News
On the Waterfront
July 25, 2011
| We've written so much about the permitting of the 1.1M SF, $900M office/lab space for Vertex Pharmaceuticals that the V-E-R-T-E-X keys are worn off our laptop. (Only a problem when we write the phrase "Re Vet.") Now it's into construction, so we thought it time for a walking tour of the neighborhood, Boston's waterfront. |
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| We snapped the cranes at work on Vertex? new HQ on Fan Pier. It's being developed by The Fallon Company, which has a big mixed-use complex planned for the rest of the site. Last year, it completed construction of ONE Marina Park Drive (right). Across Northern Avenue is a parking lot that's within the Seaport Square site, another big mixed-use project inching toward a construction start. The developers, Morgan Stanley and Boston Global Investors, plan on transforming a sea of parking lots into hotels, offices, residences, retail, and green space. |
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| Our tour guide is The Boston Harbor Association's Vivien Li who for decades has championed the cause of balanced development around the waterfront: that means commercial, residential, and maritime uses. Behind her is 368 Congress St, an old Boston Wharf building purchased by Norwich Partners, which soon will start construction on a 120-key Marriot extended-stay hotel. Vivien tells us that in recent years, the neighborhood that was once a forgetten part of the city, has taken on a safe, 24/7 character as it has been populated with restaurants, office space, and multifamily/condo projects. |
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| Supporters of the Claddagh Fund that aids veterans and their families gathered under a tent next to the Barking Crab recently where Vivien says a hotel will be built here as part of Seaport Square, planned as 6.3M SF. This part of the Seaport Square site runs along Northern Avenue, where the rusty old bridge will someday be rebuilt as a properly grand gateway between the Financial District, the Rose Kennedy Greenway and the Seaport District, aka the Innovation District (note the International Place high-rises in the background). |
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| Under construction in Fort Point Channel is the new $25M Tea Party Ship (think angry colonists, American Revolution, taxation without representation) and Museum. Vivien says the project being financed in part by the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority will change the neighborhood dynamic by bringing thousands more tourists into the area when it is completed next summer. For culture mavens, this photo was taken in front of the Children's Museum, on the Seaport side of the Channel. A few blocks from there, on Fan Pier, is the new Institute of Contemporary Art. |
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| As part of Seaport Square?s public contribution, one of the developer?s first buildings will be an Innovation Center. It will go up just to the left of where The Chapel of Our Lady of Good Voyage now stands and the chapel will be rebuilt elsewhere with additional housing, Vivien tells us. The 12k SF Innovation Center will be a temporary structure built by the developer and leased back to the City of Boston for 10 years free of charge. Eventually, that part of the site will be Seaport Square's town green, a major open space. |
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| Cars are piling into this parking lot that leads to Anthony?s Pier 4 Restaurant (rear), flanked on the right by the World Trade Center and the left by Fan Pier. Someday, other cars may be lining up to get into another mixed-use complex built by New England Development, which Vivien says has long held an option on the land. Like developers with other major projects contemplated for the waterfront, New England Development has designs for a possible complex that it can pull out of the drawer when market conditions are ripe. It may well have a park at the end of the pier, residences, retail, hotel, office, other civic spaces and a touch and go dock. Vivien says the plan would allow Anthony's to return if it wishes. |
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| Vivien is standing in front of 451 D St, a Beal Co building where the Boston Herald may relo. She says that like the newspaper, more businesses are realizing the benefit of the Seaport/Innovation District location. Rents, land, and buildings are less expensive than the Financial District and other downtown neighborhoods across Fort Point Channel. As part of the Big Dig, since '05 the Seaport District has been served by the Silver Line Waterfront route that goes to the airport in 12 minutes for $2 a ride and connects with South Station. A few stops from South Station on the Red Line is MIT/Kendall Square. Many involved with innovation, technology, and science want to be just minutes away. |
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| On the downtown side of the channel is Atlantic Wharf, the Boston Properties' complex completed in February (left). Now being built out on the ground floor is a Smith and Wollensky restaurant that will have an outdoor patio for waterfront dining. Next door at the glass-clad Intercontinental Hotel, its outdoor patio bar and restaurant has been packed all summer. On the Atlantic Avenue side, Rialto's Jody Adams will open her second restaurant, Trade. |
