Up Along the Greenway

Friday, December 12, 2008

The Boston Redevelopment Authority has finally chosen a team to conduct its long-promised study of what is appropriate development along the brand new Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The thoughtful and creative duo Ken Greenberg of Toronto and Tim Love of Utile Inc. -- both experienced in the Greenway's needs and its enormous and yet unfulfilled potential -- are it. Let's see how quickly they get to work and establish a vision.

Government gets justifiably criticized when it overregulates. Or when it puts obstacles in the way of growth and progress -- like real estate development. It's even worse when the market it already making things difficult -- like today. The city announced months ago it would do a study on height and density of development on the Greenway, which is clearly a magnet for new projects.

Who wouldn't want old concrete-fortress parking garages, relics of a different transportation and aesthetic age, replaced with handsome architecture and one or more uses that would further enhance the city? Many of the Greenway's abutters, having suffered through 15 years of construction, have made improvements. They now want to face the corridor, rather than turn their backs to it, as they did when the old elevated highway cut the city's magnificent edge off from its core.

That Greenway development study has taken longer to get going than officials liked, but we're told it should get a fast start in the new year. And also that it won't linger for a year or so before it develops guidance for the city in considering proposals for the Greenway's edges.

A lot of interested folks have heard of the selection, and city chief planner Kairos Shen confirmed it for us this week, when we ran into him at the topping off of One Seaport Boulevard, developer Joe Fallon's first office building on Fan Pier. The city is apparently tying up a few loose ends before it makes a formal announcement. The One Congress Street garage project, adjacent to the Greenway's Parcel 6 (tentative site of a new YMCA of Greater Boston facility) and led by Ted Raymond, is already presenting ideas to the community.

And that team will clearly be interested in what Greenberg and Love come up with.

Also wide-eyed concerning this process is Don Chiofaro, developer and co-owner of the two International Place office towers.

He and his partners bought the so-called Aquarium garage, and they're said to have big plans for that prominent site.

We're certain that some stimulating public hearings are in store concerning this territory.

And maybe the professionally determined guidance about Greenway development will emerge just as the credit markets are loosening up.

And government and the people who build things will be in sync.





Boston Book Festival
Emily Pardo is the executive director of the Boston Book Festival.

She arrived back in the Boston area recently from Miami, where she worked on the legendarily successful Miami Book Festival.

Mitchell Kaplan started that back in the days when the Magic City was known more for the drugs and guns and cars and pastel fashions of "Miami Vice" than for intellectual property.

Pardo told us that when she tells people she runs the Boston Book Festival, they often say, "Oh, I know the Boston Book Festival," or "I love the organization."

But they don't, or can't, because it's brand new.

The first (presumably annual) Boston Book Festival will be held Oct. 24, 2009, at Copley Square. (Or in the Boston Public Library and neighboring buildings if there's an early snowstorm.)

It's one full day for starters, and will grow if it's popular. Put it on your new 2009 calendars, which are spilling through your mailbox as the new year approaches.

There will be 30 to 40 authors speaking, and this festival isn't just about Guttenberg. There will be a technology components, a feature on digital braille.

And 50,000 copies of "The Big Read" will be distributed around the city for the occasion. That's an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to restore reading to the center of culture in the United States.

Pardo had been on the job two days when we spoke to her. We wish her the best of luck, and many Boston Book Festivals to come.





Not with a Bang
It took a very long time, and the public debate was pretty fierce, but the Boston Landmarks Commission this week voted to designate the neighborhood as a landmark, and protect it.

It happened more with a whimper than a bang at a long meeting at City Hall, where the tedious but significant wording changes were affirmed, before the main and unanimous vote of "Yes."

At the public hearing portion of the meeting, so one spoke, either for or against. It had all been said, and at this point it was a done deal anyway.

Commissioners and commission executive director Ellen Lipsey seemed genuinely of the belief that this was a process that, while difficult, worked and had a good result.

Among the changes, commercial owners were given a seat alongside a residential representative on the five-member Fort Point Channel Landmark District Commission.

As significant, the phrase "Design Guidelines" was inserted in a couple of places, to help clarify what "General Standards and Criteria" means. It was a change vigorously sought by developers and business people, who supported protection of the neighborhood but wanted to ensure that there is flexibility too.

Unless exceptions are made on individual projects, rooftop additions in the future will be "not visible or minimally visible."

Likewise, "The original window design, elements and features (functional and decorative) and the arrangement of window openings should be preserved and repaired using recognized preservation methods, rather than replaced."

Adoption of this landmarking protection for the unique Fort Point Channel neighborhood wasn't directly related to the recent approval for development of two projects in the neighborhood, 316-322 Summer St. and 49-51-63 Melcher St., but those two with their rooftop additions were clearly on residents' minds as they sought stronger protection for existing buildings, and the neighborhood in general.

The city, which had balked at the two commercial developments, recognized that the residential buildouts that everybody would like to see now, on the front end, were simply not in sight.

The city took a bird in the hand, rather than the two in the bush. Which it promises to snare later.

*******

Steve Hollinger, one of the most active residents in pursuit of protection of the neighborhood, wrote us a thoughtful letter taking issue with our Dec. 8 Journal posting on this subject.

We summarized what happened at last week's emotional public meeting in the channel and also wrote: "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."

Steve responded, in part: "This comment, and the general tone of your blog, marginalizes thoughtful residents as NIMBY impediments to progressive development. That perspective may make for interesting reading, but it is a mischaracterization of the facts.

"Our community has benefitted greatly from development, and there has rarely if ever been opposition to the redevelopment of existing buildings for any use as-of-right, including office space. Many of us are opposed to the BRA's continued approval of variances for new construction of rooftop additions and infill for the creation of additional office space, in a district that is already 87 percent office space. Rather than approving these variances for investors who simply secure the permits before flipping the properties to capitalize on the added value, we are expecting the BRA to ensure that the variances will only be approved if some of the value produces concurrent, incremental progress on other components of the 100 Acre Master Plan -- including development of residential, open space, civic space, etc."

"Over two decades, despite years of various promises flipped for office space, we are left with a district that doesn't have a single square foot of recreational parkspace for our kids to play in, a single civic space for a community meeting and not even a single residential unit under construction. The Seaport doesn't have a school, fire station or police station under way despite hundreds of thousands of square feet of new FAR approved above as-of-right under existing zoning -- it's nearly all office space."

It's not our job (nor do we want it to be) to defend the city. Our point in much of this is just that, like the South Boston Waterfront as a whole, and like the Back Bay before it, the Fort Point Channel neighborhood will take years to materialize.

The city has a defined plan for it, with a ratio of uses: a third office, a third residential, a third retail. The money to build out parks and open space will come from developers, but not before they create something with a financial return.

When the neighborhood is complete, or even half built out, then we'll know whether promises made by developers and city officials during earlier, different market conditions have been kept.

It's overwhelmingly office-dominated now, and some former residents of the artists' enclave have been displaced, and that's regrettable. The retail will come along with future residents. But it will be nice that two stately building complexes will have life in them sooner rather than later. If only during the day, for the time being.



Top Floor




One Marina Park Drive, the first office building at the 21-acre Fan Pier site on the South Boston Waterfront, topped off on Wednesday. Well, the rain and wind drove a couple of hundred guests inside the building with the workers, where there were remarks and delicious steak tips and pasta from J. Pace -- who developer Joe Fallon announced the next day will be a tenant in his Park Lane Seaport residences down the street. The actual topping off didn't happen till Thursday morning; it was still raining but not blowing too hard to raise a beam to the top of the 17th floor.

Someone referred to it as "One Fan Pier Boulevard," but we've never been able to remember the correct address, either. Now we will.

One Marina Park Drive is "the first piece of the puzzle," said Fallon. (Full and enthusiastic disclosure: We do some communications work for Joe.) "When it rains and blows at a topping off, it's very good news," he said.

Mayor Tom Menino credited Fallon with moving forward in a particularly uncertain time. "It's important to step up to the plate," he said, "because everyone else is stepping back from the plate."

Speaking at Colliers Meredith & Grew's well-attended year-end roundup at the Boston Harbor Hotel yesterday, Fallon said he will move his offices from World Trade Center East to the new building in about a year, when it will be ready for occupancy.

It's 500,000 square feet, and the views are spectacular. Even on a day like Wednesday.