Hey, there! Log in / Register

Even Amrheins not immune from South Boston building boom: Property up for sale

The Real Reporter reports that the half-acre Amrheins property, one of the last bulwarks of traditional South Boston against West Broadway condoization, will soon be shopped around under the name "Broadway Crossing" for development as a condo building or maybe an office/R&D building or something that would not look at all like the 19th-century restaurant that now sits there.

Neighborhoods: 
Topics: 
Free tagging: 


Ad:


Like the job UHub is doing? Consider a contribution. Thanks!

Comments

For those of you who'll never get it, just scroll down to something else . .

But for those of you who have ever made out with someone way out of your league in a dark parking lot, scored some of the best dope you ever had (before you gave it up) in a dark parking lot, sat in car spilling your guts out to some of the closest people in your life in a parking lot, came up with some of your best ideas ever and some of your worst ideas ever in a parking lot, strutted your stuff and maybe defended your honor once or twice in a parking lot, and made some of your best friends and some of your fondest memories in a parking lot . .

. . another one bites the dust.

up
Voting closed 0

go, "Mmmm, yassss", though some of mine have a more amorous slant. I won't miss Amrhein's much, but dark, dingy parking-lot moments, I feel with the kind of sweet, nostalgic ache that a Don Draper slideshow inspires. I'm pretty sure that when that dying-moment highlights-reel of my life unspools, it's going to include a few seconds of one impassioned, gymnastic encounter in my parked car in a remote corner of the basement garage of the Pru. Ah, romance! A few dates later, that girl revealed that her suburban home included a husband, and hoped that wouldn't be a big deal, but that's another story.

I have an old list of Boston's most luxurious restaurant and hotel bathrooms suitable for trysting at the end of a date that is going super-well. It now serves as a reminder of the relative squareness of my current life. Bogie voice: "We'll always have The Bristol." I realize it's not cool or respectful of the establishment. If you must, at least be quick, and clean up after yourselves. Some nice, proper granny is going to use that bathroom after youse.

(Aside to dudes using any public unisex bathroom: don't be a goddamned pig. Put the seat down and wipe it, asshole, and wipe the sink, too. What are you: five years old?)

As for the locales, don't ask further. It's like my still-current list of Chinatown joints that let you bring your own beer and wine. Putting it online ruins it for everybody. Slightly sorry to out The Bristol, but if you ever saw those big, gorgeous, spotless, isolated, unattended, single-person bathrooms and didn't think, "Hmmm, I wonder if Loretta would be open to sneaking in here with me?", I'm guessing you never had a dark, dingy parking-lot moment, either.

In retrospect, I guess I missed a chance when that woman asked me if it mattered that she was married. I was so surprised, stunned, that I just said, "Yeah, it kind of does." I should have responded, "I don't know: does he own a gun?"

up
Voting closed 0

Can't wait to see what "Broadway Crossing" turns out to be. Whatever it is, I'm sure it will be better than what is there now.

up
Voting closed 0

and you can already see an over-abunadance of what it will turn out to be.

up
Voting closed 0

Just search on "development" on this site. Anything proposed in the past 3 years will fit the bill.

up
Voting closed 0

go get a steak and some chowder before they tear it down and replace it with ANOTHER faux-rustic restaurant/bar with a freakin $15 mac-and-cheese entree.

up
Voting closed 0

they keep some of old building and spruce it up. it is a nice looking building...at least the part the runs along A street.

up
Voting closed 0

Yes, they should definitely keep the facade. It's lovely.

up
Voting closed 0

This building is or should be in the National Historic Registry for being the oldest bar and beer pump in the Nation. So this building should be saved and they can build some ugly ass luxury condos on the parking lot.

up
Voting closed 0

I'm sure it will look just like all of the buildings on the block of Broadway directly to its northwest.

up
Voting closed 0

People were so worried about the "Manhattanization" they completely overlooked the "Atlantazation" of Boston.
Enjoy your nice, clean, sterile, dull New Boston. I'm just glad I am old enough to remember when the city was an interesting place.
I don't give a shit about filling in the parking lot or even losing the restaurant, but to raze yet another 19th century building to yet another 5 over 1 plywood OSB box should be a crime.

But hey, it's shiny and new so it must be better, right?

up
Voting closed 0

You know that toilet/furnace/TV/dishwasher you had through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Now it would only make it one decade before requiring replacement. The same seems to be true of buildings now a days.

I love density and rarely comment negatively on new buildings, even on the aesthetic blandness of modern residential buildings. But come on developers - stop with the wooden frames and cheap siding already. If nothing else, you wouldn't want to live in one of these buildings because the wood frame guarantees that when your 6th floor neighbor is having sex you are getting sea sick on the 2nd floor, and your 3rd floor neighbor sounds like a hippopotamus.

up
Voting closed 0

“...Amrheins in the Seaport’s southern flank,”

The Real Reporter might want to take a look at a real map...

up
Voting closed 0

One of my first jobs was on the renovation work done during the mid-2000s, I was still pretty junior so I only did the demo and electrical plans but it was my first real experience with architecture and construction.

Lasting memory of that place will be a quiet dinner with a close friend, talking our way through the recent death of Robin Williams. Even then it was a sparsely frequented place but I still always enjoyed the interior, even with my obvious bias.

up
Voting closed 0

It was only a matter of time. With the location + parking lot, i'm surprised the owners didn't sell out sooner. Amrhein's was an olde school, change of pace from the trendy, upscale restaurants just a mile away in the city. I'll miss it.

up
Voting closed 0

My eyes! The goggles do nothing!

up
Voting closed 0

The Amrheins that I remember disappeared a long, long time ago and was really defined more by the patrons and waitresses than the place itself. There were lots of bad things about the old Boston, but Amrheins wasn't one of them. Hopefully they preserve the old facade as part of the new building and do something appropriate with the bar.

up
Voting closed 0

Makes ya sick!!

up
Voting closed 0

He was as much a son of Southie as I am. Yeah, he was from Roslindale.

up
Voting closed 0

This sentence in the fifth graf is an affront to grammar:

"Luxury apartments and condominiums have replaced other establishments around the nearby Broadway MBTA Red Line station throughout the decade, the transit node’s presence among many talking points of the Amrheins listing, and one reason cited for residential developers in the Seaport increasingly competing against other platforms, among them Anchor LIne Partners, said to be pursuing a laboratory play in a building the homegrown investor just purchased from Gillette, its site around the corner from Amrhein’s."

BACK TO THE MAIN POST: For all these folks who will gladly take office/lab space over condos should know that will only bring further daily traffic to the area from workers. Condos/apartments, you at least have chance the residents will use public transit or walk.

up
Voting closed 0

I remember Amrheins. A friend of mine and I ate there a couple of times. It's a pretty neat-looking building, despite its being very old, the food was good, and the service friendly. This is a case of the building boom gone berserk!

up
Voting closed 0

No word on whether this includes Mul's, owned by the same people, or whether that lot is separately for sale.

up
Voting closed 0

Just outside the inner core of the Hub of the Hub of the Universe -- parking lots should be expected to be prime targets for development

A lot of Boston / Cambridge / Somerville / Chelsea / Revere should be as of right zoned to allow for taller, denser development -- after all Paris within city limits is about Boston's size in area -- but Paris averages about 3 times Boston density Paris 41 square miles {105 km2) with population of 2,206,488 versus Boston 48 square miles (124 km2) with population of 685,094. Yet there is no Manhattanization of Atlantaization mentioned in the context of Paris.

In particular the city of Boston should sell for development the lot [over 1 acre] sitting right on the Greenway [Cross Street & Fulton Street] used to store city related vehicles -- that is Prime Development territory

up
Voting closed 0

The commentary that Paris has become a Disney-fied version of itself for the super rich at the cost of its real street-level culture, is widespread.

up
Voting closed 1

Always enjoyed that place, used to bring family and friends there. Liked their risotto served inside a pumpkin during the fall. The moving finger writs and having writ moves on.

up
Voting closed 0

of how differently people in realty view a neighborhood from the rest of us.

We see a place with texture, with real people, with businesses run by our neighbors and friends. We see nooks and crannies and funky spaces that we grow to like and get attached to. We see a place we wish to care for and nurture, because such thing enrich our lives.

Realty people see a neighborhood as a resource to be mined.

up
Voting closed 0

It really is a soulless profession.

up
Voting closed 0