How Not to Get Things Built--Kairos Shen, The Mayor, The Greenway, and Filene's

So the Mayor is worried about the Greenway. He’s also worried about Filene’s. He should be. Let’s start with the Greenway and the real world.


If anything is to be built along the Greenway, there must be a compromise between aesthetics and economics. Unless the public sector is going to construct buildings along the Greenway, which it is not, then only the private sector will do so. And the private sector will only do so if they can make a profit. Simple as that. There are 2 components to the cost of construction--the price of the land and the cost of construction. The land along the Greenway is among the most expensive land in the Northeast. Why--because it is on the Greenway and on the waterfront.

The price of land is usually measured in terms of the price per square foot of land per square foot of the development on the land. Right now, on a per square foot basis, land along the Greenway would easily carry a price of $150 per square foot of development. The construction cost for a Class A property, both hard and soft, is roughly $400.00 per square foot. The combined market “price” of land and building is therefore $550.00. But we need to account for profit. To achieve a 20% annual return on the land and building costs, a developer would need to carry a hypothetical purchase price, as opposed to market price, of $440.00. At 20%, this would enable the developer to receive a return at the $550 market price.

Let’s consider a real proposal. Don Chiofaro purchased the Aquarium Garage for $150 Million. This is a land purchase--not a garage purchase, unless the City feels Don can rent parking spaces for about $2,000 per day per space. The land measures 57,346 square feet, so Don paid $2,615 per square foot of land. Now he has to knock down the garage and construct income producing property large enough to generate revenue to justify the $2,615 purchase price per square foot of land. He also has to construct a building large enough to justify a $550.00 development cost. And he needs to profit. I have stated this at 20% per year.

So how much building does Don need? If Don built a property using every inch of the land area, the property would have to be at least 17 stories tall to justify the land cost ($2,615 / $150 market price).

Today's market net income per square foot of office space is $35.00. To get a 20% return, Don needs to carry a “purchase price” of building square footage of $28.00. At 20%, this “price” meets the market rent of $35.00. To justify the cost of construction alone, a hypothetical property would need an additonal equivalent of $35.00 in net income per built square foot. If Don utilized every inch of the site, he would need additional property height of a minimum of 14 stories of space ($400 of construction cost / $28.00 per square foot of net income.

So, at a minimum, Don requires a 31-story building which covers every inch of the site. The building would have 57,000 square foot floorplates. Nobody builds 57,000 square foot floor plates because they are not acceptable to the Boston tenant market. The City would never allow anyone to build to the entire perimeter of the site because it would leave a) no open space at ground level, and b) no open vertical space for views and light.

The building plate acceptable to the market is 35,000 square foot at the most. This would leave over 20,000 square feet at ground level as open space along the Greenway. The much more slender building would also allow better views of the water than the existing garage.

At 30,000 square feet, the tower would need to be at least 50 stories tall.

Now Kairos Shen can imagine all he wants about low rise buildings linking the Financial District to the sea. And because of a person like him and the Mayor and everybody else that is afraid of heights in the City, nothing will happen. The Greenway will remain as exactly what the Mayor fears it to be: "cold and boring." Maybe he’ll threaten eminent domain again. We’re a big city. It takes big buildings to justify big prices or else we end up with Big Nothing.

Speaking of eminent domain, let’s talk about the Mayor’s favorite project in the City—the Filene’s redevelopment. Remember the Mayor’s idea to move City Hall to a fish pier at the end of South Boston? That was right about the time he thought he could, by dictum, create a 110-story building on the sliver of land at 133 Federal Street. Well, space is available long-term now at the existing 133 Federal Street and nobody talks about South Boston City Hall.

So how’s this: a swap. Let John Hynes and his development team at Filene’s create a New City Hall right in the heart of the City. And, in exchange, extend a 99-year lease to Mr. Hynes and his team on the land under and surrounding City Hall. The former would certainly revitalize Downtown Crossing. And the latter would certainly bring long overdue life back to the brick desert. And there would be no need to tear down the existing City Hall. Just a thought.

Fear of New York, fear of heights, and Boston's Greenway--a fool's paradise of Menino's own making

"Mayor Thomas M. Menino said the height restrictions on these particular properties are intended to prevent shadows and strong winds thrown off by tall buildings from making the Greenway a cold, uncomfortable place."

I think the Mayor means well. But, Mr. Mayor, in all due respects, have you been on the Greenway lately? It already is a cold, uncomfortable place. In fact, it's also boring and utterly unused. Every proposed non-profit project has collapsed. I for one don't look over my shoulder at New York all day (“I don’t want to Manhattanize the Greenway,’’ the mayor said.) Why not? Manhattan is exciting. Or try the waterfront of Sydney, or Hong Kong, or any major, thriving city in the world that is not afraid of itself.

Now let's get to the economics. Columbus Center let out its final death knell on Monday. The project was not feasible from its inception due to height restrictions on air rights requiring decking. The pictures were pretty, but nobody ever believed in the project. And we gave money to the "developer" every time he whined.

On the south side of the Harbor, nothing is really happening in the private sector. One new office building in 10 years. We are a market of 72 million square feet. The total amount of space under construction and not already leased is 230,000 square feet in exactly 2 buildings--One Marina Park Drive and Russia Wharf. From the start of construction, it takes 3 years to construct a building for occupancy. The City is not prepared for the future demands of the modern tenant, because we are not allowing the construction of tall, modern, green, highly technical buildings which our companies will demand.

To connect the city to the sea, as the Mayor desires, we must provide a reason for people to approach the connection itself. Nobody uses the Greenway today because it is perceived as a curving linear path between South Station and North Station. It is shorter and far more interesting to walk up the streets of the Financial District, stopping at the Langham or Faneuil Hall for a beverage or lingering on the grass at Post Office Square, than it is to walk a barren stretch of disconnected parcels of grass.

If we want a thriving Greenway, we need to get over our fear of heights and our fear of the private sector.  Otherwise, we will end up with the country's most expensive dog-walking parks.

Boston's Fear of Heights and Fear of Greatness

I am on Boylston Street, in front of the Prudential Center. I have always considered Boylston Street as Boston's Broadway, with all due respects to South Boston. It is the only street in Boston, unlike its brethren in the Financial District, that was part of a classic rectilinear plan. I do love the twists and turns of our old city, and by no means am I an advocate of this Roman template.

But Broadway means a "broad way," with wide vistas, and some viewable distance. And so, as I look straight east toward the Financial District, I see a massive, multi-colored arrangement of buildings, each seemingly growing out of each other in glass, masonry, aluminum, and, yes, even Boston brick. And they are all tall. Very tall. And I love it.

I love it because it speaks to me with the same vibrancy with which Carl Sandburg spoke of in describing the true birthplace of and still most stunning assembly of the skyscraper, Chicago, of which he wrote:

"Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action,
cunning as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
Bareheaded,
Shoveling,
Wrecking,
Planning,
Building, breaking, rebuilding,
Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
white teeth,
Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young man laughs,
Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has never lost a battle,Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse and under his ribs the heart of the people"

Analagous as cities--no. But when did we lose our fierceness and our pride? But, the better question is why?

And the simple answer is that we suffer from a fear of heights, from a fear of expression, by a false-imprinted visions of city planners that "Thou shalt build small, or thou shalt build not at all."

First, let me point out that buildings are not tall because of the inexplicable egos of those that build them. Is nybody having issues with skyscrapers in Lincoln or Dover, Chelmsford, Wakefield? Buildings derive from the density of those who seek out their counterparts in business, culture, and intellect, all to the great benefit to society. The greatest of ideas do not come from the flowery lunchrooms in Stamford. They come from the great cities--Athens, Rome, Paris, London, New York. Are we not worthy of this, to be called great, or do we relegate ourselves, at least in our architecural restriction, to seek our way into a lesser orbit?

All roads lead to Boston. It has been the port of entry to New England for 400 years. It is a walking city, all the more reason for density on the narrow peninsula on which it sits. Do we begrudge New York with its towers of business? Or Chicago, where our economy experienced most closely the shift from agriculture to manufacturing to professional business and thrust up towers to accommodate the need?

Look no further than the models of Willam Alson (1964) who so aptly described the density coefficient of the great cities or the work of Martin Cadwallader at University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1985 in his work on the density gradient of the American city. Of visit the Coloseum in Rome.

So I look down Boylston Street and I mentally start tearing down the buildings that would not meet our planning code. NOTE: There really is no such thing as a planning code in Boston--we pretend there is and the Mayor uses it selectively to deny a tall building. Or he reverses it and pulls out the magic "PDA" trump card, the "Planned Development Area", in which "if the Mayor didn't plan it, don't even think of developing it.

But this fear of heights is not the Mayor's alone. It is the acquiescence of the everyday Bostonian to believe in the false credo of urban planning in which all things tall are all things evil. We have countless choppers, cutters, pickers, none of whom has ever adequately explained why tall, in and of itself, is bad.

Please do not talk to me of shadows, of wind, and of rain, of private views now obscured. Those who advocate the small are no more than the cousins of the country mice that come to the city, enjoy its delights, but seek to turn the homes of their hosts into the tiny pieces of miceland they crave.

Our so-called zoning calls are subject to paroxsms of peripatetic behavior. The Mayor literally shuns the efforts on The Chiofaro Company to construct towers on what we are all afraid to see is our new deadspace, green though it may be along the waterfront. Quick, count how many people you saw on a Sunday afternoon in the three parcels that face The Federal Reserve, International Place, and Rowes Wharf. I counted 6 last Sunday and I think two were about to get married at the Langdon. Buth this same Mayor, 3 years earlier, wakes from a nap and declares that we shall have a 150 foot tower on Federal Street. Of course, nobody sees the point in this tower but fear not, the parking is still cheap in the city's parking garage on the site.

OK, OK, back to my view. I have just torn down the Custom House, the Federal Reserve Bank, and One Beacon Street. I miss the clock, I miss the glow, I miss the mass. But we must do what we are told. I just smashed all the glass to the Ritz Carlton, laid waste to One and 100 Federal Street and to the new State Street Global Tower. I miss the audacity and guts to turn the Combat Zone into a luxury zone. I can only commit to memory that Federal Street served as the reawakening of modern finance in Boston (my apologies, Mayor White). I say farewell to a business outpost that tried to bridge the Financial District and Chinatown. There is so left much to do but I do not have the time. I am not sure what I will see--I am not sure what our fear of heights wants us to see--squart stubby buildings with all of the dynamic flair of lego construction.

The Gods be ware. I just turned my head toward the Hancock.

Oh, yes, the maximum height that all of the buildings I just tore down, were such an arrogant attempt be made, without special favor from the mayor, could not, by law, exceed 10 stories.