Old TV tower, radio studios could make way for apartments on Leo Birmingham Parkway in Brighton
A developer has filed plans to replace a building housing radio stations and an antenna tower on Leo Birmingham Parkway across from Lincoln Street in Brighton with an eight-story, 338-unit apartment building.
Bankrupt broadcast chain Audacy, which runs or ran a cluster of radio stations at the site, made $11.1 million selling it to Nordblom Co. of Burlington earlier this year. Audacy is currently paying $40,000 a month to lease the building. The tower is a legacy of the building's days as home for TV-38, WSBK, when it was an independent station and platform for Dana Hersey.
In its filing with the Boston Planning Department, Nordblom says 57 of the units would be rented as affordable. In total, the building, with a series of wings, would have 125 studio, 157 1-bedroom units, 49 2-bedroom units, and 7 3-bedroom apartments.
The building would be all electric, with no gas hookups, and would have 175 parking spaces in an underground garage, according to the filing.
It's the latest development proposal in a once sleepy area of low-rise commercial buildings where Market Streets meets Leo Birmingham Parkway and Soldiers Field Road, all spurred by the development of New Balance's Boston Landing developments along Guest Street.
Trees on the roughly 2-acre site played a key role in determining the site's overall design:
Within the Project boundaries, there is a mature woodland grove on the steeply sloping hillside from Leo M. Birmingham Parkway to Soldiers Field Place. This woodland, an urban wild, consists largely of Norway Maples trees with a smaller percentage of Honey Locusts, Elms, and Ailanthus. Despite the predominantly non-native composition, the grove represents a significant biomass and tree canopy within the urban forest. As such, a primary Project objective is to preserve as much of the existing woodland as possible. Tree removals will be limited to peripheral areas of the site directly impacted by the removal of the existing retaining wall and building and the installation of the proposed building foundations. The critical root zone of the grove exists within the steeply sloped hillside between Market Street and the existing asphalt parking lot on site. The placement and orientation of the building was developed to avoid disturbance of the slope and to increase the permeable surface condition adjacent to the grove.
The sloped area will largely be left untouched to avoid disturbance to the critical root zones of the grove. The proposed tree planting strategy seeks to employ a successional approach of interplanting new native shade and understory species at the base of the slope to diversify the woodland composition. A robust native planting scheme will extend the habitat benefits beyond the woodland edge into all parts of the Project. Along Soldiers Field Place, preserved existing mature Honey Locust trees maintain the streetscape scale and buffer the building from the surrounding uses. One existing private Honey locust tree will be removed to accommodate the building services, however, this tree is in poor condition with a compromised canopy and root system that has overgrown and buckled the existing sidewalk.
Also to be included in the project: Storage basins, porous paving and, in addition to the existing trees, 80 new trees to help act as a sponge during heavy rainfall.
83 Leo Birmingham Parkway filings and meeting/comment schedule.
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Great.
Sounds like a good and ecologically sound project!
I will say, though: the walk from that location to Boston Landing isn't exactly pedestrian friendly. I hope they'll include (or get the city to commit to) some improvements in pedestrian infrastructure as part of it given they're not including a ton of parking (which is good!).
Need a plan
That area is getting built up rapidly and it's on an island surrounded by highways. I heard somewhere in the fever dream that is my web browsing, that the parkway was declared redundant and it could be closed with little impact to traffic. Probably in that same vaguely remembered study is a comprehensive plan on how to accommodate bikes and pedestrians. I'll get on that now and report back to everyone.
Now let's start talking about that IHOP and the candlepin bowling alley.
Your fever dreams were true.
Your fever dreams were true. MassDOT announced plans to halve the roadway west of Market Street in March. (https://mass.streetsblog.org/2024/03/25/dcr-will-make-one-of-its-pointle...)
No way!
Let's go!
Bocce and ...
Maybe they can add a pickleball court next to the bocce court - the car noise can drown out the pickleball noise.
The existing highway's width
The existing highway's width would be cut in half, replacing a divided four-lane highway with a 30-foot-wide, two-lane city street, with a new 12-foot-wide shared-use path running parallel on the north side of the roadway. This will help the environment to mitigate the urban heat island effect, and will crate more green walkable spaces for the residents! Great news.
There indeed was a whole very
There indeed was a whole very recent BPDA/DCR planning project called Western Avenue / Soldiers Field Road / Birmingham Parkway Intersection Improvements, but it appears to have been scrubbed from the internet. It's mentioned on the Planning in Allston-Brighton portal under "related planning efforts", but the link goes to a page that doesn't exist anymore and just redirects back to the planning search page. No project with that name can be found on the BPDA site or via Google.
There's also the ongoing Western Avenue Corridor Study and Rezoning which will improve that side of things, though it stops at the Parkway so it won't help people who need to cross over.
Hmm
I feel like this was the studio location of WSBK before they merged with WBZ. But I think that building was only a few doors down from WBZ and not on that side of the street, so I am probably wrong.
Someone help me, I feel like there was something there before Audicy was there.. a TV or Radio station. And it was a well known name. Might have been a former location before it moved somewhere else.
My brain is foggy, some of you old Boston peeps on here.. help me figure this out.
83 Leo Birmingham Parkway rings a bell in my head but I cannot figure out where.
The thing near WBZ
Was originally a Ground Round and then it became, at least for a while, the studios, such as they were, of, I think, something called Pax TV, which was a Christian UHF station (back when that made a difference).
WPBX
Yes. That location was the WBPX station location.
And as far as the Ground Round at that location. I have this video I snagged from GBH Archives before I left twitter... its the construction of that Ground Round in 1978.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UcgpGLPbG2smnMkcoH94U6zoq3SHc_-a/view?u...
So now that you've confirmed that the location a few doors down from WBZ was never WSBK
And that jogged my memory of a video on youtube I saw from the old commercial from WSBK for their "Ask the Manager" show and the mailing address was
WSBK
83 Leo Birmingham Parkway
Boston, MA 02135
So yes. this location is the original WSBK studios prior to 1995.
Edit: This page confirms the address as this was used in their signoff/signon messages
https://signons-and-signoffs.fandom.com/wiki/WSBK-TV_Sign_On_and_Sign_Off
You are correct
the building was constructed by Storer Broadcasting when they owned WSBK- channel 38. The station broadcast Bruins games. They also had interesting entertainment options like the 3 Stooges marathon. The station also hosted a weekly Ask the Manager show where they answered questions from viewers. The station became one of the superstations that were transmitted over a lot of cable systems,
Superstation - Yes
38 was carried in the Maritimes on cable in the 80's.
Thus like the Atlanta Braves had a national following in the 80's and 90's, the Bruins had a lot of fans in Atlantic Canada before the games jumped to NESN all the time.
Oh those cable days!
We got Chicago and Calgary stations. Wasn't limited to the US, even.
Then there was satellite television in the 90s and you could explore the world.
The cable thing still happens - my brother lives in rural Alberta and he gets one of the Boston stations. I occasionally get weird international calls about things like that near tornado storm thing that happened in Arlington/Medford a few years back because they saw the newsbreak.
You are correct.
83 Leo Birmingham Parkway was the former home -- from 1968 until 2001 or so -- of the offices and studios of WSBK-TV38, and was built for that purpose. TV38 was an independent regional superstation, bringing Red Sox, Bruins, and, for a short time, Celtics, to Boston and beyond. Also home to great local programming like The Movie Loft with Dana Hersey, Ask the Manager, and the (original) Three Stooges Marathon. Paramount (Viacom) bought the station in '95, and eliminated those things. When Viacom merged with CBS in 2001, the station moved in with WBZ and four radio stations occupied the old TV38 site. The antenna is a TV tower, not a radio tower, and still stands on the grounds. Tall neon letters "TV38" once shone on all 3 sides of the tower, a traffic report landmark on the Mass Pike.
I miss
I miss the old WSBK. It was one of the few superstations we got on cable in rural NH.
Always had something good on to watch. A movie, or a show, or a sports game.
Its not the same anymore. Its really just a substation of WBZ now.
TV in the 1970's
We got cable TV in upstate NY around 1973. In addition to TV-38, we had three NYC stations. Those urban stations really opened my small town eyes.
oh yeah
Oh yeah.. not only did we get WBSK, but we got WLVI and all the Boston stations.
But we also got WPIX, WWOR, WTBS, and WGN. The only things we didn't get were the superstations from the west coast.
So many shows. So much to watch.
Watching Bruins at UMass on 38
I went to UMass Amherst in the early 70s. I lived in a dorm and the dorms did not have cable tv. So we went to Barselotti's (tall Pabst Blue Ribbon for a quarter) in downtown Amherst to watch the Bruins, on 38 via cable.
Indeed, the TV-38 tower was a
Indeed, the TV-38 tower was a trademark of Mass. Pike traffic reports growing up, along with those classically snowy Bruins broadcasts, and of course, the Movie Loft. Who could forget "Ask The Manager" with Dan Berkery and Stu Tauber?
The building was Channel 38's
WSBK Channel 38 was originally owned by Storer Broadcasting Company.
WBZ-TV and WBZ radio were owned by Westinghouse ("Group W") Broadcasting.
Westinghouse bought CBS, then changed its name to CBS. CBS bought WSBK-TV and merged it with WBZ-TV.
CBS owned a lot of radio stations, some of which ended up in the old WSBK building. When they got out of the radio business a few years ago, most of their Boston radio stations were sold to Entercom, which changed its name to Audacy.
Almost all commercial radio stations in Boston are owned today by one of three companies: Audacy, Beasley, or iHeart.
WBZ(AM) had been owned by the same company (Westinghouse) for almost a century. It's now an iHeart station; WBZ-FM ("The Sports Hub") is a Beasley station, while WBZ-TV is still owned by CBS.
All of these new builds I see
All of these new builds I see springing up look identical within maybe two style sets. Has anyone reported on the experience of living in, maintaining and code-enforcement tales in these buildings?
I can only find promotional results on Sousa, but some lawsuits and the word “shoddy” in Stantec, but I don’t know of it’s the same Stantec.
Yes
Yes they are ugly. (is what you are saying)
As far as construction.. uh. Its stick construction. I have friends who live in various complexes around the area and my take of the insides are..
They are nice. Modern. But very cookie cutter, 'we bought whatever was on sale at Home Depot' kinda look.
The friends who live in 'high end' buildings have better finishes (counters, cabinets, appliances, etc) and those seem a bit more well built. But the run-of-the-mill Avalon Bay / Archstone complexes have a cheap-y feel to them. Akin to the way I felt when I was in atlanta and would go into the McMansions friends had. Nice but cheapy.
I have a friend who lived (past tense) in a new complex on the south shore. His building had the utilities in the ceiling above the third floor. They had a water leak and it flooded all three floors. This happened three times before he moved. (not sure why he stayed after the first but.. )
We've all see a few stories in recent years about fires at these complexes and its like a box of match sticks since its all stick frame construction. It doesn't take much. (then again to be fair, neither do triple deckers close to each other)
Yes, but before sprinklers
These all occur when the complexes are under construction before the sprinklers are installed. Once the sprinklers are installed, they mitigate fire risk.
Quincy and Peabody Fires
Recent fires were in incomplete structures.
But there were some seriously scary ones in the prior decade that involved exterior travel and occupied buildings that sprinklers might not have prevented.
This massive Peabody fire was the result of a ciggie flinger and mulch: https://www.residentialfiresprinklers.com/peabody-ma-apartment-fire-spar...
The Quincy fire resulted from an illegal grill on a balcony: https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/quincy-fire-at-apartment-complex-spa...
Thanks. They ain’t pretty.
Thanks. They ain’t pretty. One, or two of them wouldn’t be so conspicuous. I was worried someone would say, “well, brownstones all look the same too,” but brown stones are still standing after what a hundred years? Hopefully, the materials are heavily fire-treated and have sprinklers. They should get the job done housing people. Maybe not being built to last will give urban planners flexibility.
Wait till you hear about triple deckers!
All of these old builds I see look identical within maybe two style sets. Has anyone reported on the experience of living in, maintaining and code-enforcement tales in these buildings?
Oh and all the brick buildings along Comm. Ave in Brighton in particular, can you believe they let developers build those cookie cutter structures?! And they built street car lines for the residents?!
Headline changed, story updated
Because while the application filed by the developer says "radio tower," of course it was originally put up for WSBK, or as it blared on three sides of the tower, TV 38 - home of the legendary Dana Hersey.
Final Resting Place of WBCN
Final address of WBCN
83 Leo Birmingham Parkway [Basement]
2005-2009
The SBK Lofts
This will get lost since its not on the main page and I shoulda posted this earlier but
Who's with me that this apartment complex should be called "The SBK Lofts"
In honor of the lots former use as WSBK and a nod to their "movie loft" program.