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Welcome to the Rose Kenne ... Waterfront District
By JohnAKeith on Wed, 09/29/2010 - 10:15pm
I'm still not sure Boston magazine isn't running one of those "find the fake article in this month's issue, win $100!" contests but I guess it's for real.
In the October 2010 issue, on newsstands now, there is a short article by Francis Storrs with the title "The Greenway Problem" that breaks the news that the Rose Kennedy Greenway, I'm sorry, let me rephrase that, the three-year-old Rose Kennedy Greenway, is going to be rebranded as the "Waterfront District" in 2011.
It's not the city or state who is doing it but ... wait for it ... a "local real estate firm".
Boston-based branding company Kelley Habib John has been hired to handle the task.
Company founder Greg John won't reveal his client's name (shall I offer some guesses?) and won't "[a]t least until the client has informed city officials, Greenway neighbors, and Kennedy family representatives ..."
(Of course, it's always been known as the "Waterfront District" to residents, so I don't get what this is really trying to achieve.)
* The article has yet to appear in the online edition of this month's issue.
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Comments
Don't be shy
Name names! But let's see: They announce the name change before bothering to tell anybody at City Hall? Hmm, what Greenway garage owner does that sound like? Let me don my thinking cap ...
In the meantime, I have four words: Oh for Christ's sake!
Here's hoping this dies the same stupid death as EaBo.
Cha Cha Cha Chia
How can he call it the waterfront district when he's planning on building his gynormous tower of doom blocking most of the greenway from the water?
Oh, don't forget the new $50 million park
The one he and Emily Rooney agreed would open up the waterfront to the public, as opposed, to, say, Long Wharf the next block over, or, oh, the arch at Rowes Wharf (which Rooney seemed to think you could only walk through if you were staying at the hotel).
I really don't understand
I really don't understand Chiofaro. When I ran the harborwalk, I'm pretty sure I stayed by the water for the Central Wharf, and the Harborwalk map seems to agree http://www.bostonharborwalk.com/placestogo/locatio...
Sure, you could make a bigger park, but it is pretty nice now:
http://www.bostonharborwalk.com/placestogo/locatio...
Yeah! Because the current
Yeah! Because the current garage offers so much better views and access!
New building won't block harbor
Just correcting an inaccuracy, the proposed garage next to the Aquarium won't "block most of the Greenway from the water"; he would build it on the exact same plot of land as the existing garage. And, he'd poke a hole in the middle of it, making it more open to the sea.
Meanwhile, the people at Harbor Towers next door have practically installed barricades to keep people from getting to the sea from the Greenway.
BoMag
...ugh. Wonderful writers have gone through there, and you can make (or launch) a very good career out of badgering City Hall and the State House. But in large part they don't, they run articles about Todd English's favorite brand of boxer shorts, Grey Goose cocktails, and who has the fluffiest poodle in town. Vote Democrat. Say no to Cape Wind. Roll your windows up when you drive through Dorchester. No personality, lots of brown-nosing. It's hemorrhaging money, they laid off half their staff last year, and they *keep running the same nonsense*. It doesn't feel like a Boston magazine, it feels like a herd of cattle chewing organic cud, lowing for greener pastures. Yuppies.
There are some talented people on their staff, and Storrs has the ability to make a good story. But it's not Wellesley Magazine, and if their articles don't play in the neighborhoods, why read? They doesn't know how to party, don't know how to kick butt, don't really know how to do anything really except take up space in the dentist's office.
trying to achieve.
I think what they are trying to do is improve the 'brand' of the space. You could argue it's ridiculous to give such a space a 'brand' - but it is a highlight of the area and something I am sure the city wants to bring as much attention, and tourists, to as possible.
Rose Kennedy Greenway sounds nice and all, but Waterfront District probably has wider appeal, and a name change and new ad campaign could do wonders.
The fact that the "new" name is actually what it always has been known as by residents makes the whole thing even less of a mystery or shock, I would say.
great
Now its to be called the Waterfront district, however there's still no waterfront venues.
A world class city that has a strong history with the harbor and connected ocean, and hardly a single waterfront eatery or lounge.
Go to Seattle and just about every single place around Lake Union is a restaurant with outdoor patio where you can sit and enjoy the water. Here in Boston? Another stupid high-priced hotel.
One coming, no?
Doesn't the BRA plan to lease out that shelter thing at the end of Long Whart as a restaurant?
But technically, although, yes, it's part of a "stupid high-priced hotel," there is an outdoor patio at the ground-floor restaurant at the Marriott Long Wharf, on the Columbus Park side - across the park from the outdoor patio at Joe's (even better, though? Pick something up in the North End and have an impromptu picnic in the park).
Let's not forget Anthony's Pier 4 and whatever that restaurant is that sits between it and the impending mega-Legal (where the Chinese restaurant used to be). Has the restaurant at Louis opened yet?
No, not Seattleish, though, but given how the city basically turned its back on the waterfront for 100 years, a start.
Let's not forget the Barking
Let's not forget the Barking Crab!
Shhhh HenryAlan!
Some of us like that the place looks seedy and kind of scary looking to the non-adventurous. Keeps it cosy with out being overcrowded.
I have heard some hilarious tourist conversations when one of a couple is drawn to it and the other doesn't want to go near it.
I think we're all insiders
I think we're all insiders here, we can get away with a mention of the best waterfront watering hole in Boston without turning it into a tourist trap. I too love the fact that it looks both like something that might have been put up in an afternoon for a temporary event, and like something that has been sitting there for decades, never far from sliding off the wharf into the channel.
Chowhound doesn't like the Barking Crab
http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/711792
good
I've never thought of it as a restaurant so much as a watering hole. Beer and appetizers after work.
If I want seafood dinner, I'll trundle down to NoNames for value.
god i'd hate to see what
god i'd hate to see what OVERcrowded looks like by your definition.... sorry but this place is about as secret as Freddy Mercury's love life-- an A1 tourist trap anytime between march and october.
Alive and Kicking Lobsters, now THERE's a secret!
that explains it
My work crowd typically disperses during the summer, so we miss all the tourist trap times.
SHHHHH!!!
You shut your mouth about Louie's in public or I'll have to kill you.
Fan Pier restaurant opened this past week
Strega opened at Fan Pier during the past several days.
Banker & Tradesman
http://www.bankerandtradesman.com/news140455.html
Quibble
Seattle has a heck of a lot more waterfront, and some nice cliffs that overlook it, too.
Second quibble: weather. Seattle so rarely gets hot that many places lack AC, and many of those decks and patios can be enjoyed much of the year with the addition of high-mounted space heaters because it doesn't get below freezing very often either.
If you were around as little as 25 years ago, you'd also understand that an outdoor waterfront restaurant in Boston would have been, well, really gross. Now that the harbor doesn't stink to high heaven anymore, it takes time for people and architecture to catch up.
waste upon waste
The name Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway Conservancy is a mouthful The Conservancy wastes public funds. How about a new name and a change in the management at The Greenway? Millions of dollars are at risk. Bamboozle District may be more apt.
Branding
This is such crap. For the past 20 or so years there's been a growing hyper-focus on names/brands as an end in itself. There wasn't a consulting firm that helped the North End get the name "the North End". Eastie sticks over "EaBo" because it's what people who live there actually call it. No one had to identify and polish up the "meme" for us to get it.
Now that we don't manufacture anything and a larger portion of the population has a higher degree of some sort or another, there is this need to create entire useless industries, like the whole branding crap. The English language staggers about quite well on the winds of what people decide to call things on their own without the aid of useless branding consultants. Names and reputations should be based on the quality of what you got to offer, not marketing bullshit. The worse thing of all is when something remains unnamed, because no one cares about it. So they changed the name of the West End after destroying the West End n'hood, and guess what, it doesn't stick. Now they try and bring the name back because it's got "cachet" but that won't stick either because they have already devalued the area (in my opinion). It's just those nameless crapola buildings on the other side of Govmint Cennuh.
Harumph... /prostate swells a bit more>
If we get too used to "Greenway"
... then people might actually expect it to remain as green space. Gotta newspeak that idea out of our heads before it sticks too firmly.
How to get rich? Find a fool and tell him/her they need a brand
Anyone remember the recent article about Harvard art museums paying a branding company a 6 figure bill to rebrand from Harvard Art Museums to Harvard Art Museum and and then back to Harvard Art Museums. To forego and then reclaim that lonely S must have made this the most expensive instance of the 19 letter of the English alphabet.
Perhaps we could rebrand Boston as just a more manageable NYC? Call it NY North, or maybe Mini-NYC. Where Greenwich Village becomes a village green....
When you can't generate intrinsic wealth by creating a real service or product then the next step is to create illusory wealth by generating lots of propoganda, such as privately "re-branding" a city zone. Then build a house of cards that looks like something that will last, suck in a bunch of naive investors who want instant wealth, success, fame, etc., cash in their investments, and then run like a bat out of hell when the cards collapses.
Once again one of the greatest American philosophers of the 20th century, P. T. Barnun, is proven right.
Here's a suggestion
Rebrand Boston as "the Colonial Collection".
Error
Hi, I work for Kelley Habib John on our real estate projects and just wanted to say that the article is erroneous. We are not involved at all with renaming or rebranding the Greenway.
We are working on helping the waterfront area detatch a bit from the Financial District and establish a name and identity of its own. The Waterfront District is just what our research determined everyone already calls it. It's not shocking, nor was it meant to be.
Imagine if we had gone crazy with it.. "The Green Coast" or "the Water Mile" then you could roll your eyes, and I'd be right there with you. But calling our waterfront "the Waterfront District" is hardly a departure from the status quo, and is hardly even upsetting. It's just meant to help the mixed-use waterfront buildings detach themselves from the office-only environment of the neighboring Financial District.
By the way - you're all wrong about who are clients are, but it did made me laugh!!