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brick1972 t1_j46j062 wrote

If you build your incentive system around garbage projects like this you will only end up with garbage. The 195 committee and the state can both get fucked for running roughshod over the city's provenance here.

I am not against projects. I am against this specific one. One problem in this forum is that anyone who says no to this piece of ugly tribute to ego bullshit tower is that we are "anti development" but that's a bunch of shit. There are plenty of better developments and better use for this space that integrates the neighborhood and there are better sites in the city for a project of this scale.

If your attitude is "we have to take what we can get" you end up with a lot of shit. I know a lot of people weren't aware of things during the last boom cycle but a bunch of projects that had high hopes and destroyed city blocks went basically nowhere and left a patchwork of useless parking lots that we are still struggling to infill 15 years later. Our enforcement is typically lagging. There is very little stopping Fane from digging a hole in the ground the saying "oops market conditions" and we are left with a hole in the ground or more surface parking.

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TheSausageFattener t1_j46ny44 wrote

Best case for this it becomes like Carnegie Tower in Portsmouth. Built and opened right before a major housing slump, high vacancy rates, takes a decade to start attracting a decent volume of tenants mostly seeking speculative ownership, no long term impact or adjustment to state/local development trajectory.

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fishythepete t1_j48jqt3 wrote

>If your attitude is "we have to take what we can get" you end up with a lot of shit.

And if your attitude is “our way or nothing at all” you get Providence. The difference is that reasonable people can disagree on what’s shit, but nothing is the same to everyone.

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brick1972 t1_j4cqts1 wrote

This project is egregious. Noone cares that it is aesthetically shit. The recommendations from all of the people who actually know planning and development is to follow the recommendations on height and development scope on these parcels. As many in this thread of noted, throw this thing on a block that is appropriate for scale and noone would be that upset. The architecture is also shit but that's not what people are arguing about. What we care about is whether this development makes sense. But you and I have had this out before on this very subject so why waste my time.

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