Wentworth Mixed-Use Life Sciences Complex | 500 Huntington Ave | Fenway

Sweeney Field is going on the roof of the parking on parker St (converting lot to garage).
 
Some existing conditions from today 3/16
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shmessy said:
Wut?????

There is a DEARTH of housing and an explosion of labs. Have I walked into the wrong movie???????
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It is darkly humorous that commercial developments are required by code to account for where their workers will park their cars but need not make any consideration for where they will live.
 
king_vibe said:
It is darkly humorous that commercial developments are required by code to account for where their workers will park their cars but need not make any consideration for where they will live.
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I mean the city could also just loosen zoning for housing and/or grant more variances like they do for commercial space. The idea that it's commercial developers' fault is ridiculous and indicative of why we have this mess anyhow.
 
shmessy said:
Wut?????

There is a DEARTH of housing and an explosion of labs. Have I walked into the wrong movie???????
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This is like telling someone who’s dying of thirst that they need to stop eating so much.
 
Blackbird said:
This is like telling someone who’s dying of thirst that they need to stop eating so much.
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Actually, when someone is dying of thirst the most important thing is to give them WATER, rather than say a weirdly headscratching "Not everything has to be about water". ;)

I love the explosion of labs and hope we get hundreds more. But we have a dire shortage of housing that threatens Boston future potential to grow and attract the best and the brightest. Perhaps the post "Not everything has to be about housing" was made in jest.
 
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shmessy said:
Actually, when someone is dying of thirst the most important thing is to give them WATER, rather than say a weirdly headscratching "Not everything has to be about water". ;)

I love the explosion of labs and hope we get hundreds more. But we have a dire shortage of housing that threatens Boston future potential to grow and attract the best and the brightest. Perhaps the post "Not everything has to be about housing" was made in jest.
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A luxury apartment tower at Huntington and Ruggles might qualify as a drop of the needed water. Enough to moisten the lips, but not enough to solve the damn housing crisis. Look to the neighborhoods and the suburbs where tens of thousands of units of workforce and middle-income housing need to be built if we want to make a dent.

In the meantime, there’s no reason we can’t keep building labs too. Considering the surrounding transit, medical, and academic institutions, this isn’t a bad spot for that kind of use.
 
Blackbird said:
A luxury apartment tower at Huntington and Ruggles might qualify as a drop of the needed water. Enough to moisten the lips, but not enough to solve the damn housing crisis. Look to the neighborhoods and the suburbs where tens of thousands of units of workforce and middle-income housing need to be built if we want to make a dent.

In the meantime, there’s no reason we can’t keep building labs too. Considering the surrounding transit, medical, and academic institutions, this isn’t a bad spot for that kind of use.
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Directly across from one of the world’s largest art museums is exactly a “bad spot for that kind of use.”
 
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Blackbird said:
.......In the meantime, there’s no reason we can’t keep building labs too. Considering the surrounding transit, medical, and academic institutions, this isn’t a bad spot for that kind of use.
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What about the sentence " I love the explosion of labs and hope we get hundreds more. " says we cannot keep building labs? What do you NOT understand?

My reaction was to a post that read preposterously stated " Not everything has to be housing. " when less than 30% of new construction today is housing.

It cannot be more clearly laid out for you.
 
shmessy said:
My reaction was to a post that read preposterously stated " Not everything has to be housing. " when less than 30% of new construction today is housing.

It cannot be more clearly laid out for you.
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Because building labs doesn’t impact our ability to build housing. If this were housing, it’d be unaffordable and it would be a drop in the bucket toward that 30% number if that’s a real value.

king_vibe said:
Directly across from one of the worlds largest art museums is exactly a “bad spot for that kind of use.”
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Oh yeah, let’s fixate on the MFA and ignore Wentworth, Northeastern, MCPHS, Harvard Medical, and every hospital and research facility in the LMA. 🙄
 
Blackbird said:
A luxury apartment tower at Huntington and Ruggles might qualify as a drop of the needed water. Enough to moisten the lips, but not enough to solve the damn housing crisis. Look to the neighborhoods and the suburbs where tens of thousands of units of workforce and middle-income housing need to be built if we want to make a dent.

In the meantime, there’s no reason we can’t keep building labs too. Considering the surrounding transit, medical, and academic institutions, this isn’t a bad spot for that kind of use.
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Building a bunch of flimsy 5 over 1s in unwalkable suburbs with no transit access is a great way to turn thousands of new highly educated workers into people who want to leave as soon as possible.
 
king_vibe said:
Building a bunch of flimsy 5 over 1s in unwalkable suburbs with no transit access is a great way to turn thousands of new highly educated workers into people who want to leave as soon as possible.
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I completely agree!
 
king_vibe said:
Directly across from one of the world’s largest art museums is exactly a “bad spot for that kind of use.”
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Wentworth is an engineering school that trains a large number of people working in biotech. The idea that buildings housing academic and industrial space on their campus is a poor use because there's also an art museum nearby is ridiculous, and given the demographics of Wentworth, pretty classist too.
 
curcuas said:
Wentworth is an engineering school that trains a large number of people working in biotech. The idea that buildings housing academic and industrial space on their campus is a poor use because there's also an art museum nearby is ridiculous, and given the demographics of Wentworth, pretty classist too.
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Right, only people of a certain class live in homes.
 
Wrap it up folks, it is classist to build housing in Boston.
 
Commuter engineering school can't build labs on their campus because we need housing everywhere is *quite* the take.

I repeat: how on Earth is it going to solve anything to stop the construction of news labs and offices in central locations? Going deeper into dirigisme is going to do nothing good for the housing crisis, which is *entirely created* by the municipalities overregulating and banning the construction everywhere.
 
It is extremely classist to build labs on a commuter engineering school campus.
 
Why are we arguing over what a college wants to do with its own land on it's own campus? Especially Wentworth that has kept it's undergrad tuition to $19k a year, and graduate tuition to $20k and has already built multiple new dorm buildings for student housing in the past few years. I mean this was never going to be housing (affordable or otherwise) as WIT isn't in the business of building general housing, they have a mission of providing a quality and affordable education in the city.
 
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