No Common Ground

Monday, December 8, 2008

To a large extent, the future of the Fort Point Channel district of Boston will be decided tomorrow night, when the Boston Landmarks Commission is expected to vote on a set of rules for new development.

Many in the neighborhood have been calling for these restrictions, which will go beyond zoning, for years.

It was clear from a Boston Redevelopment Authority neighborhood hearing last week that there will be a lot of unhappy people when this gets decided.

The district is almost certain to be voted a landmark district, and about 40 pages of restrictions will be implemented.

They will protect the historic industrial buildings, treasures that exist in the neighborhood, and they will allow the measure of development envisioned in the so-called 100-acres master plan, committed to by the city about two years ago. That called for a third residential, a third office, and a third retail in the neighborhood, totaling about six million square feet when it's fully built out, years from now. Much of it is still parking lots.

The city has been wrestling with a situation in which artists and others are unhappy that more residential units are not being built early on, in what is still a predominantly commercial area.

But the market doesn't want that, and two projects in particularly are at issue now. Both recently were approved for office use, though earlier they were envisioned as residential, perhaps homes for some of the artists displaced after Boston Wharf Co. sold its holdings and investor developers moved in.

They are 316-322 Summer St., two beautiful buildings now owned by Lincoln Property Co., and a Melcher Street complex, at 49-51-63, owned by Archon Group.

Kairos Shen, the city's chief planner, led a discussion of the Melcher Street project, which some residents have never liked, and described a compromise that the city brokered to try to make approval of the project more palatable. It involved creating some space in the rear of the 319 A St. building for artists' work space for two years. They would pay $9 a square foot, or perhaps $750 a month for a space the size a decent studio apartment.

The city is also working out a somewhat extraordinary deal, he said, in which one or more building would be virtually donated to the community for artists' live-work space in the future. It would be similar to the Midway Studios piece of Channel Center, also in the neighborhood and previously developed for artists amid market-rate luxury condos. Funding for the development, which might be at 327 Summer St., would have to be forthcoming.

For quite awhile, the city stood against conversion of 316-322 Summer into office instead of residential.

But the market for housing isn't getting better fast, and the buildings clearly would sit empty if they had to wait for condo conversion.

"Everybody knows the market has shifted a great deal," said Shen. "There's no financing for residential projects of that kind here."

The 316-322 building will have about 140,000 square feet of office space. Melcher Street has something under 50,000, and a one-story addition is now approved for the taller, middle building of the three-building set.

The four owners of the district, south of Summer Street, will spend about $65 million of their own money for infrastructure development as the new neighborhood materializes -- for streets and sidewalks and parks and other open space.

The rooftop addition proposed for Melcher Street would conform to the landmark rules as proposed, Shen said, even though, being already approved, it doesn't have to.

ADD, Inc., the architectural firm, moved from Cambridge and bought 311 Summer St. nearby, renovated it, and added a one- story rooftop floor. It is set back considerably from the building's edge. But even so it can be seen from Summer Street -- and under strict interpretation of the landmark guidelines might not have been allowed had they already been in effect.

Most certainly the three-story, irregularly positioned, modern glass floors that Berkeley Investments Inc. put on top of its FP3 residential-and-restaurant complex on Congress Street would not have happened.

The additional floor on the roof on Melcher Street is set back 24-25 feet from the street, said architech Joel Bargmann of Bargmann Hendrie + Archetype, Inc.

*******

In a discussion or debate that went on more than two hours, about the two projects and the landmark rules that were on everyone's mind, Steve Hollinger, an active 18-year resident of the neighborhood, complained that no recreational park space is currently under construction.

He said the BRA is essentially "selling" variances to developers. He said he had understood that the rooftop addition was worth about $18 million to the developer. (A developer's representative said it was less than a third of that.) "These projects are groundbreaking," he said. "They're going to have a ripple effect across the city."

"Fort Point is a back office to the Financial District -- that's how these guys see it," Hollinger said. "You're never going to see the green space."

Hollinger called the deal extending the artists' leases in another building (this was down to the wire; the leases have just expired) "cynical, very divisive, unlawful."

"This is my backyard," he said. And many people applauded.

Shen took issue with the "cynical" charge, saying that artists had initiated discussions on this as a solution to their being moved out, and city officials then negotiated.

Shen said he regretted that a sufficient number of development projects are not getting under way to create sizable amounts of open space now.

But he noted that Seaport Square, the former Frank McCourt land on the South Boston Waterfront, will have parks including one large one adjacent to another large on across Northern Avenue at Fan Pier.

In fact, that Fan Pier park, next to its emerging marina, will be built immediately after the first office building is completed, in late 2010 -- even before the next planned piece of Fan Pier, a hotel and residential building, is constructed.

John Matteson of Archon addressed some residents' charges that it had purchased and just flipped buildings for profit.

He said Archon bought 17, almost all commercial, buildings, with average occupancy of 25 percent.

Archon renovated parts of and leased up and sold 263 Summer -- restoring also the distinctive Boston Wharf Co. Real Estate sign on top.

The company combined 273 and 281, leased it up, and sold it.

It sold 311 Summer to ADD, Inc, which now occupies the building.

Archon's 300 A St. was leased to Elkus Manfredi Architects. And the only building left unrenovated was 316-322, he said, which Archon sold to Lincoln.

A Lincoln executive said the company had passed on five tenants who wanted to lease 316-322 the way it is, so that it could be renovated, and he said Lincoln is ready to go, with financing.

Claudia Ravaschiere, an artist, told a representative of Archon partner Tony Goldman, "You have not kept one promise. It's a dark office park. You cut the neighborhood in half. To you it's just real estate. To us it's a neighborhood."

Said Shen: "We are trying to take advantage of two projects that don't require financing and move the neighborhood forward. We believe it will take a few cycles to build out."

Fort Point Channel resident Valerie Burns said neighbors opposed both projects and both were now being re-presented unchanged. "If that isn't cynical I don't know what is," she said. "This is a situation of the city supporting the developers and not the community."

"This is a ridiculous kind of proposal," Burns said, and should conform to the landmark rules, even though they are not yet officially in effect.

*******

Shen mused that "I wish I worked in China," where markets don't matter so much, and a central authority can dictate what it wants, or the neighborhood wants, and the funds are always available. But, "I think in the states we do a better job," he said. "It's more organic."

"Unfortunately," he said, "we are beholden to the market in terms of what we can create."

Much of the audience of 80 or so applauded after angry comments of residents, but one ADD Inc. employee noted the area can use some more office space -- with people in it.

His office has no restaurant, as was planned on the A Street level, below Summer, because there is not enough foot traffic.

"Give it time," he said. "Build these now. Bring in money. Residences will happen." He got some applause too.

The city envisions 8,000 new residences on the whole waterfront, including about 2,000 in the 100 acres.

But there's no question artists have left, after having inhabited the neighborhood -- and, really, helping create the attraction -- for years. One estimate was 100 are gone. "We've lost 10 buildings," said a 23-year resident.

Except for a few charges of cynicism, some suggestions of profiteering, and some voices anguished out of frustration, it was mostly civil the other night.

But the gulf is huge.

What some of the artists and neighbors really wanted to say was: We were here first, and we should control it. We want what is here preserved, and we don't want it commercialized.

What some of the developers wanted to say was: Hey, we're not trying to destroy something, we're trying to improve it. No, we're not nonprofits, and we like these buildings as much as you do. But in order to preserve them and update them and make them attractive to new workers and residents, they've got to grow.

It got us thinking about zoning. Once upon a time, zoning kept industry in one part of town and homes in another. That way conflicts were minimized concerning new buildings, as well as noise and bother. Lifestyles were protected.

Now we worship mixed use. Everything folded in together.

Clearly it won't be easy.

On Tuesday we'll see just what amendments have been made to the landmark rules that were proposed for the Fort Point Channel.

The big question is whether they are labeled "guidelines," in which case they are expected to be treated with more rather than less flexibility. Or whether they are just stated, meaning they would always or more often be adhered to.

The other big question is whether commercial owners, as well as residential representatives, will have a seat or two on the commission that will interpret the rules with respect to future developments. We hear they will.




The BRA's Kairos Shen at Fort Point Channel community meeting.


316-322 Summer St., whose developer got the city's go-ahead to develop as office space.


FP3 on Congress Street (to the right of the Boston Fire Museum), a buildings treatment that almost certainly could not be repeated under landmarking rules.


311 Summer St., a building with a one-story addition. Because it can be seen from the street, it would probably not be allowed under landmarking rules.



New on the Charles
Community Rowing Inc. has the handsome new building on Nonantum Road in Brighton.

We know a young man who spends a lot of after-school hours there, and we were going to tell you all about it. But The Boston Globe's award-winning architecture critic, Robert Campbell, beat us to it.

His very positive (and deserved) review was in Sunday's Globe.

So we'll let you read about this unique and fitting structure there , and here are some pictures we took of it shortly after it opened this fall.