WBZ-TV/CBS Studio Development Project | 1170-2000 Soldiers Field Road | Allston

This development would be helped greatly if they transplant a small forest of 200 foot Sierra redwoods bordering Soldiers Field Road.

I don't believe humans actually write this stuff anymore. I believe there is template text that is available for purchase from Microsoft's Windows store. You specify what key words must be in a paragraph, and the text-writer bot does the rest.
The Project reimagines the Site through the lenses of community and connectivity, sustainability, health & wellness, and scale, with buildings that reinforce the urban street edge and new open space that creates a publicly accessible corridor through the Site
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I think it looks nice and is a major improvement. Wish it had more housing.
 
curcuas said:
I think it looks nice and is a major improvement. Wish it had more housing.
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I wish it were ALL residential. It would be nice if it was something that provided a connection between the Lower Allston neighborhood and the park across Soldiers Field Road. Of course it would need better pedestrian access across the road, of which there is almost none at the moment. And as someone else mentioned above there will be no people hanging out on this campus as shown in the renderings.

I'm biased, my apartment looks out onto this site.
 
Tangent.
As part of the obligatory community benefits "extortion" that will be inevitable with this, a modest proposal but something with real value: restoration and repurposing of the original Institute of Contemporary Arts building directly across the street in Christian Herter park. This wonderful mid-century gem has been grossly abused and neglected for almost all of it's sad 60+ years. Built as part of the ill-fated Metropolitan Boston Arts Center along with the more successful and still somewhat active Publick Theater amphitheater it lasted as the ICA home for only a few years and then was left to rot for decades, the surrounding "jungle" encroaching upon and hiding it from sight. One end of it crosses a man-made moat and connects to the artificial island where the amphitheater is.

2017 WBUR article https://www.wbur.org/news/2017/03/20/herter-park-allston-summer

1961 photo. Amphitheater on the left when it was covered by a giant tent, ICA on the right.
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The tent was raised in the spring then taken down for the winter.
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atlantaden said:
I like that squiggle!!! :love:
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So do I. So much so that I wish it was much more than a squiggle!

Seriously, though, I see ~90% lab-10% resdiential there. Boston drastically needs to up the housing game. I'm glad some pressure forced this at least half-assed improvement to the project.
 
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To be fair, this is next to a lot of new apartment growth and a big resi neighborhood.
 
In light of the forthcoming Soldier's Field Road diet, this seems to have pretty poor street-level interaction.
 
I don't mean to height fetish, but this is along a river and not far from the MA Pike on the other side. Why not build tall, sort of a modern co-op City or LIC?

I work in life science and get the rabid demand for lab space, but so much of Boston is historically preserved (for good reasons) or have shadow laws or tons of NIMBYs.
 
6 story residential -> another paperboard structure with vinyl and alucobond glued on.
 
Czervik.Construction said:
I don't mean to height fetish, but this is along a river and not far from the MA Pike on the other side. Why not build tall, sort of a modern co-op City or LIC?

I work in life science and get the rabid demand for lab space, but so much of Boston is historically preserved (for good reasons) or have shadow laws or tons of NIMBYs.
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There is some height going in on the Boston Skating Club parcel further down. It's not really the business National Development is in.
 
It's also possible the economics don't work for more vertical square footage in the lab component. There's ~4 million square feet of lab space under construction right now, much of it w/o signed tenants, and something like 1.5 million square feet of vacant lab space on the market (scroll down and look for the "life sciences report" PDF link: https://www.nmrk.com/insights/market-report/boston-market-reports), so it's a risk to try and pack more onto the site. Rents may get pulled down in the next couple years, depending on whether the Fed turns the money faucet back on, which could in turn make VCs want to do the same. And with building height an unsettled political issue in Allston, more altitude could mean more money spent on lawyers and consultants.
 
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