Winthrop Center | 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

shawn said:
One has to wonder: if shadows for a few minutes a day during a few days out of the year are so catastrophically detrimental to the well-being of trees, how in God's green earth can the likes of Bryant Park exist? I was in Hong Kong Park last week and I had to repeatedly stop passerbys and ask, "Are those real trees? You'll have to excuse me, I'm from Boston, the trees in our parks shriek like banshees if a tall building's shadow touches them, shattering all glass within earshot."

It simply boggles the mind.
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OMFG you're awesome!
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

Greetings,

I hope this email finds you well. My name is Ronald Claude, and I am Councilor Pressley’s Back Bay and Beacon Hill Liaison and her Liaison to the BPDA. You are receiving this email because you have contacted Councilor Pressley about the 115 Winthrop Square project; I wanted to make you aware of the public hearing taking place on Monday, April 24, 2017 at 1:30pm here at City Hall.

Attached to this email is the Docket Sheet and Public Hearing Notice for your convenience. They may also be found online here: https://www.boston.gov/public-notices/24016

WHAT: A hearing on a home rule petition for a special law re: “An Act Protecting Sunlight and Promoting Economic Development in the City of Boston.”

COMMITTEE: Government Operations

WHERE: Boston City Hall, City Council, Iannella Chamber, 5th floor OR
Broadcast Live on Comcast 8/RCN 82/ Verizon 1964 or streamed at: boston.gov/city-council-tv

WHEN: Monday, April 24th 1:30PM


This matter was sponsored by Councilor Bill Linehan and referred to the Committee on April 12, 2017.

NOTICE: The Boston City Council may have a quorum in attendance due to standing committees of the City Council consisting of both voting and non-voting members. However, members attending this duly posted meeting are participating and deliberating only in conjunction with the business of the standing committee.

Who can attend?
Members of the public are cordially invited to attend and testify. If you have not testified at a Council hearing before, please arrive five (5) minutes before the call of the hearing to sign up and become familiar with the hearing format, testimony locations and sound system. Please bring fifteen (15) copies of any written documentation you wish to present at the hearing.
Written comments may be made part of the record and available to all Councilors by sending them by email, fax or mail to arrive before the hearing, please use the information below.

Councilor Pressley and I greatly appreciate your input. Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any questions.

My best,
Ronald
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

I like many of us appreciate the transit improvements the Duke made when he was in office. However there's something major that liberals nowadays are missing, which annoys me because I'm a pretty progressive guy.

IF you willingly piss away 153M dollars so somebody can build a tall building near other tall buildings over a nonsensical shadows on December mornings issue, you cannot come back and ask the general public to make up that amount via tax hikes. This windfall apparently is being put to good use from what I've read, but if that's not good enough for NIMBY's simply put these things (schools, transportation, parks,etc) won't get funded, because the public at large is going to say F that, we should have taken the non-tax revenue when offered. Frankly, I don't blame the taxpayers if that's how this plays out. At some point people need to stop kowtowing down to NIMBY's as they're costing people real money to fix real problems.
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

odurandina said:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion...out-shadows/D8ig9nUa3OZZ6hPCxQOimO/story.html
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Are you f-ing kidding me, Duke? You want to restart the public process? You're going to miss the development cycle and cost the city $150 million because you were too lazy to pay attention to the multi-year public hearing process that this project already has had?

The reality is that this project is nowhere near the Common. It's not like the pencil tower on Tremont. I get that. This is in an entirely different neighborhood. The comparison simply isn't valid, and the shadow studies have been done to death. There's nothing left to do.

This project has been in public review hell for 10 years. What's another 10? Right, Mike? You can't plausibly tell me that you believe this garage needs to be redeveloped and write whiny hedge fests like this. This is the project. Vote it up or vote it down and accept that you get a derelict garage in the heart of downtown for another decade and you lose all the public benefits that can be achieved with $150 million, but for the love of all that is holy stop wringing your hands and babbling about the "process" being wrong.

I WISH this City had the balls to be anti-development, like Paris does. It can't even commit to that.
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

Agree with all these points, complete BS if this doesn't get built.

What are the chances this could come down to a city wide vote?
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

617 said:
Agree with all these points, complete BS if this doesn't get built.

What are the chances this could come down to a city wide vote?
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I dunno, but that would be cool.
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

Anyone knows whats going on at the hearing? I think the city should have chosen a different hearing location rather than city hall. This is right in the NIMBY playground.
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

remarkable exchanges between councilors and BPDA Director Golden....

this is as juicy as it gets!

Golden just demonstrated that allowing 115 Wintrhop to go up, they will be in effect, ridding the Common of worse shadows in the future by development currently allowed under the shadow law built closer to Tremont....
 
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Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

odurandina said:
remarkable exchanges between councilors and BPDA Director Golden....

this is as juicy as it gets!

Golden just demonstrated that allowing 115 Wintrhop to go up, they will be in effect, ridding the Common of worse shadows in the future by development currently allowed under the shadow law built closer to Tremont....
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I don't think I'm quite getting this...could you explain to me like I'm six. :)
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

Coyote137 said:
I don't think I'm quite getting this...could you explain to me like I'm six. :)
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The changed law would prevent more development than the current law does, but it would specifically allow 115 Federal. It's basically saying "okay, but just this once..."

It's a money grab by the City of Boston, since 115 Federal is worth so much more to them than any potential future development would be.
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

–indeed (via the sale of the site). Even i'm being convinced by this discussion that Accordia wasn't dense and fat enough, not absurd enough to prevent plants and children in Franklin Park from dying. Thanks to Almighty God for the big fatty at 115 Wintrhop Square.

i just hope 1 Bromfield isn't going to be flunked down to 280'. ...because shadow wise, since height isn't its only limiting factor.... as it's its actual location that would come very close to slicing off the Common far northeast corner with Morning Deathshadow.
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

We're about to get Galered.

ok, it's his partner in crime, Liz from Friends of the Garden...



Update;

Good God.

(paraphrasing) "fungi and pathogens..... will be greatly enhanced and threaten to kill everything."

then, by the logic being presented,

how the fuck does anything grow in Post Office Square?
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

i was interested to hear that they had to remove some cherry trees on the tremont side of the common b/c new(ish) shadows cast by the ritz and other newer buildings had caused them to begin to wither. assuming that's not a load of BS, that sort of thing lends a little bit of credence to at least some level of concern. i'm still all-in on this tower (still wish the design was a little more inspired, but it's not terrible), but im feeling more sympathetic towards at least some of the opponents.
 
Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

Larkin just explained a bit of sKyscraper economics to the entrenched opponents.

by taking size off the top, you take away from the price tag disproportionately re; rapidly.

in ways that even the most astute AB'ers might miss.

i think in not so many words he hinted that by removing height, you also potentially reduce the value of the offices below.

perhaps in addition to the iconic stature of a tall tower, the public space is reduced, and perhaps the benefit/s that you're able to extend to the tenant visavis – private corporate spaces up near the top...

but i'm sure this represents only one of the reasons the public benefit quickly vanishes.
 
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Re: 115 Winthrop Square | Financial District

I don't much give a shit about this shadows on the Common thing, but I am curious on two points in the city hall discussion. And I don't have time to be watching it because I have to work for a living. So for those there, or watching, I've got three context questions:

1) Has anybody put into the conversation the background context of how much the other bids were? I think second highest was about $100M, though I also recall the bids were all confusing as hell to compare to one another because of the wildly varying "public benefits" packages.

Anyhow, with the caveat about uncertainty of what the runner-up package included in non-$ benefits, my point is that if they punt to that runner-up, whoever that was, it's not $153M of foregone income to the city, it's $53M (which is a boatload of money where I come from, but a smaller boatload than $153M). Has anyone noted that?

2) Has anybody put that $53M into context of Boston's annual budget? It's about 1.7% of the proposed FY18 budget. The full $153M, if for some reason all the runners-up went away forever (seems unlikely), would get closer to 4.9% of the annual budget. A nice little windfall either way, I can certainly see why the City wants it, but will sure as hell not be the end-all of budget struggles for all eternity.

3) Has anybody mentioned the other designs at all? I liked at least one of them more than Millenium's, and that was before this whole shadow thing reared it's dark head (see what I did there?).

I'm just curious if anyone's actually putting it context in any of those ways? Or is it all just shadows and moss and money and bloviation?

ETA: I thought of a fourth: has the FAA been mentioned?
 
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