Take a look at some of the crazy boxes they allowed to be built in South Boston and Fort Point. All crazy colors on big ass square buildings with no architectural significance whatsoever. Obviously, Emerson doesn't have the payoff money that the developers have.

Simpler answer

By Sock_Puppet on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 3:56pm.

There was nothing nice there to put in a shadow

OMG

By Stevil on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 8:35am.

Religion comes to the BRA!

Shadows?

By Markk02474 on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 9:13am.

Was that a concern when putting a "parklet" in the North End alley for animals to crap? Its now an issue for a little used corner of the Common?

Good..Emerson has been

By anon on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 9:52am.

Good..Emerson has been anything but a good neighbor. Shuttering the Colonial Theater and Remington's. . Now they are eyeing the "other" side of the Boylston Alley as well as the businesses in the alley itself!. It's a slow inevitable creep down the block pushing good businesses out in the name of "education"

But education is good

By Finn on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 12:32pm.

But education is good business...in fact they do very good business. I do agree with you about the Colonial, and I see they will be opening again soon...but I can't about Remington's, which was getting very long in the tooth and dreadfully shabby. That sad little Comedy Vault downstairs? I never saw it in action, and I used to go there a lot.

When Remington's

By anon on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 1:16pm.

first opened the "Comedy Vault", they promoted the #^!! out of it by stating "Dick Doherty's coming home."

To which my co-workers and I remarked "Who the #^!! is Dick Doherty? And why should we care that he's coming home."

Never saw Mr. Doherty's act, but some years later, I went to a private party held in the "Comedy Vault". On one wall were crude magic marker drawings of a man's head (presumably Mr. Doherty) at various Boston locations, such as attending the "Fleece Center" and working on the "Big Pig".

If such bad Boston puns were the jist of his "act", its probably a good thing that Remington's was swallowed up by the "evil" college.

Went to see a friend do a

By Katia on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 4:50pm.

Went to see a friend do a couple open mics there and a few other places around town and yeah. Remington's kind of sucked. We had a much better time at the other venues.

Maybe it's the word 'shadow'

By Finn on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 10:05am.

Maybe it's the word 'shadow' that is the problem. If you can sell the idea that the building will provide much needed 'shade' as higher global temperatures make our summers hotter, wouldn't that be good thing?

I assume opponents had some kind of presentation showing where this shadow would be cast during the day and throughout the year? Any chance someone could find that online? Since this building would be along the southernmost side of the Common, how would it interfere with the sun rising in the east and setting in the west? Seems like most of the area covered already has a lot of trees, and the corner of Boylston and Tremont (where the T station is) is paved over. Would it reach as far as the tennis courts or baseball fields? If so, they would have a valid point.....but the sun would have to set in the south, no?

A lot of people actually seem to hate the idea of shade

By Arborway on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 11:59am.

I don't get it at all.

They're always going on about how bright everything should be / how much uninterrupted sunlight a plot of land could possibly get. I want to ask them if they've ever walked through the city on a hot day or thought of using a park for anything other than sunbathing.

I grew up in a small, rural town and you'd get the occasional suburbanites moving in. Nobody thought much of it until the past ten years or so when everyone relocating from a McMansion type community started clearing their wooded lots of trees almost as soon as the moving trucks left.

One day you'd have a house sitting on nearly two acres of forest, a week later you'd have a house sitting on a barren, sun-drenched plot. Rinse, repeat.

It wasn't always like this and I'm not sure what happened.

Building interferes with possible solar farm

By Markk02474 on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 5:45pm.

With buildings casting shadows, then the Common couldn't be made into a solar farm to help power the T (state's largest electric user)!

Be very afraid of shadows:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_(Babylon_5)

Difference between shade and shadow

By Stevil on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 3:52pm.

Noticed as I walked down the north side of Boylston today that the trees provided shade - some light comes through and it moves around as the wind blows. On the other side of the street - where I generally try not to walk - was completely shadow - very cold and unwelcoming. Go to Copley some morning and hang around in front of the church when the sun is behind the Hancock and then come back in the afternoon when the whole park is in the sun - it's a very different and more pleasant experience. Note that a former BRA director was quoted in one of the local papers a year or two ago that the best thing they were prevented from doing during his tenure was building tall buildings that shadowed the Public Garden.

Couple of thoughts - first - the shadowistas in my opinion are a bit extreme - they fight shadows that even fall in the middle of December - in my opinion there should be more negotiating room between shadows in December/January - who cares?! vs. shadows in April/November - when you seek a little bit of sun on those marginal days. Second, a little planning goes a long way. While buildings in some areas right across the street should be shorter, we can allow them to get progressively larger as you go east and south. You do this with zoning and good planning. Unfortunately we don't have zoning in Boston - we have a mayor that makes up the rules project by project based purely on whether the economics of a project make sense and at least sometimes apparently based on who he likes and dislikes.

I guess I'm the

By Finn on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 4:06pm.

I guess I'm the opposite...unless its a cold day in winter, I try to avoid the sun when its particularly strong (and it doesn't have to be particularly hot either to ratchet up that UV index) - on a hot summer day you can count on me being on the shady side of the street....and I'm sure merchants appreciate that too. So if we can all agree that shade (shadow) is a good thing in the summer, and a bad thing in the winter, surely these shadow studies should take that into account. Like they say, you can't have light without dark.

The Common and shadows

By JohnAKeith on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 3:34pm.

I am almost always for tall buildings but I consider the Common to be sacred ground so anything that would affect it concerns me.

The Boston Redevelopment Authority's website has documents on every major project in the city. There are details there on Emerson's original plans, which includes results of its shadow studies.

Go here and click on the Emerson College 1-3 Boylston Place link.

http://www.bostonredevelopmentauthority.org/develo...

Good! Us common folk like our

By anon on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 11:18am.

Good! Us common folk like our trees in our public parks. Let the students have luxury dorms elsewhere. It's bad enough Boston Common is being slowly transformed into a suburban outdoor mall food court.

Um, what?

By Arborway on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 12:02pm.

How would a 28 story building across the street kill trees on the Common?

And how is it being transformed into a "suburban outdoor mall food court"? That one sandwich shop? I don't even want to know how lame your hometown mall was.

Judging by recent reports,

By Finn on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 12:12pm.

Judging by recent reports, I'm sure a lot of sleepy residents in the North End would love to see larger and more vertical concentrations of students near the Theater District, where their ruckus and shenanigans would be somewhat less disruptive.

We live in the Northern

By anon on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 12:08pm.

We live in the Northern hemisphere so the sun is always a little more south of us, which means even though the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, it casts shadows to the north.

Go out at noon in the middle of the summer - you'll still have a bit of a shadow.

the alley used to be so

By anon on Wed, 09/04/2013 - 11:31pm.

the alley used to be so unique and a fun place to go....another college buying up unique spaces/buildings and tearing them down....not to mention one less place for students/residents/visitors to go for nightlife options! Heck what a great idea, close another club, force everyone to go to the remaining three in the theater district then complain when everyone gets out at the same time....oh and wait have no 24/7 dining options available....world class city? I think not!

Ok, next question

By Kaz on Thu, 09/05/2013 - 2:01am.

Why aren't there more 28-story buildings everywhere else?

If there's some even vague notion of how much shadow is acceptable, then apply it across the city, find the plots where tall buildings can apply and let's start building some density to reduce housing costs.

This is SimCity2000 101 people, let's go!

No 28-story tower for Emerson on Boylston Street

Comments

Maybe

Shadow police at it again

It's well known around here

No stunting here