Rethinking Government Center

Sunday, April 19, 2009

"City Hall Plaza was never really completed. We never figured out how to activate it," said Kairos Shen, the city's chief planner, who of course wasn't even born when it was created. Now, as the Boston Redevelopment Authority reaches its 50th anniversary, he, his staff, and others are brainstorming about the surrounding Government Center district. "Whether we like it or not, this plan has been completed. It's useful life as far as I'm concerned is over. What could it be?" ... Also, The Greenway gears up, and Industrial Slump ...

Shen's address last week at a design study group of the Boston Society of Architects was billed as "The Greenway District and Green Growth District." And we learned a lot about the rapidly progressing study the city is doing on future height and density along the edges of the new Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway.

But the second part of the talk was not about the Greenway, sustainable though that corridor is intended to be, according to the Greenway conservancy, which is now in charge of it. "Green Growth District" is a term being tossed around referring to what a new Government Center district could be. It was a fascinating presentation and discussion that followed.

There's a reason City Hall lets Shen do a lot of its talking on touchy development subjects. Even just coming off jet lag from a trip to South Korea, he gave a cogent and sensitively delivered summary of the behind-the-scenes reevaluation that is going on of the district.

The Government Center area is always a dangerous topic, as Mayor Tom Menino learned when he suggested moving City Hall from the '60s concrete bunker where it is now to the waterfront.

Shen said the "Mayor's challenge," following unsuccessful efforts in the '90s to repair the area, is to find the right location for City hall. "The Mayor never said he wanted to tear the building down," Shen said, repeating words he's offered before in clarification of Menino's provocative remarks. "He'd be happy to tell you he hates the building." It also has huge maintenance and electric bills, Shen said.

The enormous changes wrought when Scollay Square and multiple smaller-scale blocks were wiped out and replaced with Government Center "put Boston on the map," Shen said. It has -- along with the razing of the nearby West End in what was called urban renewal -- resulted in intense criticism. "I'm still atoning for the sins of my forebears," Shen said. "It impacts how I work, how I do urbanism."

The BRA plans an anniversary exhibition on the impact of urban renewal, which it hopes will spur reflections on the good and the bad aspects. And perhaps inform thinking about how the area can be improved, even transformed.

The buildings involved are imposing, to say the least. They include not only City Hall, designed by the firm of Kallman, McKinnell and Knowles, but also the work of other respected or revered architects: One, Two, and Three Government Center; 28 State St.; the Lindemann Center, Government Center Garage, and the most recent, the Suffolk County Courthouse named after former Sen. Edward Brooke.

"The scale is large. It's in their blood to do that," Shen said of the architects: Paul Rudolf, Edward Larrabee Barnes, Welton Becket, and of course Kallmann, McKinnell.

Debate will focus heavily on whether to add significant density to the district, he said, noting that one proposal for redevelopment of the Government Center Garage that straddles Congress Street is for 3.5 million square feet, with two towers.

The Government Center district is about 50 acres in all, roughly owned half by the public (not counting streets and public areas). He said 24.5 acres are publicly owned, 8.8 acres are privately controlled, and 17.3 acres are public space.

Shen said planners are in early stages of even considering how to go about soliciting ideas for change. They wanted to steer clear of a simple professional competition, and now are leaning toward using the local universities. "Our latest thinking is how to get the universities involved in a major way."

This wouldn't be just architects, either. Planners will probably make it interdisciplinary, involving schools of government and business schools, as well as design schools. Planners are approaching this "not in a heroic way, like the earlier urban renewal plan," but delicately.

"Even more important is patience," Shen said.

"Perhaps we could think about this being a center for green industry," Shen said. Though it is complicated and fraught with existing regulatory restrictions, one idea is that energy might even be generated by new (or old) buildings, and the area could power itself. That and perhaps other dramatic changes to the district would require new state legislation.

Shen said the thinking includes connecting a revisioned Government Center area to a market area on the Greenway's Parcels 7 and 9, both now in play developmentally -- and to a newly formed Downtown Crossing, as that area evolves.

Boston's chief planner Kairos Shen addresses a Boston Society of Architects group.

As billed, Shen began the evening talking about the Greenway. And there was a transition between his remarks on the Greenway and the Government Center district. "If there is someplace where we are going to put the brakes on, then where would we step on the gas pedal?" he said.

Regarding the Greenway and the land that frames it, Shen elaborated on what the city's consultants, Tim Love of Boston's Utile Inc. and Ken Greenberg of Toronto, are up to. They have held two public meetings; the third one is scheduled for May 21 (not May 22).

Though the Greenway is now going into its first full season, "We had not been focusing on what was happening around the edges," Shen said. And two recent development proposals that have been in the news, if completed, "would radically transform not only the Greenway but the downtown area," he said.

Thinking about development along the Greenway invigorated thinking about the nearby heart of the city, Government Center, and "where we go from here ... what the direction of the Shawmut Peninsula might be in the next 20 years."

Shen had great visuals, as BRA speakers often do. The Downtown Planning Study 2000. The 1997 "Boston 2000 Plan," of the Greenway's 27 acres, and its promise of 75 percent open space.

But in recent years, he said, "There are such strong neighborhood interests that it's very hard for us to do planning at the 20,000-foot level." And that's what this thinking gets at.

The city's Crossroads Initiative, focusing on streets on both sides of the corridor, was an effort to expand the Greenway and improve more than just the strip of land that once lay in shadows under the elevated highway (or was dead space over the tunnel, as the interstate moved south through Boston).

It was "linking the neighborhoods that had been severed by the highway." Shen said the first of 11 contracts will go out to bid in a month, and groundbreaking should be in three months, on the first of the Crossroads projects to get under way: Broad Street. It's been in planning for a year and is in the city's capital budget (read: safe).

Property owners will contribute to a long-term maintenance plan, Shen said. Likewise, for the larger area, he said, extending out from the Greenway, funding mechanisms are being envisioned that would tap property owners who benefit from public improvements. "A 'business improvement district' is one of the things we're actively looking at. Like Downtown Crossing."

In design are Causeway Street, and Summer and Congress streets, being done under one contract.

After the Boston 2000 Plan came out in the late 1990s, the city created zoning for the Greenway area, under Article 49, but "made no attempt to affect buildings and parcels that would frame the Greenway."

Repeating some of what has been shown at the two previous meetings, Shen said the consultants are considering four areas, and his diagram was something of a four-legged stool: program and use; urban design and form; environmental conditions; and economics.

Economics, he said, involves "not feasibility, but economics in a broader sense. Not only based on whether it can be financed." He said they would "not consider it in the normal economic analysis" but also "consider the added value of the parks ... to make sure everybody sees what the public's investment is in the parcels."

"That gives us leverage," he said, "makes us all partners with the people who own the land."

One category of sites for consideration in the study is garages: Lincoln Street, Boston Harbor, Dock Square, and Government Center.

A second category is vacant or assemblable parcels, including Hook Lobster, Turnpike property on Broad Street, the Turnpike's Parcel 9, and two other small Greenway parcels in the North End, 11b and 11a.

A third category includes "existing fabric": Hudson Street sites, Edinboro Street sites (both in or near Chinatown); the hardware store at 51 High St., the Richardson block, the Coast Guard building and 400 Atlantic Ave., Marketplace Center, the Blackstone block, and the Salem Street gateway to the North End.

Finally, consultants will look at "critical edges," locations redeveloped, but completed when there was a highway there, not parks: 125 High St., One Financial Center, Purchase Street frontage, International Place, the Grain Exchange and Milk Street block, Harbor Towers, the Marriott Long Wharf (which with its dead brick face on the Greenway Shen called "obviously one of the worst offenders"), the Cross Street blocks, 200 State St., and Parcel 7 (where there is a garage and where there are very wide sidewalks).

Next steps in the process include: presenting a larger vision and principles; analyzing all five zones using the "four-legged stool" approach (of use, urban design, etc.), studying massing alternatives, continuing the economic analysis, and beginning a broad transportation study that will especially focus on parking.

Massing studies will be part of what is presented at next month's meeting.

Shen pointed out the obvious to this group of mostly architects: The city is not just looking for design here, but thoughts on use, sustainability, impact on the city as a whole.

"Occasionally I hear Kairos Shen is not a friend of the architectural community," he said. "Unfortunately, I am a bureaucrat."

He explained that he wants the resources of architectural professionals but doesn't want to limit the discussion about change to design and form. "This is not an architect's problem," he said. "Architecture is only part of the solution. I am not looking for heroic architecture. Maybe we are looking for nonarchitecture. Maybe looking for landscape architecture."

But Peter Smith of the BSA, who spoke for the group, was clearly enthusiastic about the presentation. "This is what this committee was designed to do," he noted. (The group meets on the third Thursday of each month at 52 Broad St.)

Asked about the consultants' approach to their work on the height and density surrounding the Greenway, Shen, said, "They don't see it as an upgrade. They don't see it as a downgrade."

"It's not a moratorium," he said. "It is developing potential and guidelines."

"Some owners have seen it as an invitation to participate in our process," Shen said. "Some have taken a different view."

"It's not just about protecting the Greenway," he said, but about protecting both private and public interests.

Some in the community "fear this is a way of developing action and development along the Greenway," he said. But the city's way of considering plans "is so highly developed a process anyway" that it's an empty fear, he suggested.

In considering change along the Greenway or in a new green district, deliberation is the watchword, Shen said. "The mayor said, 'If we don't know what we're doing, let's do it slowly'."

As for Government Center, the problem is being defined more loosely, he said. "Is there a new fabric that would connect one side of Government Center to the other, which has been erased? Are there other parcels that should be developed?"

"And not just developed, but sustainable. Instead of just upgrading NStar, can buildings all contribute to the grid? What about storm water?"

The city will identify subject areas and may say, "Tell us how you would illustrate an economic development plan that would take not just Government Center but all of Boston for the next 50 years."

"What is an urban ecology that can take us to the next century? We want this to be a model."

Greenway Returns

As WCVB-TV "Chronicle" producer and reporter Ted Reinstein first reported last week, in a reprise of a broadcast on the Greenway, the Boston Public Market will return to Dewey Square this year.

With security costs high, it was uncertain the popular local food producers' group -- which hopes to find a permanent place at the other end of the Greenway eventually -- would be back. But it will, starting in May. A police detail was required to ensure a smooth traffic flow as trucks delivered the goods, and Greenway Conservancy Nancy Brennan says a new plan is in place.

There's more. On Wednesday, the Greenway will undergo a cleanup with the public's help, including neighbors and friends. See www.rosekennedygreenway.org or call 617-292-0020 for details. The conservancy's new team, including the firm Work, Inc., has Boston's new strip of parks in pretty good shape after a tough and trashy winter. But Brennan says there's more to do, and there will be staff to direct the work. That starts at 10 a.m. and ends at noon.

There will be sweeping, raking, cleaning of benches, and litter pickup. The Conservancy and A Better City will provide beverages, and Disneynature, in recognition of its new show "EARTH," will distribute free sapling trees for planting at home. Jamaica Plain's Spontaneous Celebrations will lead a public event noon-1:30 pm.

Meanwhile, the main feature of the Greenway, the Mothers' Walk, is the centerpiece of a Family Play Day on Saturday, May 9, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The morning program will include unveiling of the title wall at the center of the walk, in the Wharf District parks (which extend from Christopher Columbus Park through four blocks to the Evelyn Moakley Bridge).

The low wall is made up of engraved sea wall stones from the city's historic wharves, and the program was made possible largely by a contribution from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a native of Massachusetts, to honor his mother, Charlotte R. Bloomberg.

Events will include free family activities, including international music and dance, a family craft project, performers, a picnic on the Greenway, and a "sneak peak" at the soon-to-be-released Rose’s Garden children’s book, which tells the story of the Greenway.

More than 1,700 families and individuals have honored loved ones with an inscribed paver. Those can be purchased with a contribution of $500, through the web site.

Installation of the Mothers’ Walk title wall began over the weekend.

Some have noted that the engravings in the stones have begun to appear less prominent, as if the pavers have worn off. Brennan said the cleaning and sweeping of the Greenway this spring will restore the legibility, as the problem is largely dirt and sand on the stones. The letters were manufactured with ink that is supposed to endure for at least five years.

Finally, horticultural work starts this week on the North End parks. From Tuesday through Thursday conservancy staff will add a thin application of organic compost to the lawns followed up by a compost tea application to add more nutrition to the soil and improve the vitality and health of the plants, shrubs and trees, according to Brennan.

The compost and compost tea are decayed plant material; they contain no toxins or animal waste, and there should be no odor that carries into the neighborhood. "But this may make the lawns look slightly dirty for a few days," she said. "We will put up some signs to ask park visitors to stay off the lawns or 24 hours -- mostly to let the lawns rest and soak in the nutrients."

This will happen throughout the year, but this first application will be the most noticeable. We will be performing applications throughout the year to the lawns and garden areas, but this first application will be the most active and noticeable, and eventually the length of the Greenway will get similar organic care treatment. Look for work in the Wharf District next week.

(Full and enthusiastic disclosure: Tom Palmer Communication is working with the Greenway Conservancy on a small public opinion survey.)

One of our favorite spots on the Greenway, not looking quite as good after a tough winter as it did when we occupied that bench last summer. But just wait till Wednesday ...

 

Industrial Slump

Among the informative monthly or quarterly reports we get on the health (or lack thereof) of the Boston area real estate industry was Richards Barry Joyce & Partners' "indSTATus" for spring 2009, which focuses on the industrial market (warehouse and manufacturing properties), and "flexSTATus" for the period, which covers the buildings that have a mix of industrial and office.

Well, vacancy in the warehouse market rose .3 percent, 16.5 percent, since the last quarter of 2008. That marked the fourth consecutive quarter of increasing vacancy. In the manufacturing market, vacancy increased .4 percent since late last year, closing the first quarter of 2009 at 15.9 percent. Ugh.

According to flexSTATus, vacancy in Greater Boston’s flex market increased by 2.3 percent, to 18.1 percent, from last quarter.

You can study the depressing details at www.rbjrealestate.com. And thanks to Dan Foley for the info.

 

Volvo Ocean Race



Preparation at Fan Pier on the South Boston Waterfront for Volvo Ocean Race activities is even farther along than when this was taken. The Boston Stopover is April 25 through May 16. Developer Joe Fallon and the city host the colorful racing boats coming from Rio, and on their way to Galway and the June finish in St. Petersburg. Fallon also recently celebrated winning an anchor tenant for his first Fan Pier office building, to be occupied early next year.