...sometimes restoring the urban fabric means daylighting a long-buried stream
So, this item is a bit dated (going back to last summer), but the project really didn't get underway on the Riverway/Fenway until this spring: Muddy River restoration begins. We're talking here about the Muddy River as it meanders through the Riverway/Fenway stretch of the 19th century Emerald Necklace greenway system. In particular, we're focused on the part directly in front of the art deco edifice originally built as a Sears department store and later redeveloped, after Sears departed in the late 1980s, to become the highly successful mixed-use Landmark Center. A Boston Landmarks Commission's report on the building dates the paving-over that Anthony Flint references in The Risky Business of Parking Lot Creation to 1965. For those of you keeping score at home, that means that the city and commonwealth bought themselves about 20 more years of Sears at this location by giving up the Muddy River and forcing it underground. Maybe not as bad a bargain as when New York let the Penn Central Railroad tear down Penn Station (to save the railroad from bankruptcy!) in 1963 to build a tragically mediocre skyscraper and relocate MSG, only to have them, you know, declare bankruptcy within 5 years, but still hardly the way to steward part of a masterpiece of Olmstedian landscape design for the long haul. And you can credit our departing Mayor for having the sustained memory needed to bring the parking lot back into public ownership as part of the Landmark Center redevelopment process. We'll have photos once they're done and the Muddy River again sees the light of day. (Blog Post No. 2013-7)
Showing posts with label Fenway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fenway. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Friday, July 15, 2011
Blog Post No. 2011-12: Boylston Street in the Fenway...
...it just keeps getting better
This one is another of our media commentaries here at RTUF ("They report it, we give it the once over..."), though this time the media is actually just doing RTUF's work for it. [Thank you, Media!!!] First, it was Russ with the pictures in the last entry, now it's the real estate beat reporter in the relatively recent pages of The Boston Globe talking about the remarkable restoration of the urban fabric along a thoroughfare that as recently as the early part of the last decade felt like a fairly dated and poorly designed suburban strip dropped in the very heart of the city. Not so anymore. In his piece from last Thursday's edition entitled "Fenway facelift continues," Casey Ross traces the two major new developments (plus the Jerry Remy/Guitar Center rehab that has been a huge hit (pun intended)) that have begun to create the active streetscape and walkable development on Boylston Street envisioned in 2004 when the City adopted a new neighborhood zoning article for the area after several years of strategic planning and visioning for the ballpark and its surrounding area. The Globe even includes, dare we say it (!), a RTUF-like little graphic showing how the most recent developments have filled in the street wall and started to make a real, respectable urban boulevard. And like RTUF, they aren't giving the McDonald's site redevelopers any credit until they actually put the building down on the site:..
Additional comment: In thinking a bit more about this post over the weekend, one additional comment seems in order. The almost-immediate decision made by the Henry/Lucchino ownership group to keep Fenway Park instead of tearing it down and building an imitation next door (as had been proposed by the prior ownership group) has made a huge difference to the neighborhood. Starting in 2003, the ballpark has undergone a series of carefully conceived and brilliantly executed renovations under the leadership of architect Janet Marie Smith that have enlarged the seating capacity from 33,000 to over 39,000 and, simultaneously, given the park a better look and feel. The Wikipedia entry lists them here and I will say for the record that in my opinion the best of them was taking down the windows on what was the .406 Club. I say in there once with a friend from law school and it was one of the more disconnected experiences I've ever had watching a sporting event in person. I mean, the crowd sounds had to be piped in because you were behind this wall of glass, sitting directly above home plate. Fenway Park can and should be many things, but antiseptic is decidedly not one of them. So, instead of enduring the upheaveal of moving the ballpark for little practical gain (and a lot of loss in terms of continuity and authenticity), the neighborhood has seen its most famous asset cared for and polished to look the best it may have ever looked, and Boylston Street just keeps getting better...
This one is another of our media commentaries here at RTUF ("They report it, we give it the once over..."), though this time the media is actually just doing RTUF's work for it. [Thank you, Media!!!] First, it was Russ with the pictures in the last entry, now it's the real estate beat reporter in the relatively recent pages of The Boston Globe talking about the remarkable restoration of the urban fabric along a thoroughfare that as recently as the early part of the last decade felt like a fairly dated and poorly designed suburban strip dropped in the very heart of the city. Not so anymore. In his piece from last Thursday's edition entitled "Fenway facelift continues," Casey Ross traces the two major new developments (plus the Jerry Remy/Guitar Center rehab that has been a huge hit (pun intended)) that have begun to create the active streetscape and walkable development on Boylston Street envisioned in 2004 when the City adopted a new neighborhood zoning article for the area after several years of strategic planning and visioning for the ballpark and its surrounding area. The Globe even includes, dare we say it (!), a RTUF-like little graphic showing how the most recent developments have filled in the street wall and started to make a real, respectable urban boulevard. And like RTUF, they aren't giving the McDonald's site redevelopers any credit until they actually put the building down on the site:..
 |
| Sources: BRA, Boston Globe. |
Additional comment: In thinking a bit more about this post over the weekend, one additional comment seems in order. The almost-immediate decision made by the Henry/Lucchino ownership group to keep Fenway Park instead of tearing it down and building an imitation next door (as had been proposed by the prior ownership group) has made a huge difference to the neighborhood. Starting in 2003, the ballpark has undergone a series of carefully conceived and brilliantly executed renovations under the leadership of architect Janet Marie Smith that have enlarged the seating capacity from 33,000 to over 39,000 and, simultaneously, given the park a better look and feel. The Wikipedia entry lists them here and I will say for the record that in my opinion the best of them was taking down the windows on what was the .406 Club. I say in there once with a friend from law school and it was one of the more disconnected experiences I've ever had watching a sporting event in person. I mean, the crowd sounds had to be piped in because you were behind this wall of glass, sitting directly above home plate. Fenway Park can and should be many things, but antiseptic is decidedly not one of them. So, instead of enduring the upheaveal of moving the ballpark for little practical gain (and a lot of loss in terms of continuity and authenticity), the neighborhood has seen its most famous asset cared for and polished to look the best it may have ever looked, and Boylston Street just keeps getting better...
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Blog Post No. 2010-14: Thinking about Adams Park...
as July passes the 1/3rd mark
Of Farmers Markets, EBTs, and Bounty Bucks.
Like an increasing number of neighborhoods in Boston, Roslindale has a weekend farmers market in the summer and fall dubbed, logically enough, the Roslindale Farmers Market. Today was hot and humid in Roslindale. But that didn't keep a good crowd from turning out, which is a story that has a couple of interesting angles.
When we first moved here in 2000, the market was located on the lower parking lot directly adjacent to the MBTA's Roslindale Village commuter rail station. For whatever reason, the market never seemed to be worth visiting at that location. Too few vendors, too little action going on. A couple of years ago, the market moved into Adams Park, the small park at the center of Roslindale Square. Though I do worry about the wear and tear on the park, especially in a relatively hot and dry summer as this one has been so far, that change in venue has really worked wonders. We now have multiple, high quality farm stands to choose from, a handful of local merchants putting out their own small-scale operations (I especially appreciate Fornax Bakery's stand), and entertainment. [This weekend's band was a surf-sound group called The Beachcombovers. Not bad at all. ] And the attendance at the market seems to be increasing year-on-year. Certainly some of the crowd is drawn by the quality of the produce, local sourcing, etc. It's also a location with much greater visibility and dignity than the MBTA parking lot.
I also firmly believe that the City of Boston's assistance starting in the last two years to the farm stands in being able to offer Electronic Benefit Transfers or EBTs, which permit debit card-like expenditure of federal supplemental nutrition assistance program dollars, has made a world of difference. Because, let's face it, the goods at farmers markets are often priced higher than similar goods in conventional grocery stores (particularly in a state like Massachusetts, where the remaining farming is relatively small-scale), they can sometimes feel like preserves of the conscientious but well-heeled. Not so since EBTs started being accommodated. And even less so with the City's newest program, called Boston Bounty Bucks, launched in partnership with the Food Project. For EBT customers, Bounty Bucks provides a 50% match on the first $20 expended participating farmers markets around town. When I attended the official opening of the Dewey Square Farmers Market near South Station a couple of weeks ago, I tried to get Paul McMorrow, of Banker & Tradesman, Boston Globe, and Harbor Garage article series fame, interested in the story. So far to no avail. But I still think it's potentially a great story, and could be a follow-up to the piece that appeared in yesterday's Globe about urban agriculture and the Food Project's greenhouse in the Dudley Triangle ("Boston ploughs stimulus money into urban farms"). I think a look at the numbers would show a jump in purchases by low and middle-income households at farmers markets where EBTs and Bounty Bucks are offered. In other words, the Roslindale Farmers Market now looks and feels like all of Roslindale is in on the action. And that's a very good thing.
UDPATE and RTUF ADVISORY: Two items I read in the paper (the Globe, of course) this morning seem worth mention. First, an opinion piece by Michael Harmon ("Main Street model revitalizes Roslindale") points out the great success that Roslindale Village Main Street has been since its inception in the mid-1980s. Everything in the piece is true about the small-scale changes that have made the Square a turnaround success, though much more could be said about the details. In any event, we do have a functioning neighborhood center to be proud of, and the 2200-person average attendance number quoted for the Farmers Market sounds on target. Second, this week's entry in the Brainiac column ("MFA 1, Gardner 0") speaks to a recent subtle improvement in the urban fabric I've had in mind to blog about: the reopening of the Museum of Fine Arts' Fenway entrance back in 2008. The reopening of that entrance, along with the increase in emphasis on the Huntington Avenue entrance, construction of a new visitors' center in the center of the museum's main building, and the de-emphasis and eventual closure of the entrance on Museum Road (located behind a surface parking lot), were among the first tangible fruits of the museum's broader expansion project under the direction of Foster + Partners. Apparently, Charles Birnbaum from the Cultural Landscape Foundation also agrees that reopening the Fenway entrance was a good idea, representing the reconnection of the institution to the historic park it faces. Not having been able to see the Renzo Piano design of the Gardner Museum's expansion plan in much detail, I can't say whether I agree that it loses something important in its connection to the Fens. If others have opinions, I'd love to hear in them in the comment section.
Please note that, in addition to the above update, this entry was also further edited after its initial publication. -- MJL
Of Farmers Markets, EBTs, and Bounty Bucks.
Like an increasing number of neighborhoods in Boston, Roslindale has a weekend farmers market in the summer and fall dubbed, logically enough, the Roslindale Farmers Market. Today was hot and humid in Roslindale. But that didn't keep a good crowd from turning out, which is a story that has a couple of interesting angles.
When we first moved here in 2000, the market was located on the lower parking lot directly adjacent to the MBTA's Roslindale Village commuter rail station. For whatever reason, the market never seemed to be worth visiting at that location. Too few vendors, too little action going on. A couple of years ago, the market moved into Adams Park, the small park at the center of Roslindale Square. Though I do worry about the wear and tear on the park, especially in a relatively hot and dry summer as this one has been so far, that change in venue has really worked wonders. We now have multiple, high quality farm stands to choose from, a handful of local merchants putting out their own small-scale operations (I especially appreciate Fornax Bakery's stand), and entertainment. [This weekend's band was a surf-sound group called The Beachcombovers. Not bad at all. ] And the attendance at the market seems to be increasing year-on-year. Certainly some of the crowd is drawn by the quality of the produce, local sourcing, etc. It's also a location with much greater visibility and dignity than the MBTA parking lot.
I also firmly believe that the City of Boston's assistance starting in the last two years to the farm stands in being able to offer Electronic Benefit Transfers or EBTs, which permit debit card-like expenditure of federal supplemental nutrition assistance program dollars, has made a world of difference. Because, let's face it, the goods at farmers markets are often priced higher than similar goods in conventional grocery stores (particularly in a state like Massachusetts, where the remaining farming is relatively small-scale), they can sometimes feel like preserves of the conscientious but well-heeled. Not so since EBTs started being accommodated. And even less so with the City's newest program, called Boston Bounty Bucks, launched in partnership with the Food Project. For EBT customers, Bounty Bucks provides a 50% match on the first $20 expended participating farmers markets around town. When I attended the official opening of the Dewey Square Farmers Market near South Station a couple of weeks ago, I tried to get Paul McMorrow, of Banker & Tradesman, Boston Globe, and Harbor Garage article series fame, interested in the story. So far to no avail. But I still think it's potentially a great story, and could be a follow-up to the piece that appeared in yesterday's Globe about urban agriculture and the Food Project's greenhouse in the Dudley Triangle ("Boston ploughs stimulus money into urban farms"). I think a look at the numbers would show a jump in purchases by low and middle-income households at farmers markets where EBTs and Bounty Bucks are offered. In other words, the Roslindale Farmers Market now looks and feels like all of Roslindale is in on the action. And that's a very good thing.
UDPATE and RTUF ADVISORY: Two items I read in the paper (the Globe, of course) this morning seem worth mention. First, an opinion piece by Michael Harmon ("Main Street model revitalizes Roslindale") points out the great success that Roslindale Village Main Street has been since its inception in the mid-1980s. Everything in the piece is true about the small-scale changes that have made the Square a turnaround success, though much more could be said about the details. In any event, we do have a functioning neighborhood center to be proud of, and the 2200-person average attendance number quoted for the Farmers Market sounds on target. Second, this week's entry in the Brainiac column ("MFA 1, Gardner 0") speaks to a recent subtle improvement in the urban fabric I've had in mind to blog about: the reopening of the Museum of Fine Arts' Fenway entrance back in 2008. The reopening of that entrance, along with the increase in emphasis on the Huntington Avenue entrance, construction of a new visitors' center in the center of the museum's main building, and the de-emphasis and eventual closure of the entrance on Museum Road (located behind a surface parking lot), were among the first tangible fruits of the museum's broader expansion project under the direction of Foster + Partners. Apparently, Charles Birnbaum from the Cultural Landscape Foundation also agrees that reopening the Fenway entrance was a good idea, representing the reconnection of the institution to the historic park it faces. Not having been able to see the Renzo Piano design of the Gardner Museum's expansion plan in much detail, I can't say whether I agree that it loses something important in its connection to the Fens. If others have opinions, I'd love to hear in them in the comment section.
Please note that, in addition to the above update, this entry was also further edited after its initial publication. -- MJL
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