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Increasingly bustling South Huntington Avenue could get even more bustling with proposed 38-unit building
By adamg on Sat, 01/30/2016 - 12:20pm
Architect's rendering of what building would look like with no trolley tracks in front.
A developer wants to replace a couple of parking lots and a derelict old building with a six-story residential complex on South Huntington Avenue, next to the Wok N Talk near the intersection with Huntington Avenue.
In a filing with the BRA, developer Walter Huntington LLC proposes a building with two wings - one five stories, the other six - with 38 residential units - five marketed as affordable - 26 parking spaces in an underground garage and roughly 7,000 square feet of retail space and at 33-39 South Huntington Ave.
The Proposed Project would create a mixed-use development combining market-rate and affordable housing opportunities in a contemporary aesthetic appropriate in scale, massing and design to the Huntington Avenue and South Huntington Avenue nexus, in addition to the area's emerging redevelopment.
In planning the building, great care was given to respecting the area's as-built conditions. As a result, the proposed building has been designed and scaled to compliment the busy thoroughfares of Huntington Avenue and South Huntington Avenue, the area's ongoing multi-family residential development, and the surrounding mixed-use development proposals. ...
The building’s massing is derived from a creative reassessment of its site context and urban conditions. A series of metal panels provide a strong identity along the segmented urban grid of South Huntington Avenue, and serve to subdivide the building form, composed primarily of terracotta, metal and glass. With the addition of terracotta, the design possesses a rich material palette that relates to its immediate context and serves as a compelling precedent for the area's future development.
Oh, look, here comes the trolley! And floating on air and running on batteries, no less:
35 South Huntington Ave. filing (2M PDF).
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Comments
Forget the retailers
There is next to no foot traffic there so stores would do pooly. They would need a lot more parking since the spots designated wouldn't be enough even for all of the residents.
development brings the foot traffic
Leaving aside the fact that there's actually plenty of foot traffic there, do you not think these units would bring people who would provide the customers?
As for parking, see all prior (correct) arguments for transit oriented development. It's right on the T (the green line, I know, but still...)
The parking that is already
The parking that is already there is almost completely used up and this will bring even more demand for parking, so they need to include just as many if not more spaces. Just because people want to take mass transit sometimes doesn't mean they don't also want to keep a car around.
Totally disagree
A retailer would not survive on the small amount of foot traffic there.
What.are.you.not.understanding?
38 new units is going to bring more foot traffic and if you know the area at all, you should know that there are several other much bigger developments in the works. Even now it's hardly a desert as far as pedestrians go.
Not to mention the VA Hospital
The folks who work there might be interested in patronizing those businesses, particularly since they can hop right on the T when they are done. There just isn't anything down that way to draw them right now - but it is a huge population of workers a couple blocks away.
As somebody who works at the
As somebody who works at the VA, you're misunderstanding the culture pretty badly. While I live in the city and walk/transit, I'd say easily 80% of our workers live in the suburbs, drive to work, and drive right back out of town. Even more so for the patient population, who are terrified of Boston as a big bad crime ridden city and won't leave the campus.
They're not going to walk down the street to businesses and then hop on the green line... they MAY walk down to pick up lunch if it's a café or something, but only in nice weather. We already have all the stuff in Hyde Square available for about the same walk, and it's like pulling teeth to get any of my coworkers to walk down there for a quick bite.
Va Employee
Medical Resident here who rotates through the VA. All these retailers need to do is offer something that caters to the VA population. Start off with a good discount if you show a VA employee ID, or work something for patients as well. Then name a sandwich in honor of the troops.... I dunno the Macarthur Meatball Sub? (awful but work with me here) and before you know it you'll have 300 employees and 500 patients walking .3 miles down the street for a sandwich.
You say there are no people
You say there are no people around there then you say there are too many people around there already so this development needs to include more parking. Which is it? And encouraging people to drive isn't going to improve foot traffic. Forcing subway users to pay for parking they don't use is a waste of space and money.
You are assuming that all of
You are assuming that all of the people that move there would use the subway or wouldn't keep a car anyway.
Would be nice if street part
Would be nice if street part matched the rest of the street more, since the rest of that stretch of road mostly has very similar looking architecture. It's good that they include parking spaces since the existing parking on that road seems to be just about if not completely occupied.
Though some variety
In architectural styles is nice, especially in a city. Everything looking the same on a street is kind of boring.
The original architecture
The original architecture looks more interesting than the newer architecture being built.
If you don't think that area
If you don't think that area has a lot of demand for parking, then look at the street view, which was taken during the summer when all the students weren't even there. So it's good that they are including spaces.
Betting pool
$5 to put your name on a Google Calendar for the date when the first car slips on the T tracks and goes right through their beautiful facade?
"Beautiful" facade?
....could you please point that out to me.....
#crapitechture
We know how you feel
Since you perceive a market, how about learning to design buildings yourself? The need for different and better ideas is quite obvious, and you do have a passion for it.
You make this comment all the
You make this comment all the time when someone doesn't like architecture. You do realize it's possible to have opinions on things without expertise or actually doing those things for a living, right? You of all people should know that, you prove it here daily.
The problem is the lack of ideas
People tell us all about what is WRONG with another's ideas. But then they don't do shit to fix the problems that cause the lack of ideas.
It isn't wrong to encourage those people to try their hand at the wonderful designs that they are so certain are being withheld.
Swirls
"I always wanted to be an architect....", but honestly I don't think the issue is that there are NO competent architects out there (and I'm not sure that I would be capable of becoming one of them). It seems more a case that there are no developers with either the balls or the lack of avarice (or surfeit of ego) to invest the money it would take to make a landmark building.
So even if I could poot Taliesin's out my backside (ouch..sharp eaves!) it wouldn't matter much if I didn't have the money to put them up. So what you should be suggesting is that I win the Megabucks. Then you'd see some architecture, what IS architecture! (But I sure as shit wouldn't be designing it - I'd be paying for it.)
We will save the day!
We will save the day!
glad to see this, at last
As the cool older buildings along S Huntington have become endangered & sacrificed for ugly condo buildings a la the Little Wanderers, I wondered why that space was being overlooked. This really is an improvement.
Needs more affordable housing, though.
Sounds good to me
I pass through this area on foot fairly regularly and think this (or any new development, really) would be great. Ground-floor retail is desperately needed and would thrive there--there is more foot traffic than you think and new retail would bring more. Tons of people come through there to switch between the 39 and 66 buses or to go to/from the Brookline Village T station. Being able to pick up dinner or groceries would be really attractive, I would imagine. The existing housing on that stretch is full of students; these buildings would bring some working professionals to the area. And I think 26 parking spots is more than enough, maybe too many, given how close it is located to multiple transit modes.
The parking could be even
The parking could be even more since the street parking is already used up in the summer when the students aren't even there.
There's also a huge new complex going in across Huntington
Where 2 Brookline Place is. Children's Hospital owns the property and is going to develop the hell out of it. So any new businesses over by the Wok n Talk will have more foot traffic in general.
http://www.brooklinema.gov/648/Two-Brookline-Place-Childrens-Hospital