Boston Globe – By Jon Chesto Globe Staff May 07, 2015
For years, Mayor Thomas M. Menino stood as the biggest hurdle in Don Chiofaro’s quest to build two skyscrapers where his Boston Harbor Garage now stands.
Chiofaro has found a more receptive audience in City Hall with Menino’s successor: Mayor Martin J. Walsh wants to see a bold development replace the aging concrete bunker now on the site. Read more
Two decades ago, state transportation planners were looking ahead when they plotted out a rail-tunnel route about 130 feet beneath Boston. Even though the state couldn’t afford to include the rail tunnel as part of the Big Dig, the designers left a space where they could add one later. The state still doesn’t have money to build the North-South Rail Link, the white whale of New England transportation. But a Boston zoning panel studying land-use rules for the waterfront should show the same kind of foresight as Big Dig planners by recommending protections for the underground route from encroachment. Someday, when the financial and political stars align to build the tunnel, efforts today to keep the route viable will pay off.
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By Casey Ross – Globe Staff
There have been three great ages of development in modern Boston. The first began after the Back Bay was filled in the late 19th century, a radical change that triggered a historic construction boom. The second came in the 1960s and ’70s, when a “high spine” of office towers — stretching from the financial district to the Pru — began to rise over an old town.
The third is now… Read more (click the link below)
Harbor Towers One and Two, and the 1400 car harbor garage were built in the late 1960s as a single developments at a time when the waterfront was walled off from the city by the Central Artery. This was a blighted area consisting of unused dilapidated warehouses and was a dangerous neighborhood that had fallen into disrepair…
Read the entire article here.
The Massachusetts Historical Commission has taken issue with the proposed height and massing of the Haymarket Hotel proposal for Parcel 9 by Normandy Real Estate Partners and Harbinger Development. In a January 26 letter, the MHC noted the proposed height far exceeds the 55 feet zoning limit that was set to protect the historic character of the Blackstone Block district…
