Affordable Housing Institute : US

By: David A. Smith

 

[Continued from yesterday's Part 1.]

 

In yesterday’s post, I expended several hundred words in a possibly-unnecessary exercise – intellectually demolishing the feasibility of architectural speculations, presented in the Boston Globe, that I believe even their proponents would concede are whimsical fantasies, never intended to exist beyond CAD/CAM screens and jpegs. 

 

They represent an effort to do something creative with a landscape marred by a prolonged slump in commercial building.

 

I tripped over that imprecision.  The landscape is marred, if indeed it is, because construction stiopped after it was started.  Had there in fact been a prolonged slump, then Filene’s will still be a department store.  Rather, Filene’s disappeared for a combination of two reasons: (1) a boom in property growth, with the resulting boom in real estate property values, and (2) the decline of the department store as a business model.  Filene’s became Macy’s, and Jordan’s became Macy’s, and Macy’s didn’t need two department stores across the street from one another. 

 

There is no telling when a building will rise again at the stalled Filene’s redevelopment, so the city’s architects are filling the void with a few ideas of their own:

 

In Part 1, taking the Globe at its word, I cherry-picked the most outlandish, the least practical.  But is architecture allowed to be completely impractical?  Only with the whimsical discretionary money of a plutocratic patron interested in creating new urban follies.  Yet, having disarmed us with an of-course-these-are-unserious disclaimer, the Globe in fact wants us to buy the product:

 

At stalled work sites, architects and planners are seeking to create forums for artistic expression and experimentation, transforming weed-strewn lots –

 

My hackles rise at cliches. 

 

Beware my hackles

 

Weeds are not strewn; they sprout.  Litter is strewn.  And when was the last time you went strewing, anyway?  Does ’strew’ have any conjuration other than a past passive?

 

In a word, “No.”

 

– into places where people could pause to enjoy intriguing urban scenery, or at least walk their dogs.

 

And not coincidentally, to create work for architects J.  Like this proposal, the first of several seeking respectability:

 

Filene’s design #8: Designer: Brad Koerner. Design firm: LAM Partners Inc. Koerner proposes draping the Filene’s site in enormous fabric that would serve as the canvas for supersize LED video screens. The screens could project any number of animations, such as a waterfall, or artists could be commissioned to produce animations that reflect the spirit of the Downtown Crossing area. Flood lights would accent the remaining portions of the structure.

 

“The idea is to breathe new life into these projects at a time when people would really appreciate it,’’ said Shauna Gillies-Smith, a landscape architect who proposed a medicinal garden for an empty site in the Longwood Medical Area.

 

Longwood design #2: Architect: Shauna Gillies-Smith. Design firm: Ground Inc. Gillies-Smith, a landscape architect, proposes to build a temporary medicinal garden at Longwood Center. Some of the plants Gilles-Smith proposes planting are: Echinacea, begonia, California poppy, chrysanthemum, honeysuckle, nasturtium, and valerian.

 

“It’s about signaling a present and future commitment to the public realm.’’

 

While I doubt there would be much health or economic benefit from this use, it would be visually pleasing. 

 

While some submissions are whimsical, others propose straightforward improvements such as basic lighting improvements or graphics to upgrade dull construction fencing.

 

What these more modest designs have in common is appearance – covering up the urban surgery with an optical band-aid.  They also have in common acknowledgment of their transitory nature:

 

In Miami, officials are renting idled sites from developers for $1 a year and making temporary parks of them.

 

In Seattle, one developer of a stalled 15-story office building volunteered to build a fountain, benches, and landscaping, while another allowed local food vendors to set up at the proposed site of a hotel he hasn’t been able to build.

 

Filene’s design #7: Designer: Dave Waller. Design firm: Brickyard VFX. Waller proposes to use the empty Filene’s site to post vintage neon signs from New England’s history, featuring signs from old drive-ins, Howard Johnson’s, and Dunkin’ Donuts.

 

At Columbus Center, principals of Schweppie Lighting Design Inc. proposed covering a fence with panels that change color as people pass by. At Harvard, John Powell suggested covering the fence in a video screen with images of Allston’s past and renderings of how development could change it in the future.

 

There’s only one problem: money.

 

The fixes range in cost from $300,000 to $1.2 million.

 

Who will pay for it?  The architects are unanimous – someone else.

 

At the least, said Tim Love, a principal of design firm Utile Inc., developers have an obligation to see that stalled projects don’t become eyesores.

 

“Any landowner has a civic responsibility to make their property look attractive,’’ Love said.

 

 

Really?  Says who?

 

“If a homeowner has a weed-filled front yard or leaves trash out, they would face penalties in most municipalities.’’

 

Garbage is a health hazard.  Weeds aren’t.  Mr. Love’s hypothesis is wishful thinking.  Less wishful-thinking is to imagine the city might fund the beautification.

 

Boston officials are now mulling whether to install temporary dressings at several sites. The Boston Redevelopment Authority asked developer John B. Hynes III to cover the two half-demolished buildings on his Filene’s site with large screens.

 

Which they should – helps protect the remaining shell, costs little, improves appearance.

 

Hynes and city officials are considering whether to print graphics or other designs on the screens.

 

Talk is cheap. 

 

 

Talk, in fact, costs nothing.

 

The BRA is also consulting with the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority about restoring the land at the Columbus Center site.

 

Columbus Center design #3: Architect: Simon Hare. Design firm: Placetailor Inc. Hare proposes to cast a nylon canopy over Columbus Center, to reconnect the community with the construction site and its possibilities. The canopy, to be spread across the Massachusetts Turnpike work site, would be supported by metal poles and braces that would lift it 30 feet over the highway.

 

“There’s not a lack of ideas being batted around,’’ said Kairos Shen, the BRA’s chief planner.

 

Ideas are cheap too.

 

Slightly more than four (!!) years ago, I posted about the Fan Pier’s empty site in the Curse Of Too Much Value; my point being that a well-located site that has already had substantial investment will not be redeveloped into a lower-value use.  Being cursed with so much value and sunk cost – financial and emotional – to be recouped, it

 

 “The problem is, how do you implement them? The reason these installations seldom get off the ground is there is no money to pay for them.’’

 

Ay, there’s the rub.

 

In most cases, the burden of paying for temporary installations falls on the developer. Builders already don’t have the money restart construction, so they are reluctant to find and spend as much as $1 million for aesthetic improvements.

 

You think not?

 

Change this planet as we know it!

 

“I’m not averse to landscaping and creating something unique, but by the time you take down the fencing and mobilize to do the work, we hopefully will be ready to proceed with our development,’’ said Tom Alperin, chief executive of National Development, which stopped construction last fall on the Longwood biotech lab.

 

That’s the second practicality: time.  Developers with stalled properties want to get them moving.  Anything established on the site merely means something to be dismantled later, at a cost of time.

 

Alperin said it would be too much work to accommodate [the Globe's] proposals in the time frame he’s working with. He said he hopes to resume construction within 18 months.

 

However, if somebody paid him to put in the public amenities, that would be a different story.

 

Some architects and designers urged the city to consider new regulations to help pay for art installations. Josh Barandon, chief executive of Squared Design LLC of Los Angeles, said the city should consider levying a penalty on developers who leave their sites dormant for prolonged periods.

 

Trust an Angeleno to recommend something for a Bostonian to do!

 

You, Kev, we’ve got a good idea for you

 

“In our opinion, such a penalty is both logical and feasible, especially in light of the current situation at Downtown Crossing,’’ said Barandon –

 

How thoughtful of him to offer his opinion that one third party (the city) should tax another third party (the developer) to pay for something his firm would be paid to create.

 

– whose firm collaborated with Howeler + Yoon of Boston to create a vertical garden at Filene’s to grow algae for the production of alternative fuel.

 

Oh, that’s sensible!

 

Love, the principal of Utile, said the city could require developers to buy insurance that would pay for aesthetic improvements in case financial problems forced them to stop construction.

 

I doubt such insurance exists now.  Still, if there were a market, somebody would write the coverage.  But why would a developer want to buy that insurance? 

 

“If developers want to play in this city and take risks, one of the risks they have to mitigate is the chance that the economy might collapse between permitting and construction,’’ he said.

 

Yes, that’ll certainly revive the economy and make Boston more business-friendly.

 

 “To financially penalize developers trying to hold onto their projects is ludicrous at a time like this,’’ said David Begelfer, chief executive of NAIOP Massachusetts, a commercial real estate trade group. “We have a unique circumstance in the financial markets. If you try to put in place regulations because of that, it could have unintended consequences for future growth.’’

 

That’s ludicrous!

 

Hynes, the Filene’s developer, doesn’t know when he’ll be able to resume construction. In the meantime, as he prepares screens to protect the two buildings on the site this winter, Hynes said he is willing to consider incorporating art but is more focused on the functional than the fanciful.

“Priority one is to protect the structure of the buildings, and priority two is the aesthetics,’’ he said.

 

Remarkably rational.

 

“We’re not predisposed to anything, but the hope for us is that whatever we end up doing, the emphasis is on temporary.’’

There’s the third obstacle: risk of losing development rights.  Install anything, anywhere, and someone will decide it should be preserved as a permanent use – then all your value is lost.  If the site is ugly, everyone will want you to get on with the business of developing it.

 

Beauty, to a developer, is a clear path to building.  And for that, an ugly lot is better.

 

It’s all in the eye of the beholder

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