Tag Archives: real estate development Boston

Peace, good will

What do you want for Christmas? Maybe it’s the same as what I want. It’s peace. A refuge from vitriol. A haven from such absurdities as Stephen Bannon running the country and Ben Carson running HUD. A sanctuary from a nation that still appears to be fighting the Civil War in its red state/blue state configuration.

We won’t have that peace nationally. So I’m hoping we can find it here in Massachusetts. We’re in a good place. We welcome all comers. Democrats like the Republican governor, Charlie Baker. It feels as if he wants what is good for the commonwealth. Mayor Walsh also seems to promote policies good for a majority of the people.

Even if we don’t agree with these leaders on all matters, they are not corrupt, foolish, random, mean or narcissistic.

Most business leaders in Boston are also as good as you can get. They may or may not be people you’d want as friends and some of them may have inflated opinions of themselves, but as far as I can tell, no one here is running a place like Wells Fargo, where unreasonable goals set off fraud.

We can begin our peaceful, gracious, generous behavior with two items of contention—naturally they would be real estate developments. With the apparent blessing of the mayor and the Boston Planning and Development Agency, Millennium Partners wants to build a tower that, contrary to state law, will cast shadows on the Common and the Public Garden. I don’t know how, but let’s work this out.

The developers are not bad guys. They live here, and have done so for a long time. Early on they took a chance on what used to be known as the Combat Zone and built the Ritz Carlton Hotel and Residences, which helped transform that dingy neighborhood. Millennium Place may be ridiculed for its high-priced residences, but it is a substantial improvement over the mid-century Filene’s building that formerly occupied the site. And the developers saved the older Filene’s building. So they’ve not been bad for Boston.

The protectors of the Common are also not bad people. They are legitimately concerned about keeping the oldest park in the nation healthy, and that means it must have a certain amount of sunlight. The Friends of the Public Garden, which also helps keep the Common in good shape, are some of the best citizens in Boston, with selfless determination to make the parks work for Bostonians as well as the tourists who come to see what history is all about.

The other place that needs some cooperation is the Lewis Wharf Hotel. Let’s just stop the demonization of the developers and the opponents. This parking lot and the waterfront both need serious attention. I don’t have an opinion on the design but surely there can be a meeting of the minds over what is appropriate, what is a good treatment of the Harbor Walk and what will work for everyone. A hotel seems to be an appropriate use. Its design is mostly within the zoning. If people of good will can sit down and hammer out a solution, it would be good for the whole city.

This could sound fairly Pollyanna-ish. But 2016 has been such a terrible, mean, nasty piece of work on the national scene that it should end. Given our soon-to-be president’s nature, 2017 will probably not be better. Here, however, locally, we can reject that behavior. Almost all of us involved in these struggles are not in it for ourselves, but for the good of our city. Let’s sit down, agree to respect one another, and resolve disputes companionably.

We shouldn’t take the national scene as our model.

Interesting passageways are returning

In 2010 in this column, I urged developers to create permeability at the ground level of big buildings. I especially wanted them to replicate the historic little lanes of downtown Boston—Spring Lane, Pi Alley, Winthrop Lane—or to create Boston versions of the Burlington or Prince’s Arcade in London and Paris’s passage couverts. These covered public walkways, open at each end and lined with small shops, cut through the ground level of big buildings.

Open passageways were forgotten in Boston throughout the city’s first fifty years of building skyscrapers. I can identify two. One is not in Boston. It is the passageway off Brattle Street in Harvard Square formed by concrete and glass buildings by Josep Lluis Sert, Walter Gropius and Benjamin Thompson. The Harvest Restaurant lies along this path. The other is the Rowes Wharf rotunda, not a linear passageway, but at least a pedestrian opening in a large building.

But now there is good news on the permeability front. Three developers are incorporating open passageways and arcades into their plans. I don’t think it was because of my column. But I’m pleased.

Each plan is different. The first to emerge will be an arcade at Avalon Bay’s Nashua Street Residences. These two buildings, 34 and 38 stories tall, are rising behind the Tip O’Neill Federal Building and beside North Station/TD Garden near where Nashua Street meets Lomasney Way in the Bulfinch Triangle.

The 25-foot high covered arcade will run north and south between Avalon Bay’s buildings and North Station/TD Garden. Its 30-foot width can handle the heavy commuter foot traffic spilling from the station toward MGH, Mass. Eye and Ear and farther destinations.

Conveniently for those commuters and for Boston Garden fans, shops and restaurants will fill the west side of the passageway, said Scott Dale, senior vice president at Avalon Bay.

The arcade will turn left and spill out into the West End. Along this section will be the lobby for the residences.

The arcade solved the problem of getting pedestrians safely through the site, said Dale. It is too early to know what shops might occupy the spaces but one hopes they are small, varied and satisfying. It is a felicitous solution and should be finished in fall, 2017.

Related Beal’s Congress Square is another development that will include a public passageway—one that has been there since colonial days. Quaker Lane got its name from a Quaker Meeting House that long ago occupied an adjacent site. The narrow lane is not a straight shot. It has two parts. One path connects Congress and Devonshire streets. About halfway along that path another L-shaped path meets it. That portion began at Congress Street.

The Congress Square project renovates several older buildings around Quaker Lane and includes new construction filling in a parking lot. Its letter of intent was filed with the Boston Redevelopment Authority on October 31.

Related Beal is not yet specific about Quaker Lane. “As part of our redevelopment plans for Congress Square, we will be activating Quaker Lane, which bisects the property and will connect Post Office Square to Faneuil Hall. We look forward to transforming this space into an urban oasis for pedestrians, lined with boutiques, indoor and outdoor cafes and restaurants, and distinct retail venues,” said

Stephen N. Faber, executive vice president of Related Beal, in a quote provided by his public relations firm.

Sounds like a good revival of a forgotten passageway.

Don Chiofaro also has plans for a pedestrian passageway in his Harbor Garage project. It is from 70 to 172 feet wide, extends between two proposed buildings from the Greenway to the harbor and is protected from the weather by a retractable glass roof. It is a linear passageway, but it evokes Rowes Wharf’s rotunda in its drama and spaciousness. The most recent news about this project is that neighbors in Harbor Towers’s two buildings inexplicably object to Chiofaro’s two buildings, and have proposed one building only. Their plan would eliminate this tantalizing path to the harbor, one of the best features of Chiofaro’s proposal. The path would also help mitigate the barrier Harbor Towers itself now presents in enabling the public to get to the waterfront.

This will get worked out, but the features these three developers have deployed to make new developments hark back to historical Boston, when public passageways were common, will mean a richer pedestrian life for us all. Let’s hope subsequent projects incorporate such permeability into their plans.