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Roxbury looks set to get a BJ's

The Bay State Banner reports the membership discount store has agreed to move into the mixed-use development that looks like it might finally get built on the parcel across from the police headquarters on Tremont Street that has been vacant for so long it has trees growing on it.

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Comments

Wow. A typo in this headline and this would become a completely different story.

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n/t

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(also has mind in the gutter)

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... inner twelve year-old ...

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The traffic already blows on that stretch of Columbus; this is gonna make it suck even worse. Plus this will likely act as a magnet for a slew of even crappier big box stores to invade the area.

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This BJ's is going to be B U S Y. It'll make South Bay look like a cake walk.

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Not sure of the logic here, you have to pay to shop at BJ , a yearly fee. The check out lanes will be clogged sorting out all this stuff.

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I was wondering that too. I mean, don't get me wrong. glad something is going there. But wouldn't a Roche Bros or a Market Basket or heck even a Target be better? Only because you do have to pay to be a member of BJs.

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And put it here in Roxbury where it is needed. Take care of the neighborhood people first.

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Maybe DRM can "invoice" BJs and get free memberships for everyone.

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It 1.5 to 2.5 miles to nearest grocery.

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They often police it at entry to avoid gumming up checkout

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The late great jazz club? For some reason it was so urgent to take that property by eminent domain and tear it down. 16 years ago!

http://www.thecrimson.com/article/1998/3/2/historic-jazz-club-plays-last...

God, I am so glad Menino is gone.

Howie Carr had a good point today:

Something is very wrong at Boston City Hall.

They’re behaving sensibly. What the hell is going on?

First of all, Mayor Marty Walsh refuses to unleash a regulatory jihad against Uber, the convenient, cheap livery service that’s driving the cab companies crazy, because they are neither convenient nor cheap.

We all know what Mumbles would have done. He would have turned Uber upside down and shaken them until every last penny had fallen out of their pockets.

Instead, Walsh acknowledges the safety questions about Uber, then adds, “But we also cannot condemn a popular, effective service like Uber.”

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You be meaning Connolly's Stardust Lounge.

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of how to respond to this new development. Its not Walmart,therefore it may not affect"mom and pop/small businesses"like Walmart most certainly would have. But I would assume(I have no kids/family)and from common knowledge, that most families would benefit from buying in bulk/at wholesale prices.

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Yes , indeed the whole thing is off center here , pay to shop , bulk or multi- unit items, not orientated to the surrounding citizenry. The mom and pops , and small restaurants , buy items at BJ Club, you see them loading up on some items, in quantities that are greater than the average clan could consume. Plus , some BJ Clubs have an automobile dept. for tires and such, and gasoline pumps. The BJers know their onions, they run a tight ship, but you would think S & S would have scoped out this area, or the Market Basketeers. Joe the Trader , or Whole Foods need not apply, even Roche 's , naw I don't think so. In a who knew ,déjà vu moment , right up the way ,just where Columbus & Tremont used to meet , was a Hertz Truck Leasing garage , and a good portion of their trade was supplying trucks for the food industry.

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There's also a grocery store going in as part of the development at Barlett Yard near Dudley Square... seems like the more appropriate space for a smaller non-supermarket like Trader Joe's or Whole Foods

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From what I've heard on the neighborhood listservs, Trader Joe's was approached for the Bartlett project and said we are "not their target demographic." Which, even if they're not targeting us, most of us in the neighborhood certainly spend enough money going to the ones in Coolidge Corner or Boylston Street.

The residents of the neighborhood in general seem to not want a Whole Foods, and I don't know if they've been approached.

Harvest Co-op was at one point considering it. Unsure if this is still the case.

BTW, Adam, do you subscribe to the various neighborhood listservs? A lot of this sort of stuff gets talked about on them.

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Costco is king in this field of big box bulk retail. If you were really inclined, you could get to Costco on the Orange Line. So, this BJ's will offer downtown residents a bit more convenience. However, even a small shopping run to one of these places usually still means needing a car to get everything home due to the bulk nature alone. So, I'm not sure proximity is a real winner and the land can't be as cheap as building outside of 128.

I'm also surprised BJ's is willing to do this considering 2 years ago they were sold to a couple of holding companies after Wal-Mart presented an initial offer to buy them out and reduce the market to just Sam's Club and Costco. At the time, BJ's closed 5 stores and dropped a few dozen headquarters staffers and moved HQ to a cheaper location in reorganization.

Is there any reason to think it's any healthier today? They just did a dividend recap loan in order to payout double the investment from the vulture, er private equity owners. It downgraded their credit rating and added $700 million to their debt (they bought BJ's for only $2.1 billion...making this a significant recap). This is a classic pump-and-dump. They're going to overload BJ's with debt, take all the equity and run, leaving BJ's dead on the vine for acquisition or bankruptcy. I don't see the point of opening this store financially given the past 2 years BJ's has just gone through.

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Zip and Car.

Even their advertising has people holding Warehouse Club sized stacks of toilet paper.

Closer in still matters, when you are talking a one or two-hour rental instead of driving an extra half hour each way in weekend traffic.

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Just look at their map. Perhaps demand is just low. Tried and true is using a cab to get home with purchases from Target, Walmart, K-mart etc. Definitely not a bicycle. Oh, and BJ's will be using tractor trailer trucks for deliveries by the pallet-load (starting about 4 AM), not vans that might work OK for small quantities of hair product.

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How many people have you talked to who are in the truck delivery industry? Who actually, you know, do this kind of work as their livelihood?

Your obsession with my friend and how he has decided to run his business most efficiently, and how it doesn't match your uninformed opinions about how we need 18-wheelers to deliver donut cups, is growing EXTREMELY tiresome.

Either talk to real people who have real money on the line and real operations in real areas of the city, or stop claiming that your opinions about reality are somehow superior to reality because you are unable to think beyond your obsessions.

Also note that a lot of Boston is underserved by ZipCar because they long refused to allow public spots to be used for ZipCar (even though each would reduce the need for 8-12 spots of resident parking), unlike other cities in the area.

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I helped out a friend who used to be a flower merchandiser, for Valentine's, Mother's Day, and Christmas, spending a good portion of my time in the loading docks. Everything came in on trucks of loading dock height, most all of it on pallets. I just used this opportunity to provide another example of where your obsession with vans doesn't cut it. Flowers come in on big carts, but all else is on pallets. Seems like way more than half of the customers are driving SUVs, mini-vans, or pickup trucks. No bicycles.

If you look at the Zip Car map, lack of free public parking doesn't seem to be an issue elsewhere in Metro Boston where there are lots of stations, so your argument is very weak. Giving away parking spaces for free to HubWay also only makes sense for high utilization locations.

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Costgo must be blue chep pallets, very picky there. BJ not so particular ,

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Who said that a big box in a big box place cna't have big trucks?

People are questoining mega trucks on city streets where they don't belong not trucks on highways.

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There used to be at least two truck freight terminals that went from Columbus to Tremont there, and Armour had a pork operation nearby as well. So that area was no stranger to truck , or for that matter , rail car traffic. It remained a wasteland of empty lots for years , a no mans land . For years , the only thing active was a Merit gas station ,and of course , Connolly's Stardust Lounge.

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Where was Stardust Lounge ? I know about Slade Lounge and Chritmas Bar-B-Que House

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Why BJ's? I'm guessing because they're the first business that's willing to foot the bill for this project, which is loaded with lots of unprofitable community uses. Not that there's anything wrong with that, just sayin'.

The local development team for this parcel was selected by the BRA in 2007 and at one point was "de-selected" because of their inability to make it happen. That decision was reversed:

When It Comes To Land Development, The Mayor Is Key
http://www.wbur.org/2009/08/25/mayoral-issues-planning

Since then, Elma Lewis Partners has repeatedly failed to find an anchor tenant willing to put enough money into the project to cover the costs of all the extras. They've missed multiple deadlines over the years but the city kept giving them extensions.

Is BJ's the best fit for the area? Probably not. I doubt they care, $$$

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They wrote a whole story about "Elma Lewis Partners" without disclosing who the partners were.

A politically connected bunch, I am sure.

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Anyone else think of that song "Nothing But Flowers" after reading that part about trees growing in the vacant lot?

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Why do we need another BJ's? Can't we get an urban Target or something instead? That's something Boston is sorely lacking.

Also, as I'm sure anyone who's even looked at the stretch of Tremont between Melnea Cass and Ruggles St during the day can attest to, is it really a good idea to be funneling all that new traffic through there that comes with a 1600 car garage?

Have they considered something NOT car-oriented for the space? It has excellent transit access being right next to Ruggles Station.

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I think I'd prefer to keep the vacant lot.

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For market rate, of course. Then you can do what you want with it.

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That's a bad idea. The city is in need of many things however a BJ's is not one of them. That area is already sorely congested. The surrounding area is purely residential no kids needs to open there curtains to see a neon life size BJ's sign. In addition mom and pop stores, yes small business owners have fought to survive our economic crisis and maintain the character of our city. Massachusetts legislature should use caution when limping it's people out to these large inanimate companies

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BJ's is #3 in the bulk retail world. They have about 200 locations and were last valued at $2.5 billion in 2011. That's a little more than $12,500,000 value in every location on average. That includes their land, buildings, stock, employees, cash, and any other assets in the valuation. When you start piecing it out a bit, that's not a lot and they're leveraging debt recently, so they're probably not worth quite as much these days either.

They're also founded and based here in MA (Westborough, used to be Natick where it was started as a part of the Zayre's name). Their first retail location is in Medford between the Fellsway and Highland Ave. A lot of what's good for BJ's is good for MA since they have quite a few employees in the state.

So, in reality, BJ's is a part of the character of the city and its people. It's an hour drive to their headquarters where you can see all your neighbors working...hardly inanimate. Unfortunately, it's owned by a large inanimate group of investors currently who are okay with gutting its finances for their profit.

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