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The dream never dies: Tommy Tower edition
By adamg on Fri, 11/06/2009 - 9:06am
The most prominent thing on the Boston Redevelopment Authority's Web site is a Flash package that features Tom Menino standing in front of the Boston skyline - enhanced by the 80-story tower he wants to build at Winthrop Square.
For a building that never got built, Winthrop Square sure gets around:
Neighborhoods:
Free tagging:
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Comments
Keep it virtual!
Something needs to be built on that horrid collapsing parking garage and it won't be a crime to get rid of the crumbling concrete column building next door either ... but I hope this isn't what gets built.
Notice they always show it in the skyline, not, like up close? The streets around here are so narrow that I wonder how they are even going to be able to assemble it. It is a logistically difficult site ... which may be why it has the crumbling garage on it now.
again?
Stop this nonsense...you may know a lot, but construction logistics is clearly not your forte.
It really says
Build to Suit...well, maybe now we know where the political capital is going. The administration will announce a plan to overhaul the entire zoning code in an effort to prohibit any form of restrictive zoning. In its place will be opportunities to build anything anywhere (well, unless it infringes on one of his friends' open space or development rights) so long as TMM gets to pick the top of the building, or the front door, or the porch, or have a plaque on the facade recognizing the idea was his. It will be cost effective as well as streamline government services: ISD can provide vending machines for building permits, and the ZBA can be eliminated.
Build it!
I think tall buildings are cool and I want more of them. I don't have much of anything constructive to add here, I just like looking at skyscrapers. Build this one, the one near the aquarium, the one in south bay, build them all. Maybe they're not economically feasible now, but maybe 5 years from now, when they open, the business climate will be different?
Logistical Issues
I have to wonder where the zone of refuge will be for that building. We just had our fire drills on Federal street and a lack of communication meant that we had ours at the same time as the tower across the street ... and there was really no where to go save toward High Street because the street packed with people because the street is not very wide. The tower they are planning would have as much capacity as our two towers together. In an emergency, or even a multi-building emergency (100 Summer is nearby too), exactly where would people evacuate to?
I think skyscrapers are wicked cool too ... but they aren't sculpture. They are buildings and buildings need tenants and tenants need to be able to get in and out of the buildings for it to work.
Lots of parking lots around there
towards Fort Point Channel and Gillette, so if I had to flee the building in a fire, that's where I'd go.
Um ...
Those are all a half mile away, Ron. South Station/Dewey Square Plaza would be the first choice. All those people would also have to squeeze through to Dewey Square across a point in the Greenway where pedestrians get about 20 seconds of every multi-minute light cycle to cross ... if a semi held up at the next light isn't entirely blocking the road all the way down to the tunnel exit.
We just went shopping in Chinatown until the fire drill was over ... but it still raises issues of infrastructure capacity.
Sorry, this was my error
Somehow I got confused and thought this was the other thread about the A Street tower proposal over by Fort Point Channel. Disregard my comment above entirely!
Menino is such a self-promoting whore
You know that project to repaint ugly utility boxes?
The ones in JP have "City of Boston Mayor Thomas M Menino" painted into them.
$20 says the douchebag required it of the artists before he's agree to "let" them paint it.
I think we need to have a state law banning officials, paid or elected, from putting their names on public property.
I swear to god, if he could figure out how to put his name on road signs, he would.
The best part is
if I had spare time I could find 20 quotes from the mayor where he says 'That is the BRA, I have nothing to do with that..." Usually when they screw the community for one of his pals or former employee's consulting company making millions of dollars.
Thank you city of Boston voting electorate. You get what you vote for.
Is it just me?
Or does that picture of Hizzoner in front of the city look just like the dog in Duck Hunt right before he shows you the ducks you caught?
Lazy MSPaint version at work
+1
Bizarrely correct.
I second the +1 and wonder: Photo contest?
Like, say, a French Toast Alert T-shirt to whomever comes up with the best Photoshopping of that image?
Due date?
I'm going to have to wait until the weekend if I want to put a few of my ideas into a contest. Any limit on entries and when do you want to make the final call?
You think fast!
I hadn't even gotten that far. First I just wanted to see if it might be contest-worthy. If so, probably a week at least for entries and then a couple days for an as-yet-unnamed but no doubt extremely august panel of judges to decide.
Menino looking creepy lately?
Is it just me or has he started looking more and more like the pudgy masks the torturers in the movie Brazil wore? His video ads made him look deranged.
Barney the Dinosaur Mayor
They both have open mouth syndrome.