0 New Boston Skyscrapers will Make — or Brake — the Skyline

Copley square office buildings in Boston

Credit: Boston Globe

The greater Boston audience has an opinion about just about anything, including our skyline. This poses a challenge to Boston’s strongest developers and architects to reshape our city into something elegant, energizing, and functional.

From the Boston Globe:

No matter how elegantly they may be paved or planted, urban plazas are boring, windy, and little used, especially in weather like ours. The Prudential, back before its Arctic plazas were filled in with shopping arcades, was a good example. The Federal Reserve Bank, next to South Station, is another. It’s a handsome, eloquent Diva tower behind a plaza that has the charm of a recently abandoned battlefield.

As far as the public is concerned, cities aren’t made of buildings and plazas, anyway. Cities are made of streets and parks. From the point of view of urban design, the buildings are there to shape those public spaces and feed them with energy.

0 Tower Height Contended on Boston Harbor Garage Site

rendering of the proposed towers at Boston Harbor

Credit: Boston Globe

The Boston Waterfront will continue to change and be the gateway to our city.  City Hall has moved to the positive side, but it appears not all the abutters are for the size of the Harbor Garage site.

From the Boston Globe:

Boston Redevelopment Authority officials said they plan to recommend Wednesday that a skyscraper on the site of the Boston Harbor Garage be allowed to reach up to 600 feet. That would essentially match the taller of the two buildings Chiofaro has proposed for the property and would be far taller than any other neighboring building overlooking the harbor.

But Chiofaro would not get everything he wants: City officials will propose to limit development at the garage site to 900,000 square feet. The two-building complex proposed by Chiofaro last year would total 1.3 million square feet, with a mix of offices, residential units, and other uses…Chiofaro declined to comment, so it’s unclear whether the smaller building area would limit the developer to one tower instead of two.

0 Boston Developers Contending for Financial District Tower

new Boston office tower financial district

Rendering of Accordia Partners’ proposed tower. Credit: Boston Globe

The shuttered garage that falls between Devonshire and Federal Street in the core of Boston’s Financial District shines brightly as an opportunity for eight suitors to make their mark on the Boston Skyline.  Tenants in recent quarters have flocked Downtown to take advantage of value rents and infrastructure driving office vacancy down to 10 percent.

The Boston Globe details the eight developers “have filed proposals for a skyscraper, several of which would be nearly as tall as the city’s largest, the Hancock Tower, on the site of a city-owned parking garage that is now closed. The competitors include a who’s who of local and national developers, a measure of how strong Boston’s real estate market has become…If approved, the Winthrop Square project would add another tower to the fast-changing Boston skyline. Already, five towers over 600 feet are proposed or are being built while other large complexes are under development downtown.”

You can read the full article on the Globe website

0 Boston Harbor Garage Towers Discussion Continues

Rendering of the proposed towers at Boston Harbor Garage

Credit: Bostinno/Streetwise

How many towers can the 1.3 acre site on the waterfront support?

Graphic renderings of the proposed Boston Harbor Garage towers were recently unveiled; the towers would replace the Harbor Garage on India Street.

From Banker & Tradesman:

“‘They told us that being allowed to build that much would be considered a valuable business opportunity by any experienced developer,’ Lee Kozol, chair of the Harbor Towers Garage committee, said in a statement. The economic analysis has been submitted to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which is reviewing conceptual plans for the project…for the project to go forward in its current form, the BRA would have to waive maximum height and minimum open space limits for waterfront developments.”