling under water.

The $7.2-billion Trans-Hudson Commuter Rail Project, known as THE Tunnel and overseen by New Jersey Transit, has named a partnership of groups to lead design plans for the project. The firms, consisting of Parsons Brinckerhoff, STV Group and DMJM Harris, will develop current plans that call for 4.1 miles of 2 side-by-side, single-track tunnels. The rail project will double train capacity, alleviate the traffic bottleneck between New York and New Jersey, and connect to Penn Station in Manhattan

The Chunnel cost 12.7 billion pounds, or about 800 million dollars a mile.
Most of the Chunnel construction was completed before the Big Dig got underway in earnest. The pound is about $2 to 1 pound these days, but the exchange rate was cheaper back then.

So tell me, exactly what kind of value would you put on the Waterside Place land if you tunneled I-90 from South Cove up the Fort Point Channel, and under the harbor all the way into Logan? Lets say the Big Dig spent $2 billion more to do the long tunnel route, or enhancing the per acre value of Waterside Place by about $250 million per acre. As you cant build high on Waterside Place (because of Logan and the FAA) I think anything you build there ought to have a construction cost of $10,000 a square foot to rationalize the appreciated value of the land parcel. That will be a monumental building worth a day's journey to view.

 

[Roxxma]

keep in mind that rebuilding Potsdamer Platz und Leipziger Platz was more than a mere redevelopment of vacant land. These were, until WWII (and for some time after the war until the building of the Wall) vibrant public business and transportation hubs. The building and fall of the Berlin Wall had to be countered by redevelopment that not only would reknit the areas and restore the street patterns severed by the wall, but also act as a proverbial "fuck you" to the what the builders of the Wall did to that city.

 

[Ron Newman]

Someone above suggested LL Bean as a tenant. I would certainly shop there if they opened one. This location is much more convenient than Burlington Wayside Commons (not to mention Freeport, Maine).

 

[Bobby Digital]

^ maybe LL Bean would succeed here, maybe it wouldnt.... Its mainly a catalog product is it not? its great if this is seen as mainly as a showroom that advertises, but not a revenue generator in itself.... look at cambridge soundworks... they used to have stores in greater boston, but they shrunk to just what? norwood? if LL Bean if prepared to lose money and look at it as an advertisement venture than LL Bean would be perfect.... but i think most of their business comes from the cataglog and internet. Obviously companies such as LL Bean KNOW brick and motor stores cant sustain themselves. But as showrooms, one store in Boston might be able to do the trick. People can touch, test and whatnot their products and maybe thats enough to generate excess sales in the boston area, and their store would be worth it.

 

[Ron Newman]

Huh? LL Bean used to have just one store, the big one in Freeport. In recent years they have added six other full-price retail stores (including Burlington MA) and twelve off-price outlet stores. Obviously they think they have a future in brick-and-mortar stores.

 

[castevens]

My parents would take a trip to Freeport Maine at least 3 times a year to go to the LLBeane store. Now they're happy to go up to Burlington, and not all the way up to Maine.

 

[kz1000ps]

And were there a store in Boston (or at least one I could access without needing a car), I wouldn't have had to spend $10 out of a $50 gift certificate on shipping and handling, like I recently did.

 

[Ron Newman]

off-topic aside: the #350 bus from Alewife goes to the Burlington store. Not terribly convenient, but possible.

 

[Roxxma]

off-topic aside: the #350 bus from Alewife goes to the Burlington store. Not terribly convenient, but possible.

The 354 bus via Woburn terminates very close to there as well. It is billed as the Woburn Express bus, but terminates on Van De Graff Drive, well inside of Burlington's corporate boundries.

 

[czsz]

Boston is the capital of New England, and LL Bean is a distinctively New England store. If it has a presence here, it should be a flagship on Boylston St., not a mall outlet like those that will eventually exist from Miami to Minneapolis.

 

[kz1000ps]

6/27:

 

[TheBostonBoy]

Wow, great pics kz. These are good because these are like the first ground pics we have seen of the site, instead of the usual aerial shots we see. This is great, gives you a lot better idea of how big the site is and whatnot