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Developer now proposes 47-story building at Copley Place with no additional parking
By adamg on Thu, 03/20/2008 - 5:19pm
Simon Properties, owners of the mall, want to stick a 47-story structure atop it that would include a four-story "winter garden" and 300 condos (starting at $1 million) according to the Boston Business Journal and the Herald.
The Journal notes:
No additional parking is called for by Simon in the plan, which noted the proximity of nearby public transit stations.
When plans for the project first surfaced in 2006, the Herald quoted sources as saying Simon was looking at a 20- to 30-story building.
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Comments
That's fine with me
The building site is directly across the street from Back Bay Station (Orange Line, Amtrak, Commuter Rail) and two blocks from Copley station (Green Line). You can even walk indoors (underground) to Back Bay station without going outside. Can't get a whole lot more transit-accessible than that. Market it to people who don't need or want their own cars.
Add more people to the city without adding more cars.
Agreed.
You really couldn't ask for a better location for something like this.
And it's better than the "We'll build more parking downtown to encourage the use of mass transit to get cars off of downtown streets" logic that we've seen a lot of lately.
Just don't tell my wife
She'll want to move there.
Alert Sara Schweitzer immediately!
What's the over under on the obligatory
Globe piece declaring "winter gardens" and
$1m-plus condos as being de riguer
for all Boston residents?
Natick Mall vs. Copley Place
A comparison of the two would make a great Sunday front-pager.
Above the fold...
of course!
Elkus-Manfredi
Elkus/Manfredi, he architect of Neiman Marcus at the Natick Mall, is architect of the new Simon tower, so you may get your wish.
http://www.elkus-manfredi.com/retail.html
Dream on
It'd be great to add people and no cars, but the reality is, at $1 million to start for a condo, the people moving in there are going to have a lot of money. Thus, they will likely want to have every luxury and convenience available to them - including a car. Many of them will buy up the parking spaces in the area, which, based on the law of supply and demand, means the already astronomical parking prices in the city would likely go up some more.
So we should exclude the
So we should exclude the wealthy from living in the city so you can have cheap parking?
Think of all the money you'll be saving when you get rid of your car.
Parking Freeze
There is unlikely to be any NET increase in parking in Boston ever (or at least for a long time). Since the 1970s there has been a freeze on the construction of any new off-street parking in, essentially, downtown Boston. See http://www.cityofboston.gov/environment/sbf.asp. My understanding is that it was an EPA related due to deteriorating air quality in Boston.
Simon likely "chose" to use the Copley garrage because it would have been impossible to find sufficient parking spaces in the parking bank. This is one reason why developers are starting to buy surface garages so they can tear them down and build a building with equivalent under ground parking. For example, the State Street Financial Center sits on top of an old City garage and the same thing is true for the giant garrage on Congress Street which was just purchased along with its air rights by a large developer who wants to put up towers. Same of the aquarium garrage. The cost of parking in Boston is deliberately kept high to induce people to take public transit. Its just a shame that a system wasn't devised to take the money generated from the increased cost of parking and put it into transit. Instead, the owners of garrages existing when the parking cap was implemented got rich.
Parking capacity
I agree with Ron. More parking = more cars, which is one thing Boston has plenty of already (cars that is).
I'm curious, however, to know how close to capacity the Prudential and other garages are right now. They may actually have space available for new residents who insist on having (and are willing to pay a lot for) cars in such a transit-rich area.
Trust me,
No one living in a multi-million dollar "luxury" condo in Boston is ever going to be taking public transportation, unless they are the live-in "help."
They will all have showy cars to match their showy condo's and will need a place to put them. And they won't park in just any garage, it'll have to have a car detailing service on the premises.
Kreskin sez
Let me look into my crystal ball...
I see the value of a parking spot in the Back Bay going up, uuup, uuuup!
I've always thought it would be cool to own a space in the Back Bay Garage, with its own on-ramp to the Pike. It's like the Bat-Cave.
Clarification on "no additional parking"
Today's Globe article says there will be 300 parking spaces dedicated to these units, and they will come out of existing spaces in the Copley Place garage.
Ah, so no NET increase in parking spaces
Which is cool, although I'd still wonder if somebody who buys a $1-million condo at a turnpike offramp is really only going to have one car.