Whats left to build on?

[stefal]

I didnt paste the full article, that also appears to be a free article as I dont have a subscription and was able to see the full article. Either way I edited the post just incase.

They are free for the first 24 hours, then behind a paywall.

I am also upset about hear about places like Sligo in Davis Sq closing (although I'm not even sure that lab is still happening...?) but I disagree that it always goes this way. Lyndell's in Ball Sq is being rebuilt as a 5-over-1, and they plan to remain open during construction and eventually move back into the first floor: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2024/0...tomers-need-never-go-without-its-baked-goods/

I think that the difference here is that the landlord and the bakery owner have a good relationship and respect for each others' goals. I don't know why that isn't the case in more of the city. Probably corporate ownership of property?

It is definitely corporate ownership. While you can pull up Lyndell's as an example, I think it's more the exception rather than the norm. For the Sligo project, I can't imagine the executives in the UK for Scape really caring if they keep Sligo or Dragon Pizza on this project - they just want a return. Scape (probably the Boston team) did say they will "work with the existing businesses" to permanently or temporarily relocate them, but it seems like it wasn't going to financially work for many of them - I talked with the owner of Sligo about relocating, and he was going to apparently try, but didn't go through with it.

I think you'd need a local developer or standalone projects by small landowners (becoming less frequent now with cost of construction and land prices) to see more Lyndell's-type projects. That, and I'm not really sure you could recreate Sligo in a brand new lab building...

Similarly, it's partly a weak-government issue - the out-of-state company that has taken over Harvard is the same company now moving to Davis (not the Sligo parcel, but across the street), promising the same thing they promised in Harvard, but for some reason, Somerville didn't call them out on the fact that they have pushed out many of the small/local businesses and made Harvard much more corporate.


With all that said, I often reflect on how we're losing some pretty great local establishments in Davis for new lab buildings, when I'd consider there are some much easier parcels to work with directly in Davis - the former Wallgreens and adjacent parking lot, the two (large) parking lots on Day Street, this massive single-story commercial building, Winter Hill Bank, Dominos, and the many small infill plots across the square. It really is a great opportunity in my eyes - I'm sure the land prices are not cooperating, and the locals on the Facebook pages scream at the thought of anything taller than a public bench being built within a 5-mile radius of Davis, but in another world I guess...

 

[AndrewOnTheMBTA]

I was looking at the FAA height allowance map and found that a lot of notable buildings are squeezed in right into areas over where the heigh allowance changes. As there's a lot of low heigh allowances in buildable places like Seaport, Waterfront, South End, and so on. Was there an exception made for One Dalton, since it's right on the line of 500 ans 1000, and technically within 500 ft-600 ft? I've always thought this map explains a lot of why we struggle to get 500+ ft tall building proposals. Bank on Cambridge and Somerville to progress fater with 400-700 ft proposals...