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| Communities by Design Built Works: Architects Demonstrate the Value of Community Design | | > | A Civic Vision for Turnpike Air Rights Boston, Massachusetts | | > | East Baltimore Comprehensive Physical Redevelopment Plan Baltimore, MD | | > | Inner Harbor East Baltimore, MD | | > | Lafayette Courts Baltimore, MD | | > | Mid-Embarcadero San Francisco, California | | > | Landmark Lighting Master Plan Milwaukee, WI | | > | New York State Canal Recreationway Plan Albany, NY | | > | Pennsylvania Convention Center Philadelphia, Pennsylvania | | > | The Village of Park DuValle Louisville, KY | | > | Riparian Meadows, Mounds, and Rooms Warren, Arkansas | | > | UrbanRiver Visions seven communities, Massachusetts | | > | West Harlem Waterfront Park New York, New York | | > | R/UDAT Built Works | | > | R/UDAT Austin, TX | | > | R/UDAT Moose Jaw, Canada | | > | R/UDAT Salt Lake City, UT | | > | R/UDAT San Angelo | | > | R/UDAT Springfield, IL | | | |
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Project Details
Architect: Goody
Clancy Architecture, Planning, Preservation
Award: National AIA Award for Regional and Urban
Design 2001
Implementation Status: Adopted by City, two major
projecs underway based on the plan.
View Communities by Design Built Works: A Civic Vision for Turnpike Air Rights
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Background
As consultant to the Boston Redevelopment Authority, Goody
Clancy completed the City’s first comprehensive plan for
development over the Boston extension of the Massachusetts Turnpike: A Civic Vision for
Turnpike Air Rights in Boston. The report, endorsed by Mayor Thomas
Menino and hailed by the editorial board of the Boston Globe,
establishes neighborhood-specific guidelines for development along
the Turnpike’s 2-mile long cut through the heart of Boston,
and serves to reconnect the urban fabric separated by this
wind-swept canyon.
Working closely with a 26-member, mayoral-appointed Strategic
Development Study Committee, Goody Clancy orchestrated the input of
more than 1,000 residents from over 25 public meetings, the needs
and desires of 7 distinct neighborhoods, and the design challenges
of 23 parcels all varying widely in shape, size, and surroundings.
The report goes far beyond individual neighborhood interests,
however, and addresses citywide initiatives, such as methods to
improve transportation links, increase affordable housing, create
useable open space, and encourage innovative building design and
pedestrian-friendly thoroughfares. To ensure its implementation,
the Vision and Guidelines are underpinned by the economic realities
of air right development costs and constraints, such as the
necessary massing and heighth to support housing, hotels, and
office space.
Implementation Status
2000…the Plan was completed
2001…the Plan was adopted by the City of Boston and the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority to guide
development of Turnpike Air Rights (serving the role of zoning,
from which the Air Rights is exempt)
2002…Cassin Winn Development formally
announced the first major Air Rights project—approximately 1
million SF of mixed-use development (hotel, retail and restaurants,
condominiums, rental apartments, health club) together with a new
neighborhood park; project consisted of two 30+ story towers
2002-3…following the development approval process specified in
the plan, the Mayor and Turnpike Chairman appointed a Task Force to
review the project and after more than 100 meetings, for which
Goody Clancy served as a consultant to the Task Force, the Task
Force approved the project with one tower and two lower-rise
buildings that together created three new city blocks of mixed-use
development
2004-6…development team completed complex design and
engineering
2006…Cassin Winn announced that the plan was ready to move
into construction
2006…the Boston Red Sox, Millennium Development, and Berklee
College of Music announced Air Rights development proposals
Public Process
In 1998 the Mayor and Turnpike Authority Chair appointed a
Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) and selected Goody Clancy to work
with the CAC to prepare a plan and guidelines to govern Air Rights
development over the Massachusetts Turnpike. The creation of the
CAC represented a joint response by the city and independent
authority to community outrage in response to a 59 story Air Rights
tower that had been proposed at the junction of two historic
neighborhoods: Back Bay and the Fenway. The process, which lasted
over two years, included regular meetings, chaired by the CAC, with
eight separate neighborhoods along the length of the Turnpike at
which Goody Clancy presented planning and design concepts and then
more detailed guidelines. In addition the CAC hosted monthly
meetings for all of the neighborhoods along the Turnpike, which
were attended by 200 or more community members. The Boston Globe
and Herald, along with neighborhood press, covered the planning
process. At its completion, the Globe published a lead editorial
endorsing the plan and its vision. Robert Campbell FAIA, the
Globe¡¦s architecture critic, wrote an editorial
supporting the plan and referred to it as ¡§¡Kthe
best thing for the city since the Emerald Necklace.¡¨
Community Impact
The key concept underlying the plan was to match enhanced
economic value with enhanced civic value. The large scale required
to make Air Rights economically feasible¡Xgenerally requiring
buildings of 25 floors or more¡Xin the midst of
Boston¡¦s fine grain of historic and traditional urban
neighborhoods had blocked most previous Air Rights proposals. This
plan broke through this barrier by suggesting that development
could go even higher, if the added value was used to create well
designed transitions to adjacent neighborhoods, hide parking (which
had to be above-grade), create new public spaces of tangible value
to neighborhoods, include retail space along public streets and
other civic benefits.
The plan¡¦s objectives were broad:
¡§¡Krepair the physical, social, and economic
breach presented by the railroad and the Turnpike¡¦s
cut thorugh Boston.¡¨ This overarching goal was
translated into four perspectives ¡§that touch at the
very core of enhancing Boston as a livable city¡¨:
- Reinforce the vitality and quality of life in adjacent
neighborhoods¡Xthe plan has encouraged redevelopment of
surface parking and other underutilized sites that lined the
Turnpike in areas where Air Rights development is envisioned
- Enhance Boston as a place to live, work, and invest¡Xmore
than $500 million, roughly 90% of it private investment, has been
committed in response to the plan, with more than $1 billion in the
pipeline¡Xwhen completely developed, Air Rights will
accommodate more than 5,000 mixed-income housing units together
with one to two million SF of hotel, office, research, retail, and
other uses
- Repair and enrich Boston¡¦s public realm¡Xthe
plan envsions more than two miles of new landscaped public
sidewalks, in addition to a series of public parks and other public
spaces, in conjunction with Air Rights development. Most of the new
public sidewalks are located in areas that will support retail at
street level (for example the Cassin Winn project includes retail
along most of its street frontage, with single loaded row houses
along the remaining frontage)
- Foster increased use and capacity of public transportation and
decreased reliance on private automobiles¡Xall of the Air
Rights development is served by public transit, creating
Boston¡¦s single greatest opportunity to add
significant TOD density¡Xas a result the plan requires low
parking ratios for Air Rights development (in some cases less than
one space per unit)
Lessons Learned
The most important lesson offered by this plan is the importance
of increasing civic value as economic value increases. This lesson
is critical from both an external and an internal perspective. Had
the plan attempted to hold the height and scale of Air Rights to
the lowest feasible levels, which would still require substantial
buildings, the result would have been community rejection of
buildings viewed as inappropriately tall in the context of
Boston¡¦s neighborhoods that offered no compensating
benefit. While increasing heights from 25 to 30 or 35 stories was
controversial, this increase unlocked the ability to fund
significant civic benefits that not only overcame community
opposition, but is now enabling developers and architects to create
projects that avoid the blank walls and scale transitions that
often make Air Rights development a problematic neighbor.
Principles for Livable Communities
These principles could have been written to inspire the
plan¡¦s guidelines.
- The plan requires that buildings celebrate human scale, with
retail and other uses that interact with pedestrians at street
level, massing that avoids development out of character with
adjacent buildings, and articulation that respects the neighborhood
context; the plan, for example, requires that all parking (which
for Air Rights must be above grade) must be shielded from public
streets behind a layer of housing, hotel rooms, or other uses to
maintain a vital connection between buildings and public
streets.
- The plan provides for a wide range of housing types to augment
the relatively narrow range available in adjacent neighborhoods and
expand opportunities to attract people to live in
Boston¡¦s neighborhoods and to remain in their
neighborhoods as they move through different life stages.
- The plan requires mixed-use development wherever feasible.
- The plan provides an unequalled opportunity to introduce more
than seven million SF of mixed-use development, on more than 40
acres of ¡§found land¡¨ in the heart of the
region¡¦s core.
- By limiting parking and locating considerable density adjacent to
transit, along with provision for new bicycle lanes and more than
two miles of new sidewalks, the plan contributes significantly to
making Boston¡¦s core still more walkable and
transit-oriented.
- The plan proposes a series of new public parks and squares, the
first of which will be created as part of the Cassin Winn
development. All of these spaces are enlivened by retail and in
other ways connected directly to the life of adjacent
neighborhoods.
- While the plan goes to great lengths to ensure that Air Rights
development creates a vibrant sense of place, particularly along
public streets, squares, and parks, its most significant
contribution to neighborhood character is to provide a series of
scale and use transitions that preserve the historic and
traditional character of adjacent neighborhoods.
- The plan directs development, for the first time, to recharge
ground water levels, which is critical to the environmental health
of nearby neighborhoods and structural integrity of nearby historic
buildings.
- By unlocking the ability to add significant new development to
the region¡¦s land-poor core, the plan helps focus
development toward the core and away from the surrounding natural
environment.
- The plan emphasizes the importance of design, and makes this
emphasis tangible by insisting that projects should be increased in
size and value so that they can afford very high quality urban and
architectural design.
Overall Sustainable Contribution
In addition to creating roughly 40 new acres of developable land
in the heart of the region¡¦s core and thus tangibly
supporting smart growth at a very significant level, the Plan also
creates new parks and green roofs, recharges ground water, limits
traffic generation through TOD and limited parking availability,
and enhances the city¡¦s pedestrian-friendly
character. At the same time, by requiring mixed-income housing,
making specific reference to facilities to expand
Chinatown¡¦s cultural offerings, and creating a venue
to accommodate new investment, the plan contributes to social,
cultural, and economic as well as environmental
sustainability.
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| Healing a wound through the heart of Boston |
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| Where housing, land, and open space are all scarce, dense development is encouraged to add mixed-income housing, recoonect lively streets, and create a public park. |
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| "A Civic Vision" incorporated the work of more than 25 public meetings across the city, attended by more than 1,000 residents representing eight activist neighborhoods and widely diverse advocacy groups. |
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| Diverse retail space with a lively street edge could replace wind-swept bridges separating the Back Bay and the Fenway |
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