Downtown Crossing
If you've been wanting to try Plaza III at Faneuil Hall, you better hurry. The place is $175,000 in arrears on its rent and the marketplace's owner - itself in bankruptcy - plans to replace it with an Anthem lounge-type restaurant, roughly along the lines of the nearby Houston's.
The Boston Licensing Board will decide tomorrow whether to let the restaurant's current owner transfer its liquor license to Anthem, which hopes to open up fully by May. Attorney Dennis Quilty told the board today Plaza III has had "a very long bad run of it" - downtown Boston just couldn't support so many steak places.
Also tomorrow, the board will vote on a request for a beer and wine license for the Barracuda Tavern, a proposed seafood restaurant at 15 Bosworth St. - the site of the old and infamous Hank's Tavern, near Cafe Marliave. The proposal has the enthusiastic support of city councilors Sal LaMattina, Steve Murphy and Rob Consalvo. "There's three city councilors here looking for a new restaurant," LaMattina told the board.
In case you forget which way you're headed, the T provides this handy little sign at the front end of the Alewife-bound side of the Red Line.
Jed H. shows just how windy it was in Copley Square today (photo posted with permission).
Channel 4 reports a door, possibly unhinged by the wind, fell five stories and hit a man in Chinatown.
David Inniss tweets he wound up in a dust storm behind the Ritz Carlton and had to take refuge in Macy's:
I ended up with grit in my eyes and mouth, yuck.
UPDATE: MBTA says no fires.
Boston Police are tweeting there are fires in the Chinatown AND State Street stations on the Orange Line. Local 718 tweets firefighters are trying to determine the source of smoke on the Orange Line at Downtown Crossing.
The T itself is only reporting a disabled inbound train at Haymarket.
There's just something weird about all the posters of perfect-skinned models in the poorly lit, dismal tunnel on the Forest Hills side of the Orange Line at Downtown Crossing - more disconcerting even than the chef pushing Diet Coke on the walls of Back Bay station.
Far from being a desolate wasteland today, Downtown Crossing was actually kind of lively, even if nowhere near as crowded as it might once have been just ten days before Christmas. This guy had set up an easel on Washington Street and was busy painting away.
There was one sad sight on Summer Street, though: A clearly emaciated Santa being forced to lay down beats to try to raise money for food: Read more
16WadeSt captures the scene in Downtown Crossing, looking down Washington Street.
Copyright 16WadeSt. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
In his first major speech since his election to a fifth term, Mayor Thomas M. Menino issued a rousing call for new ideas - apparently including such out-of-the-box notions as actually building something (anything!) on the old Filene's site, reviving the proposal for a Business Improvement District in Downtown Crossing, and improving the quality of public education. Read more
Stephen Laniel kvetches about the poor state of signs in Boston; recounts his experience transferring from the Orange Line to the Red Line at Downtown Crossing this morning:
... The one stairwell that will take you down to the Alewife-bound track was closed. T officials were standing there looking bewildered. There weren’t any signs. They directed me to the tunnel that connects Park to Downtown Crossing; if I hadn’t known that the red line was there, their pointing would have confused me. It still confused me, because I’m not accustomed to walking to another station to catch the train. ...
Yes, there will be one - a large tent on Summer Street, with various artists and craftspeople, between Nov. 28 and Dec. 24.
Read more on the blog or follow on Twitter.
Via Beantown Bloggery.
The Boston Fire Department ordered power shut on the Orange Line between State Street and Downtown Crossing shortly after 10 p.m. when smoke appeared in the State Street station. Power was restored not long after when firefighters discovered the smoke was coming from one particular train, not another track fire, according to Boston Fireman and Local 718.
He was holding a guitar, but in the short time I listened to him at Downtown Crossing, Fester didn't actually play. Instead, he sang "Yesterday" to a karaoke CD.
In the "kids today" department, as I was walking up to the Forest Hills side from the Oak Grove side, these two teen girls in front of me were talking about Halloween, when one blurted out, "I wanna be a WHORE!" You go, girl!
Boston Fire tweets there was a small track fire on the Red Line outbound at Downtown Crossing shortly after midnight. No injuries.
Back in September:
Meltdown on the Red and Orange lines.
Wait, what's that? That's not a Christo installation? It's just the developers trying to mollify an outraged city and protect what's left of the old Filene's buildings after more than a year of leaving them exposed to the elements at the giant hole in the middle of Downtown Crossing?
Oh, never mind.
Somehow I missed this account of what happened when some kid stole Ben Franklin's hat in Downtown Crossing last week:
... Ben Franklin catches up and starts whacking the thief with his cane, so the cop starts yelling, "Easy with the cane! Easy with the cane!" ...
I bet it's the Faneuil Hall Ben Franklin who gets mad if you take his picture without paying him.
Via Bostonist.
Matthew I shows there's still some life in the old retail district.
Copyright Matthew I. Posted in the Universal Hub pool on Flickr.
Panhandler this afternoon on Summer Street in Downtown Crossing:
Could you give me some money for absolutely no reason at all? I've run out of excuses.
Orange Line operator on the PA this evening as the train pulled into Forest Hills:
I hope you had a good time on the Orange Line! Please remember to take all your belongings. See you again!
The Globe reports on how badly developer John Hynes feels about the empty swimmin' hole on Washington Street, says that if he doesn't get financing by October to start building there, he'll fill the hole in. No word on whether he'll also cover up what's left of the Filene's buildings, or simply leave them to rot so that when he finally does get financing, he can tell the city they're too far gone to save and simply knock them down.
NOTE: I'd originally linked to stats on a new MBTA Transit Police site. That site is now dead and looks like they are no longer linking to stats from their old site. Feh. The information below was from the new site before it got taken down/fell apart. Channel 4 reports overall crime on the T system is down. Oy.
The latest crime stats from Transit Police show a dramatic increase in crimes at busy Downtown Crossing over last year.
As of June 30, 143 criminal incidents were reported at Downtown Crossing, compared to 61 for all of last year. Although all types of crime are up, it seems that Downtown Crossing visitors are quicker to spoil for a fight this year - there have already been 56 reported assaults, compared to just 16 for all of last year.
I was meeting somebody on the Common today (it's amazing what you can do when the weather's nice). As I walked down Winter, there was Spare Change Guy doing his usual thing (and still clean-shaven) right at Tremont.
Meeting done, I walked through the Common back toward Downtown Crossing. Spare Change Guy was sitting on a bench. His hand was out, and he was asking for spare change, but he was really subdued, almost like his battery was worn down.
At his usual spot at Winter and Tremont, there was a Spare Change guy, somebody hawking Spare Change News. So is there some rotation going on here?
That's what they did in Wellesley, which has its own giant hole in the ground (where the Wellesley Inn got torn down for condos that never materialized). The Swellesley Report notes the developers actually agreed to do something to keep part of the town from looking like London after the Blitz:
... We'll miss seeing the tumbleweeds blowing across the vacant lot, but I guess we can't have it all. ...
And then promptly kill off the Downtown Crossing store forever so it can rent it to somebody more lucrative, the Herald reports. Vornado teamed up with Syms on what is now apparently the winning bid for the frail Filene's Basement.
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