Whats left to build on?

Isn't the silver line and I-90 through the seaport tunneled through fill in a flood plain?
 
No it is in a potential flood zone because of the ocean but it is not in the Charles Basin flood zone which I assume is the difference.

I'm sure you could build a tunnel but the cost would be incredibly high. I think it would have to be built as though it was an underwater tunnel and the portals would need to be protected from flooding somehow and I am not sure how that could be done.
 
TallIsGood said:
Isn't the silver line and I-90 through the seaport tunneled through fill in a flood plain?
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Not the kind of mush Beacon Park is. That was a landfilled in 1864 for a horse trotting grounds. It was the first landfilling segment of the Back Bay using the fill they brought in from Needham Highlands to do the rest of the Charles Basin fill, and was the test parcel before they moved on to the basin fill east of Kenmore that would actually hold buildings and a street grid. Prior to Beacon Park all the landfilling they had done was from hilltop mining off the tip of Beacon Hill to fill in all the small ponds in downtown, widen the Shawmut Peninsula isthmus, and manicure the wharves with boulders and gravel. There's a reason why it was nothing but trotting grounds, rail yards, and roads for 150 years. They invented their tidal flats landfilling technique there before applying it on the whole rest of Back Bay, South Bay, and Dot Bay.


Before the next inevitable question comes up...YES, there are height limits because of the soil properties. It's not known exactly what they are because nobody is proposing anything supertall, but there are finite limits quite a bit lower than the Logan limits because it just gets too bloody expensive to drive foundation pilings deep enough to stay put for 100 years in that experimental mush. And that is exactly the reason why you can't tunnel in it, either. Not that there is ever ever going to be a need to tunnel through that blank a slate of wide open space that won't be tapped out for another 25 years at the rate Harvard's cadillacing it with its Allston Master Plan.
 
citylover94 said:
No it is in a potential flood zone because of the ocean but it is not in the Charles Basin flood zone which I assume is the difference.

I'm sure you could build a tunnel but the cost would be incredibly high. I think it would have to be built as though it was an underwater tunnel and the portals would need to be protected from flooding somehow and I am not sure how that could be done.
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Yep...this. Pumps, pumps, armada of pumps. And to some degree just letting 'er flood by-design like Storrow and the Esplanade by BU and Magazine Beach are designed to when the Basin just can't hold any more after a big storm with big storm surge constraining the dam's outflow throughput into the Harbor.

Requires tricky anchoring of the tunnel because that fill slowly shifts over century-level lengths of time like an ultra-slow lava lamp. It wouldn't have to be something like the Blue Line tunnel or Ted under the Harbor which are semi- free-floating to handle the soil fluidity of a major water crossing. But it would have to be land tunneling with a lot of extra support doodads senselessly driving up the cost. Because it's much dodgier-condition fill than the Back Bay street grid the Green Line is built through you'd have to have some sort of anchoring system like all the hermetically sealed wood posts driven all under the Back Bay in a giant geometric grid before the streets were laid out on top. Those are what allows the century-level soil fluidity to move around without any surface and sub-street structures moving with it.

But do it under dodgier-condition fill from before they knew what the hell they were doing. So, considerably harder than what anchors the Boylston St. subway.


That is never ever going to be worth the cost of over-over-engineering. If you even needed to in the first place, which you don't because it's a barren slab of empty land that Harvard is slow-walking along.
 
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Someone remind me why Storrow is necessary? Just turn it into a normal city street.

(I think it's been a year or two since I've ranted about this.)
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
You can't anything underground on mid- 19th century...poorly lanfilled...silt on a Charles Basin flood plain. Nip/tuck the transpo spawl, absolutely, but you are not making it invisible.
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Under that logic Back Bay's Pru or Hancock shouldn't exist. Back Bay was all filled in swamp. There's always a way.

Similarly, Kendall Sq (as was much of Cambridge) was also marshland that was pumped and pumped and pumped-out over the centuries. Also hence the title of "Cambridge Port" in Central Sq. or Lechmere downriver.

The height of the stone walls along that section of the Charles River can be heightened again too. Note, that will have to be done eventually anyways due to inevitable sea level rise.
 
Digital_Islandboy said:
Under that logic Back Bay's Pru or Hancock shouldn't exist. Back Bay was all filled in swamp. There's always a way.

Similarly, Kendall Sq (as was much of Cambridge) was also marshland that was pumped and pumped and pumped-out over the centuries. Also hence the title of "Cambridge Port" in Central Sq. or Lechmere downriver.

The height of the stone walls along that section of the Charles River can be heightened again too. Note, that will have to be done eventually anyways due to inevitable sea level rise.
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Asked/answered in the post. BP was poorly-done early landfill not sunk with pilings to support tall structures. Everything you cite is irrelevant to THAT landfill parcel and THAT parcel only. It's not surface flooding, it's fact that BP and BP only was not prepped for slow-creep liquefaction at the century level. You can't fix that without un-landfilling and re-landfilling that segment of basin.
 
Could BHCC sell some of their lots directly adjacent to the community college orange line station for development? Even selling one often and turning the other into a garage would make financial sense.
 
tysmith95 said:
Could BHCC sell some of their lots directly adjacent to the community college orange line station for development? Even selling one often and turning the other into a garage would make financial sense.
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I've always envisioned a developer getting all the land BHCC owns in turn for a new and (closely/same parcel) relocated BHCC building/campus. I don't know how it would work out or if it would even make any financial sense, but that's how I've always wanted them to handle that set of lots along 93.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
Asked/answered in the post. BP was poorly-done early landfill not sunk with pilings to support tall structures. Everything you cite is irrelevant to THAT landfill parcel and THAT parcel only. It's not surface flooding, it's fact that BP and BP only was not prepped for slow-creep liquefaction at the century level. You can't fix that without un-landfilling and re-landfilling that segment of basin.
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Sorry, I typed that, early on before your response and got side tracked before logging back in and posting it. Thanks for your very thorough post.
 
Now that Copley tower is DOA I played around with what a new tallest would look like here. Slanty roof and all.

rrSlGds.png


Here it is with the old render I had made with the dalton st garage, symphony garage...etc. The kitchen sink render.

vup8T8K.png



The scary part is these are all feasible, the hardest to get through would probably be in the symphony neighborhood, but if it were to come last and not be too obnoxiously tall...mayyyybe it could get through. Probably not though.
 
I also still think after the smoke clears on GCG/causeway this open triangular parcel could be a hot ticket once people get used to height in this area.


 
The Mission Main Apartments (roughly bounded by Smith, St. Alphonsus, Ward, and Parker in Mission Hill) could support some serious densification. It's a huge site (about 20 acres) of suburban garden-style apartments that practically borders both the Green and the Orange Lines. And it's surrounded by institutions that would likely put up (relatively) little NIMBY opposition.

Seems like they could add 1,000+ units of housing there without even trying very hard...
 
Justin7 said:
Someone remind me why Storrow is necessary? Just turn it into a normal city street.
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It'd make a great D-Line branch from North Station to Kenmore (and perhaps beyond to West Station), and a great bikeway too.

And once those had been prioritized, I'd give whatever local street / back alley functions make sense for local auto trips
 
JumboBuc said:
The Mission Main Apartments (roughly bounded by Smith, St. Alphonsus, Ward, and Parker in Mission Hill) could support some serious densification. It's a huge site (about 20 acres) of suburban garden-style apartments that practically borders both the Green and the Orange Lines. And it's surrounded by institutions that would likely put up (relatively) little NIMBY opposition.

Seems like they could add 1,000+ units of housing there without even trying very hard...
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I remember when those were built - the projects before were (I think) denser and pretty bad. I think its still all subsidized/section 8, and I would think Wentworth at the very least wouldn't want to see a return of a intensified housing project. Switching to a mixed income model might work, but then you get push back from existing residents and activist groups. Plus, all of that housing is only 14 years old at this point.
 
In the original Christian Science complex render there is a 291' tower at the edge of the complex. Who knows if once the units are sold in 1 Dalton if this could be back up in the air later on down the line. If they've looked at it before theres no reason they cant later once everything else comes together and has some time to settle.


csplaza-plans585.jpg
 
stick n move said:
In the original Christian Science complex render there is a 291' tower at the edge of the complex. Who knows if once the units are sold in 1 Dalton if this could be back up in the air later on down the line. If they've looked at it before theres no reason they cant later once everything else comes together and has some time to settle.


csplaza-plans585.jpg
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That model also shows the Midtown Motel site redeveloped with an 10 or 11 story project.
 
I wonder if the square footage of that tower got transferred to 1 Dalton to account for the extra 200' height bump it got. If that is the case, the third tower is probably off the table.
 
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