Blog Post No. 2010-1: Staples strikes GOLD in Roslindale Square

Admittedly, it remains a fairly big box, but still...



Location: 4165 Washington Street, Roslindale, MA

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2008

Photos: Just the 1, posted by Chris D. to yelp.com, a business rating site, looking north along Washington Street, with Roslindale Square behind you. (NOTE: I am having camera difficulty and so am relying on a web-obtained photo for this entry. I should be back with my own pix next post. - ML)

The Story: We're back in Roslindale Square, near your faithful correspondent's modest accommodations in God's favorite streetcar suburb. And we're looking here at the "new" Staples, completed in 2008 and given its LEED-NC "Gold" rating last fall. Staples helps to anchor the northern entrance to the business district. Although the graphic below indicates that the urban fabric restoration here isn't dramatic, the progress here is still meaningful. For as long as we had lived in Roslindale (since 2000), this location had been home to a shuttered Ashmont Discount store. [Still visible if you go to Google maps and use the streetview feature here.] For those who may not be entirely up on your local, now-departed Boston home improvement store chains, Ashmont Discount was one. This particular location evidently went down the tubes in the late 1990s when Home Depot opened a location a couple of miles away in West Roxbury. So, there it sat, vacant and without any activity for several years, even after the former Roslindale Pub site immediately to the north (you unfortunately can't see it in the photo, but you can see it on the Google maps link if you pan north) was redeveloped into a three-story mixed-use building about 5 years ago. In any event, the real estate market finally got around to this site in 2007, when Staples took the plunge and moved forward with this location. I will confess that I was among those in the community who thought a drug store/pharmacy was a better fit for the location. But Roslindale Village Main Streets did a good job of canvassing the community and finding out that, given the high number of self-employed folks in the area, an office supply and services store was in demand and would work at this site. Staples apparently agreed.

So, we have under examination a single-level, single-use, fairly large box. And I know some of my fellow New Urbanistas may be wondering what's worth talking about? To them, I say, be a bit more patient and a bit more generous. The Ashmont Discount building that this Staples has replaced was a ramshackle, hulking, unwelcoming presence with a facade of split-face concrete block and virtually no windows. Put simply: it was grim and needed to go. The Staples building shown here is a world away in terms of design and integration into its surroundings. It reaches a good deal closer across the side parking lot toward the Dunkin' Donuts than the previous structure. [Brief aside: That DD represents a lost opportunity. Like every DD here in Boston, it's VERY busy and generates a lot of pedestrian as well as vehicular activity. You can see how it used to look in the Google maps view. They did eliminate the pull-in parking directly off the street and replace it with a landscaped front yard, which clearly goes in the plus column in terms of both traffic management and pedestrian safety. Yet the pedestrian experience here would have been made truly good by moving the building up to the street as part of the construction project that resulted in the Staples. Unfortunately, that didn't happen.]

As I indicated above, this building was awarded LEED-NC Gold status in 2008. LEED stands for the "Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design" program developed and administered by the United States Green Building Council. The LEED rating system is the most widely-used green building rating system in the U.S. and has been at the forefront of moving the architecture, real estate, and construction industries toward sustainable design. LEED started by rating new construction or "NC" earlier this decade and then rating other types of contexts (core and shell, new homes, existing buildings, etc.). More information on LEED and its multi-faceted rating system can be found here. I'll close this post by making an observation related to LEED as demonstrated by this project: The LEED system is a valuable tool, but has had its blind spots. LEED uses a scorecard and point system to determine eligibility for certification, and at what level (Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum). It has been wildly successful and done enormous good in improving the spread of high performance design and building. That said, sometimes points can be "racked up" for relatively minor elements -- such as bike racks, which were installed here -- that have a marginal impact on a building's total sustainability profile. Another blind spot has been LEED's too-tight focus on building envelopes and immediate sites. What good, some say, is a new LEED-certified building out in the woods separated from everything else if everyone needs to drive there? In such a case, wouldn't the increased emissions from all of the driving to the site by its users offset whatever benefits there may be from the green building components? LEED has been trying to answer this question, most prominently in recent years by working with the Congress for the New Urbanism and the Natural Resources Defense Council to produce the LEED-ND component of the system, which looks at sustainability at a broader regional, neighborhood, and even block scale and tries to reward transit-oriented, infill, and contiguous development locations with higher points. The growth of LEED-ND has been slowed somewhat by the severe downturn in the real estate development market over the last 18 months, which immediately followed its release in pilot format. Going forward, it'll be worth watching to see whether LEED-ND matches the success of LEED's other rating categories.

RTUF Sketch of the Restored Urban Fabric: Fairly self-explanatory. Parenthetically, you can see most of the Greater Roslindale Medical and Dental Center, featured in Blog Post NO. 2009-2, in the lower left of the graphic.



NOTE: This post was revised after its initial posting. - ML

Post No. 2009-9: Breaking with the early pattern for posts here on RTUF...

Form-Based Codes (Finally) Gaining Traction in New England?

And so, dear readers, we take our leave of 2009 and look ahead to 2010 with encouraging regional news on the Form-Based Codes (FBC) front. In fairly rapid succession over the last 3 months of the year, we have seen 3 new FBCs adopted in 3 different New England states:

• First, on October 22, Jamestown (Rhode Island) adopted a SmartCode^-based FBC for its core village area.
• Then, on December 7, Hamden (Connecticut) adopted a town-wide FBC, also based on the SmartCode.
• Finally, on December 9, Dover (New Hampshire) adopted a Transect-based FBC to replace its existing downtown mixed-use district.

When combined with the 3 FBCs already adopted in Massachusetts -- for the Hamilton Canal District in Lowell*, the Buzzards Bay downtown area in Bourne, and the SouthField project in Weymouth-Abington-Rockland -- these new codes leave Vermont and Maine as the last two New England states without at least one FBC in place.

Curious about what exactly a FBC or Form-Based Code might be? And why someone concerned about urban design and creating better places might want to look into this relatively new form of development regulation? The Form-Based Codes Institute (visit them at: http://www.formbasedcodes.org/) has a comprehensive definition occupying its own page on FBCI's website that is available for initial reading. I'm hereby encouraging discussion in the comments section of this post if anyone wants to explore the concept further.

Here let it be said that FBCs are intended to regulate both private and public development in a way that produces desired built environments or urban forms such as residential neighborhoods, village centers, main street districts, suburban and urban downtowns, while simultaneously permitting and even encouraging mixing of uses (e.g., residential or office above retail) as essential to creating those desirable places. FBCs are best understood in contrast with conventional zoning, which is geared to regulating the private use of land as the first priority, typically by separating uses from each other into homogeneous districts (residential, retail, office, industrial, warehouse, etc.), pushing buildings back from the street and each other through setbacks and buffering requirements, and deferring to advisory design guidelines or design/development review processes to determine how and in what structures those uses will occupy the land. For FBCs, enjoyable places and a strong urban fabric are intended regulatory outcomes. For conventional zoning, such outcomes are often incidental or, in the worst cases, made more difficult to achieve.

For more information on the adopted NE FBCs:

SouthField (MA) -- Zoning and Subdivision (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4)

Bourne (MA) -- Zoning Overlay

Lowell (MA) -- Zoning and Subdivision (Four pdfs starting with "Final HCD Form Based Code...")

Jamestown (RI) -- Zoning Text and Map (Article 11 provides the bulk of the new FBC provisions)

Hamden (CT) -- Zoning Text and Map

Dover (NH) -- Excerpted Zoning Text and Embedded Regulating Plan (pardon the multiple jpgs):

^ - The SmartCode is a model FBC made available for adaptation to local conditions and legal requirements by the Center for Applied Transect Studies at http://www.smartcodecentral.org. The SmartCode uses the Transect as its framework for regulation.
* - My firm was retained by the City of Lowell to provide legal assistance in the drafting and adoption of the Hamilton Canal District FBC and, along with my firm colleagues, I was personally involved in providing that assistance.

Blog Post No. 2009-8: The W Hotel Boston (100 Stuart Street)

And now for something completely different...

Location: 100 Stuart Street, Boston, MA (MAP)

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2009

The Photos: Walking along Stuart Street, from the corner at Tremont Street toward Charles Street.

The Story: Finally completed and opened just a couple of months ago, the W Hotel Boston substantially changes the dynamic at the corner of Tremont and Stuart streets in the heart of Boston's theater district. The Charles Playhouse is down Warrenton Street, the Wang and Wilbur theaters are across Tremont Street, the Shubert's right next door, the Emerson Majestic is a block up Tremont, and the Colonial is up and around the corner on Boylston Street. Most recently, art house cinema returned to Boston at the Stuart Street Playhouse two blocks over. Despite its central location, for at least as long as I've lived in Boston (since 1997), this site was the archetypal urban fabric no-no: a surface parking lot occupying a full city block at a key downtown intersection.

The architecture here is uncompromisingly modernist in style, though the building's placement on its site suggests its designers were more than happy to come out and meet the street directly with lots of ground floor activity and transparency. Of course, this is a fairly tight urban site with no space to waste anyway. While the building is a clear departure from much of what's around it, there has been little open hostility to its ultimate arrival, especially given its overall height and facades that proceed directly to the buidling's full height without any stepping back.

This may be a good point at which to discuss Boston's "High Spine." As with so many things having to do with architecture, urban design, and planning in Boston, Robert Campbell recently (in 2006) covered this topic in the Boston Globe (link here) elegantly and with an eye toward what is truly important about it, especially its accordance with Boston's "basic DNA" as a craggy peninsula connected to the mainland by a narrow neck, even if the original Boston Neck was a bit more to the south and east. Here let it be said that the High Spine has, since its endorsement in 1961 by the Boston Society of Architets' Committee on Civic Design, provided a remarkably durable and understandable conceptual framework for where tall buildings outside of the city's Financial District should be located. That is, in a "High Spine" stretching from the area around Kenmore Square on the west, running eastward on a line through the Prudential Center, Copley Square, and Park Plaza (thereby threading the needle between the Back Bay and the South End atop the Massachusetts Turnpike Extension, the MBTA Orange and Green lines, and the main Amtrak/Commuter Rail corridor). Major and easily recognizable peaks on the High Spine today include the Prudential building itself and the "old" (the one with the weather beacon on top) and "new" (designd by I.M. Pei) Hancock towers, but there are many less lofty peaks along the length of the spine, including the Millennium Center development from earlier this decade and, now, the W Hotel. It may well be that the location of this new building along the High Spine explains why, at least at this point (several years after its approvals were obtained), its realization has caused little angst among the populace. All in all, it's a welcome addition to the urban ensemble.

RTUF Sketch of the Restored Urban Fabric: I'm pretty sure that the dimesions on the building's notch along the Tremont Street side are not accurate, but you get the general idea.

Blog Post No. 2009-7: The Back of the Four Seasons Hotel

Small Changes Can Make a Big Difference (The first in a series...)

Location: 200 Boylston Street, Boston, MA (MAP)

Year of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2006

The Photos: In and around the intersection of Columbus Avenue, Charles Street, and St. James Avenue, at the rear of the Four Seasons Hotel, showing the two-story addition done as part of the extensive renovation of the hotel.

The Story: Completed in 1985, the Four Seasons Hotel in Boston was one of the first hotels developed with luxury condominiums in the same building that can make use of the hotel's services. Needless to say, a success and a model much copied elsewhere. Given the hotel's location -- across Boylston Street from the Public Garden and Boston Common, blocks from Boston's high-end shopping districts along Back Bay's Newbury Street and in the Copley Plaza -- it's hard to remember that the development project was actually pursued under the auspices of the Park Plaza Urban Renewal Plan. The area to the rear of the hotel, Boston's Park Plaza area, was the principal area to which the city's red light district migrated after the early 1960s urban renewal-motivated demolition of the old Scollay Square to make way for Government Center. With the adoption and implementation of the Park Plaza plan in the 1970s and 1980s, the remaining adult entertainment uses moved on to the Combat Zone a few blocks to the east. Getting back to the Four Seasons itself, its Boylston Street frontage worked well from the beginning, being drawn up to the wide sidewalks of the major street and activating the edge with entrances and high visibility into the hotel's ground floor through a permeable facade. But the St. James Avenue frontage was less fortunate. Particularly at the irregular intersection of St. James, Charles, and Columbus, the building was drawn far back from Columbus, leaving a no-man's land that was little used. There were also no ground floor entrances or uses that could bring life to the street. When the hotel decided it was time for a complete top-to-bottom overhaul of its guest rooms, they also took the felicitous step of filling in the dead zone that had been left at this intersection, inserting a curving two-story wing that includes a high-end furniture store at the ground level and meeting areas and function space above. This may seem like a fairly small, incremental improvement, but when teamed with the much-improved retail uses on the ground floor of the 1920s-era Motormart Garage and the One Charles residential building across St. James (RTUF will get to that in a later post) and the smart treatment of the smaller and more usable public space (now dubbed the Bristol Courtyard) that remains, it clearly works as a sum greater than its parts. And I'm an incrementalist at heart anyway.

[Rev. November 16, 2009] RTUF Sketch of the Restored Urban Fabric: See below. I'm clearly not an architect, but you get a sense of the sensitivity of the change here and how it helps frame up and channel the view along Columbus Avenue into the Common.

Blog Post No. 2009-6: New Feature

RTUF is adding a new feature to our posts: hand-drawn sketches showing the urban fabric restoration in plan view, starting with Blog Post No. 2009-1 on the Saltonstall Building. The feature will be added on a rolling basis to prior posts and will be included in all posts going forward. We hope this added feature is helpful. -- ML

Blog Post No. 2009-5: Charles River Plaza

The Evolution of an Urban Shopping Center

Address: Charles River Plaza, 175 Cambridge Street, Boston, MA (MAP)

Year(s) of Urban Fabric Restoration: 2003/2008

The Photos: Walking up Cambridge Street from Massachusetts General Hospital heading toward the Harrison Gray Otis House and Old West Church.

The Story: For a period starting in the 1960s up and through the early 2000s, Charles River Plaza behaved much like a garden-variety suburban strip center dropped into the heart of a major city. A supermarket, some smaller stores (including a pharmacy and bank), and a movie theater (closed in the early 1990s) were arranged in an L shape facing the corner of Cambridge Street and Blossom Street in Boston's West End (whose demolition to pave the way for urban renewal in the late 1950s/early 1960s is a story all its own) with below-grade and surface parking entered from Cambridge Street and a mid-rise hotel at the corner itself. The early 2000s redevelopment of the center, completed in 2003, added new building area on top of the former movie theater space to create a mid-rise office building and also infilled a new 5-story addition along the Cambridge Street frontage with office space above and retail stores below. All of the office space was taken by nearby Massachusetts General Hospital as clinical and medical office space for its doctors and staff. The surface parking level atop the garage structure remains and is generally hidden from the Cambridge Street frontage. So, instead of walking past a blank parking structure wall and street level garage roof parking, you walk by retail stores and a building that does a much better job of enclosing an important and historic street. As with the Saltonstall Building described in Post No. 2009-1 of this blog, the reconstruction of the streetscape along Cambridge Street that was completed in 2008 was long and drawn-out. But the end result is a very substantial improvement over what existed before and works well with the evolution of Charles River Plaza.

[Rev. November 18, 2009] RTUF Sketch of the Restored Urban Fabric: See below. The filled in portion is effectively a full block along this portion of Cambridge Street.

Blog Post No. 2009-4: Houston, we have a Follower!

RTUF is pleased to announce that our good friend Darlene Wynne has, as of yesterday, become this blog's first Follower! [To be totally precise, Darlene is our first and only Follower, but we hope that changes very soon.] For those of you who don't know Darlene, she is a planner and New Urbanista of the first order. Indeed, Darlene was one of the founders and major motivating players of the New England Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism for several years. Although she now lives and works in the Philadephia area, her efforts in this region have not been forgotten. Thanks for signing on Darlene! -- ML