The Seaport’s Sky-High Transit Solution To Landing HQ2
Boston’s quest to land Amazon HQ2 has mainly left the Seaport out of the conversation, but a city councilor says a proposed gondola system could be what brings the neighborhood to the negotiating table.
Millennium Partners has proposed a Summer Street, cable-propelled gondola network running from South Station to a property one of its subsidiaries owns in the Raymond L. Flynn Marine Park, the Boston Herald reports. As many as 71 10-passenger cabins could move as many as 4,000 passengers per hour in and out of the Seaport, where traffic is notoriously congested.
“It’s pretty significant as to how many people they can move in and move out with the gondola system,” Boston City Councilor-At-Large Michael Flaherty told the Herald.
Millennium is willing to pay in excess of $100M for the construction and operation of the gondola, as well as improved ferry service to the marine park. Flaherty sees this as an easy Seaport sell for Amazon.
The company’s HQ2 project will eventually require 8M SF for offices, something the Seaport does not readily have. But Flaherty said he has reached out to Seaport developers and landowners like Millennium, Skanska, Related Beal and Jamestown to work together on a proposal.
“A lot of commercial entities are struggling with whether they’re going to renew their leases or they want to come here, because it’s hard to get in and out,” Flaherty said on the Herald’s radio station Wednesday. “The gondola [system] … solves that.”
