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The Menino Three-Step
Ladies and Gentlemen, Mayor Menino's Three-Step Plan for Vital Urban Parks!
The silver lining here is that although the city and the state have conspired to get almost everything wrong, the space remains open. There's still the opportunity to get it right.
More like two-step
You can't tie Menino to the Big Dig itself; planning work on that started even before he was elected to the city council.
Yeah, yeah, nit-picking!
Yeah, but I like the Big Dig.
Yeah, but I like the Big Dig. I was blaming him for his support of replacing the Artery with a median strip. He'd been mayor for a decade by the time the Greenway was formally created, and certainly could have pressed for an alternative scheme of development.
But even if it's only a two-step, it's still been a lousy dance. Menino has done a lot of wonderful things for the city. But he's been at his best, on the whole, when it comes to the million minutiae that make the city run well. Large scale projects like this one are not his strength.
Agreed. With the current
Agreed. With the current "median strip" setup, I think they would be better developing most of the land. It's just not enjoyable hanging out on an empty city block, with or without trees, benches, etc. The strip doesn't really lead anywhere, so you can't bike or roller blade on it easily, and the numerous intersections (all of which, in typical Boston style, require a push-button to get a walk signal) don't make for a pleasant walking experience either.
If they wanted to make it park land, they should not have it surrounded by 3 lanes of traffic, interrupted regularly by cross streets.
The sites they want develop (i.e., the ones with exit ramps) are probably too expensive for these non-profit type uses. They'd be better off putting some commercial or residential towers over those plots.
Once I realized they were replacing the six lane elevated highway with a six lane surface street with a giant median, it wasn't too hard to envision what the end result would look like.
The one place where it works
At the entrance to Chinatown, but maybe that's because there was already something there to work with, and the park pays homage to the area's heritage (even if it is kind of strange at first to see live bamboo).
The North End Parks work very
The North End Parks work very well also. The only issue right not is that it's too cold to be outside. In the summer though, I can't think of too many parks that are more successful. The fountain down by the Aquarium seems like it's working too. It's only issue right now is the same thing; too cold to use a park let alone a fountain.
The rest of it though, yeah, I totally agree. Pretty heinous.
Both of those sets of parks
Both of those sets of parks are surrounded by actual neighborhoods with people living in them, and somewhat distinct from the rest of the strip. The template they offer can be applied more broadly - bring large numbers of residents on to some of the parcels, intersperse with other parcels serving as parks, and watch the whole become more than the sum of its parts.
Building over the ramps is prohibitively expensive for a nonprofit cultural institution, because it involves a very high fixed cost, but yields only a few stories worth of use. The solution is not complicated. Build towers. Preferably, very tall towers. Allow them to spread the cost of erecting a load-bearing platform over and around the ramps below over as many stories as the FAA permits.
You get a few nice things out of that. First, you replace the useless ramp-filled parcels with actual productive space. Second, you bring thousands of residents into the area, enlivening it in the evenings. Third, office or commercial space would increase daytime usage. Fourth, you're placing high-value properties on the tax roles. (It entirely baffles me that the mayor who never ceases whining about tax-exemptions and PILOTs gets handed priceless acres of the most valuable real estate in the city, and decides its best use is by...nonprofits. Really?) Fifth, you're relieving price pressure on other downtown neighborhoods like Chinatown and the North End.
I don't see why this isn't the way to go. Then again, I can't understand why Menino isn't down on his knees, begging Don Chiofaro to forgive him and build his waterfront tower (that is, if he makes it a little more attractive). The denser the center city, the better off we all are.
Towers on the Greenway would
Towers on the Greenway would make me wonder whether that was the plan all along, and the Greenway was intended to fail.
The best plan I had seen for
The best plan I had seen for the post-Artery space was to build *some* towers, in a way that left several parcels open for Post-Office-Square size parks, and I think the parcels would have corresponded roughly with historical spaces - i.e. a new Dewey Square near South Station; a new Fort Hill Square in front of Rowes Wharf, something by Faneuil Hall, a New Haymarket Square, probably a couple of others.
You'd have a series of spaces at a human scale strung along the old Artery, with urban infill in between - could be 5-6 stories, could be a couple of towers. Something to fill in that incoherent gash of space that currently runs through downtown. We have gained relatively little compared to what could have been.
Doesn't lead anywhere
I take issue with this statement. It does lead somewhere. I know that because I walked down it once. It leads from Faneuil Hall to South Station. Kinda. Though the sidewalk on the water side would be better.
I agree with the other statements, though. Your description of it as replacing the six lane elevated highway with a six lane surface street with a giant median strip is spot-on. That's the key failure from which all the other failures derive. Pretending it's one unitary park isn't going to fix the fact it's not. It's a bunch of little tiny parks that don't quite add up to a whole. And building over the ramps? Nagannahappen.
My latest idea for what to do with it is make it into an urban orchard. Plant a variety of fruit bearing trees, bushes, and vines all up and down it, set up associations to maintain them for fruiting (really, apple trees will go to hell if you don't maintain them), and declare the pickings are free. That's something that will bring Chinatown and the North End together.
A lot of the Greenway decisions were made in the 1980's
Between the Dukakis Administration and the feds, both of whom wanted to limit for-profit development on top of the depressed highway. Any dissent back then, particualrly by the locals, was stifled by the staties and their backers (like the Globe), who jumpd on anyone with differences on the project ...."you're jeopardizing our funding!"
Apparently I'm the only one
Apparently I'm the only one who likes the RKG, and thinks plopping buildings on the parcels is a bad idea.
It could use a tad more shade, and a few more benches, but it's a wonderful place to spend an afternoon lunch, and take a nice mid afternoon walk.
It's also packed at lunch, when it's nice out, contrary to how some want to paint it.
Yes, there are some nice parts of the Greenway
And the Conservancy has done its darndest. The giant hammock was a wonderful thing. Kids love the fountains. The timeline and the return of the bronzed garbage at Hanover are nice, as are the chairs and tables that aren't bolted down. And if you remember the Central Artery, nothing beats the view from near the Garden toward the Custom House.
But as a whole? I'm not sure it works. Chinatown can use all the parkland it can get. The North End, um, maybe, but Christopher Columbus Park was already right there. The sections in between? It's a block away from the harbor - and the Harborwalk (which, granted, has some issues of its own).
I'm with you, anon
I think it's lovely, a great way to get from the North End to Chinatown and a really nice place to have a sandwich on a sunny day. Don't listen to the density crowd that won't be happy until each plot is owned by a corporation with a 30-year tax abatement, inhabited by cubicle-filled stories-high droneitories and packed in like Sao Paolo. Grab a sandwich from the Clover truck and enjoy the green.
Yeah - who needs taxpaying
Yeah - who needs taxpaying businesses in the middle of a downtown business district?
Who needs density in the city, right?
The whole point of the urban form is that it is dense enough to bring efficiencies (such as the tax collection you cite). These people who want to grab more and more land for open space should move to Vermont.
"efficiencies"
Cities are a balance of the density you seek and the public spaces they require. Boston does a better job than most of maintaining that balance. Want more tax dollars? Support the innovation district, support construction on the vacant lots scarring downtown -- leave our open space out of it.
I was blown away by Chicago,
I was blown away by Chicago, where the was a push for greenspace.
The city has parks on just about every corner, and has several huge parks along it's waterfront, built in the 18th century.
And it works much better then Boston.
The only thing that needs to be done with the RKG is to promote ground level storefronts and businesses along the park. Unfortunately, many of the structures were created pre-big dig and didn't bother since their fronts faces surface streets under an elevated highway.
Let me know when there's a shortage of those
or why we're giving tax abatements to companies like Liberty Mutual NOT to build there. Meanwhile, there are HUGE lots of prime property right on Washington Street that are just waiting for someone's huge tower proposal.
Remind me again how many enormous taxpaying businesses are in Central Park or Millennium Park... which are both adjacent to business districts.
Remove half the ramps
Remove half the ramps and fill them so we can build on them - or at least have a continuous string of parkland if that's what ultimately comes to be. There are far too many ramps now. It should be only an express route in and out of, or bypass of, the downtown - with the ramps located where they make sense urbanistically, not where they are most convenient for drivers.
Northbound:
Atlantic Ave / Kneeland Street offramp (before tunnel) - maintain
Rowes Wharf onramp - eliminate
North Street offramps - eliminate
Haymarket Sq onramp - maintain
Southbound:
New Chardon St onramp - eliminate (downtown drivers accessing the airport would only use the TWT unless coming from Storrow)
Clinton Street offramp - eliminate
Seaport Blvd offramp - maintain
Dewey Square offramp - eliminate
Essex Street onramp - maintain
Once this happens, each of the major ramp parcels will either be eliminated or greatly reduced. Where ramps would still exist, a large enough parcel for a building will be created alongside it, with the possibility of that building being cantilevered over the retained ramp.
You shoulda seen the old one
I am not a traffic planner, but you're going to propose one exit and one onramp in each direction for the entire downtown, and at the perimeters? I'd like to see someone run a simulation on this, I can't imagine what degree of epic fail this would fall under.
The Old Artery had something like two dozen on- and off-ramps in the same area where you list yours above; that was cut to the nine you've listed, and there was already a fair amount of insanity involved in those cuts (no ramp from Tobin Bridge to I-93 north; the addition of a U-turn ramp on the Pike in Allston, etc.) I don't have the time to go into what downtown traffic would be like if the only escape routes are at Kneeland or North Station.
The existing number of exits works reasonably well. Anything less would be uncivilized.
Short Sighted
To those who call the greenway a median strip, do you consider the Comm. Ave mall a median strip too? They are essentially the same thing - the major difference being that Comm. Ave has been there more than 100 years and the greenway has been there less than 10. The greenway was designed with a 50+ year horizon in mind. It hasn't grown up yet. Not even the buildings surrounding much of the greenway have had time to adjust. Many of them still orient their worst sides (air handlers, blank walls, parking garage entrances) towards the greenway because for 50 years it was a wasteland. When you walk down the greenway, you really have to envision what it will look like for your kids, because it wasn't intended to be fully completed for you.
Greenway is not the Comm Ave Mall.
Walking down the Comm Ave mall is all very nice... until you hit Mass Ave with the ramps and underpasses that force you to cross traffic three times. Between highway ramps and air vents, walking the Greenway is essentially entirely moments like those.
Then there's the fact that the Greenway is built on tunnels, and so large parts of it cannot support trees.
So yes, 50 years down the road the Greenway will be just like the Comm Ave mall, except without trees, with all sorts of bisecting highway exits, and with air vents instead of statues.
Our children will thank us for this lovely gift.
"Entirely"
Mularkey. It's "entirely" crossing streets, not making eratz three-street forays around Mass Avenue.
You have absolutely no imagination. Right now the entire city of Seattle is laughing at you. Why? Because all of Pioneer Square is built above two stories of fill and forgotten buildings, yet still manages to be a beautiful public space largely thanks to public structures and other non-tree decor. I'm not saying we should steal a totem as they did, I'm just saying there are a lot of ways to fill a public space that don't require complex root systems. Boston is already a massive joke when it comes to public art, whereas Chicago used public art to populate its various spaces.
Want a compromise? Sell the rights to each stretch of park. Sell them to Legal, sell them to Fidelity, sell them to whoever will slap a name on them, plant some public art on the space and do the job the city won't. Millennium Park came about this way, and there's no reason that publicly funded institutions like the MFA can't kick in some influence as well. Not saying I want the baby heads out there, but public art and structures are a great way to do the job trees can't.
Menino tried with the non-profits and good on him for doing so, but now we may need a little of that public-private partnership that's worked so well elsewhere.
Meanwhile, Squarepants, why don't you think up some solutions for once instead of pointing and wailing at the problem like a toddler who's dropped an ice cream cone?
Then there's the fact that
Often stated, but not quite accurate. Much of the central part of the Greeway cannot support large canopy trees like the oaks that line Comm Ave - but there are other smaller but still very attractive shade trees like sugar maples and birches which have much shallower root systems and are perfectly suitable. The only downside is that they don't live as long (~25-33 years) since their natural niche is to be transitional species that grow along the edge of forest/meadow environments.
Plus, we could fill the Greenway with more of the larger tree-like shrubs that do well here - like lilacs and our gorgeous native azaleas. If you've ever visited the Arboreteum, you'll know that when mature these can even actually grow large enough to provide some close shade.
***
At the same time that I agree that city leaders have dropped the ball on some Greenway development (lets get that farmers market built already!), I must admit that I think the sections that are nice are quite nice, and I think that it has a good chance of evolving into a gem the same way the Esplanade has.
100 years is not the only difference
The Comm Ave. Mall is in a narrower street, in a neighborhood filled with dense residential structures. It also provides a unified pedestrian experience and the cross streets are mostly minor side streets, not major arteries.
That said, I do think the Greenway as is can get better with age. I just don't want to settle for that, because it won't ever reach the quality of the mall without some significant changes to traffic and building patterns along the route.
"dense residential structures"
Oh, that's rich. Yes, manses and townhouses. Dense as de-luxe apartments in the sky, those are. "Unified pedestrian experience." I'll take crossing Hanover over crossing the "minor side street" that is Mass Ave any day, pal.
Exactly how, again, will plopping towers in the middle of this great, unobstructed bit of open space better "reach the quality of the mall?"
Mass Ave? Seriously? Which
Mass Ave? Seriously? Which basically marks the extreme end of the mall? That's got to be one of the most uncharitable responses I've ever seen. Also, do you really think Back Bay isn't dense? It's one of the densest full-sized neighborhoods in the country...
Anyway, most pro-development folks would be very happy if plopping down towers on ADJACENT parcels were possible (Chiofaro tower, Congress St Garage Tower), leaving your precious open space open. But so far, we've seen nothing but attempts at even stricter regulation (see NIMBYs in the North End). So yeah, when plans for covering up the disgraceful, eye-sore ramp parcels fall through, these folks are going to call for some kind of alternative.
Bookends
Like a lot of folks here, it seems to me that a couple of tall residential towers as bookends to the greenway would do little harm. The city could make ground-floor public space a condition of the towers. Call them the gateways to the greenway. The residents would have a great amenity of direct ground access to the park, in exchange for subsidizing increased amenities for park-goers.