Quote:
Originally Posted by colemonkee
^ While I like that proposal, the two-tower plan most recently approved was so much better.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by JMKeynes
I thought that the tower shown above is the most recently approved one.
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With Boston's insufferable process--no proposals by Don Chiofaro w/ Prudential have been approved via *Article 80 Review that sets the table for construction in the City. Between 2006 and 2014, (2) [2 tower] proposals were pronounced "dead on arrival" by Boston's planning authority.
*(a dark/depraved place on the human evolutionary map).
The current project is the only proposal brought forward by City planners to the Article 80 stage.
A special zoning program called the Downtown Municipal Harbor Planning Initiative (MHP) was created by the City in 2015 to produce zoning relief for 2 projects to move forward, and bolster Boston's waterfront:
1. The sinking of the universally hated Harbor Garage, and the creation of a world class day/night working/ residential/ tourist zone to act as forerunner to the N.E. Aquarium's "Blueway" redevelopment plan/vision.
2. A ~325' highrise hotel called the Hook Wharf project to replace a low-rise lobster restaurant that burned down 13 years ago.
The process kicked out a plan to allow for 1 tower of sufficient height to make demolition and remaking ~1,450 parking spaces below grade, and tower construction economically tenable for Chiofaro Co to draw up formal plans, pnf's, environmental studies, ect.
After various shareholders were allowed to posture in a quasi public process, the MHP was put to vote. City and State officials eventually agreed that the overall benefit to Boston was substantial. It was then passed up to the state authority to navigate making it a lawful action: (not straightforward in a state fraught with environmental and public access activists).
Finally, the day came that Don Chiofaro and Pru submitted a tower/site plan that turned the Garage initiative into an actual project subject to the Article 80 process.
Observers ran the range from elation, to general approval, to disapproval, public posturing & tirades.
Unfortunately, the process to complete the tricky steps to make the zoning relief for these 2 "one offs" came with years of warnings and challenge's by neighbors, an unhinged Aquarium think-tank, a billionaire and his paid for friends--and a professional extortion agency called the CLF.
A Suffolk Superior Court judge eventually sided with the warrior plaintiffs to declare the process lacking legal legitimacy. The plaintiffs were confident they could stop the project--and have (for now at least) been proven right.
Per the Globe article shown above, Lawmakers search that pathway to make the two projects legal.
Not telling anyone they should love this design. In San Francisco or Miami, it would probably take its place with other highrises near the waterfront as just another nice condo tower. It screams Hallandale/ Golden/ Sunny Isles Beach like nothing else [this side of the North Miami area] does.
For its difficult, underdog status, the adage of 'perfect being the enemy of the good' is apropos. It's really dumbfounding: The Aquarium should be strongly in support--especially with reverence to a future 'Blueway.' i don't know how anyone would not happily give support as it is currently proposed for the miracle change to the Harbor-front and Wharf it sets up geometrically, and infusion of life it brings to the Greenway and Boston.