Sprucing Up

Thursday, October 2, 2008

One of them is 99 High St., the whitish 32-story tower near South Station that backs up to the Rose Kennedy Greenway.

Once known as the Keystone building, for the shape of its windows, 99 High is a stalwart. A portion of the first floor is now home to Lannan Ship Model Gallery, which once resided across the Greenway and Atlantic Avenue at Russia Wharf.

The gallery moved before Russia Wharf was emptied out, the three-building site now being transformed by Boston Properties Inc. into an office tower, with about 50 residences in the building on the downtown side.

Executives at the site's former owner, Equity Office Properties, once said the Greenway side was appearing to be more desirable for residents even than the other end of the block, which is on the Fort Point Channel, and against an interesting old Congress Street bridge whose restoration someday will be finished.

But 99 High --

It was months ago when the real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle announced that the owner, TIAA-CREF, would be updating the building.

This isn't a case where the back side of the building will be turned into the front, with a restaurant added. The Greenway block it faces at Dewey Square has a large ventilation building on it, in any case.

The loading area of 99 High faces the Greenway, and nothing can be done about that.

But substantial work is being done.

There will be new lighting in the main lobby. The High Street-side sidewalk is being removed and replaced, raising it to make it handicapped-accessible.

There will be new lamp posts for street lights -- acorn fixtures that are consistent with the area's history.

Windows are being replaced on floors 3 through 32, including more energy- efficient glass. The central cooling tower is being replaced, and the heating plant is being upgraded.

Steve Steinberg of Jones Lang LaSalle said the Energy Star designation, awarded in 2007, will be sought again.

The stone columns on the first two floors are being removed, travertine stone being replaced with Colonial Gold granite imported from India.

Storefronts are being enhanced with Muntz bronze finishes. Bronze is being added to the main entrance, replacing stone.

The old canopy is being demolished, replaced with a mirrored glass jewel box with a three-dimensional logo reflecting the "99" address.

Most visible, perhaps, is new exterior lighting that will illuminate the columns 20 stories up.

Building security is being upgraded with new cameras, card readers, and bollards at the main entrance.

Citibank's office and banking center is located at 99 High.

Elkus Manfredi Architects designed many of the changes.

One Boston Place, One Post Office Square, and other Boston office addresses are also in the midst of making their spaces more inviting to tenants and attractive to visitors and passersby.

They'll be better positioned to compete with the new guys in town -- Fan Pier, Two Financial Center, Russia Wharf, and -- who knows? -- maybe someday Cesar Pelli's tower at South Station.





LITTLE THINGS FIRST



General Manager Paul Jacques and the Boston Harbor Hotel gathered a couple of dozen people together Wednesday to talk about the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway, which as we've told you probably too many times will be inaugurated on Saturday. (Conservancy Executive Director Nancy Brennan told us a week ago it's not going to rain, and indeed weather.com predicts a delicious 62 degrees and 0 percent chance of precipitation.)

At the lunch (with great views as a beautiful storm splashed the harbor waters), Vivien Li, executive director of the Boston Harbor Association, and John Copley of Copley Wolff Design Group, a firm that created a good stretch of the new parks, talked about the achievements and the challenges ahead.

Li said the Boston Harbor Hotel, developed by the Beacon Companies and now owned by Equity Office Properties, part of Blackstone, was the first major piece of the waterfront to be renovated. And architecturally as well as from a public access point of view, it set the standard, she said.

Copley said the parks aren't completely done, in the sense that they will evolve with uses dictated by the public and guided by the parks stewards, as parks do. But he offered the thought that only with proper funding and event-organizing guidance of uses will they prove successful.

The "business improvement district" structure -- basically, where neighbors kick in the funding -- is promising, he said, but it's never even gotten close to being implemented in Boston.

The discussion from thereon pretty much focused on why nobody ever stood up and took responsibility for the Greenway, before the conservancy, late in the game and along a somewhat awkward public-private partnership model, was forged.

Li noted that the city's study of allowable height and zoning along the Greenway -- just getting under way even though the Greenway is officially complete -- will provide guidelines, not rigid limits. She liked that.

Rick Dimino of A Better City (formerly the Artery Business Committee) said there's a lot more than just height of the buildings that will be the Greenway's future neighbors to be considered.

"If it's about sunlight and if it's only about sunlight, we're going to short- change the future of the Greenway corridor," he said.

"I respect the mayor's concern, but we may really need to think about allowing some shadow here and there," he said.

Paul Grogan of The Boston Foundation said the issue of caring for the Greenway and funding can't be separated from larger matters of how the public's needs are served and paid for.

Some who attended Wednesday had not heard that the Boston Public Market, which gathered local growers at Dewey Square last year, had been snuffed out because the group couldn't afford $17,000 to pay for police details to ensure traffic and pedestrian safety for this season.

Everybody thought it was a shame that the market's future hinged on that kind of an expense and that nobody in this smart city could solve the problem.

How, they all wondered, is the YMCA of Greater Boston or the Boston Museum Project or the New Center for Arts and Culture ever going to raise the millions of dollars each requires, get their leases and permits, cover those gaping highway ramps, and build their cultural treasures along our Greenway?

Grogan said the city needs leadership, perhaps a group of leaders, to address all these issues in a comprehensive way.

As for the public market, he said: "We'll pay."

Maybe next year there will be endives at Dewey Square.