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I would say it’s doing okay. It’s buttressed by more vibrant areas as you said. There is certainly serious concern from city officials and local media about downtown crossing and FiDi. At this point you have retraction and vacancy but some businesses willing to lease anyway (generally small leases).
Philly seems better to me based off my visit there which was during Christmas. I was in downtown and ate in Chinatown at Bar-Ly. In Boston and New York I was there during thanksgiving I stopped to visit my brother in Harlem and stayed in the Bronx for 2 days before continuing up to Boston-so the comparison was basically side by side. I went from the Bronx to Harlem to Rockefeller Center and way out to Valley Stream.. I have family in all three cities. My assessment was both of those places are generally more vibrant downtown than Bostons ‘official’ downtown is. For what I think are obvious reasons. Boston is more retail heavy, has comparatively fewer bars and restaurants, and is more office heavy than Philly (so when a place like Estella opens it’s notable), and it’s downtown has to compete with Kendal Square and Seaport and Longwood Medical Area.
Philly’s downtown has tighter streets good for pedestrians and energy but really Philly in general seemed poised for more growth and becoming the brew it city on the east coast. Idk how much of that buzz is back. Philly has always been full of crime and its populaceSeems mostly used to it and appears to be waiting it out in a return to normal. whereas in Boston there seems to have been a major and relatively new uptick in violent crime in its Downtown/Theatre District area in a city ( everywhere else is getting safer, naturally) with a smaller stomach for that sort of thing.
In New York, the throngs of humanity waiting for the 2 train and the absolute insanity at FAO Schwarz (went their with my small son- just said it was a toy museum because the cashier line was basically inaccessible). Same for Dallas BBQ in the square.
Whereas Quincy Market was missing street performers in 1 of the 2 dedicated areas and I was actually able to walk through the food hall without quite as much hassle as I normally do. For a holiday weekend it felt more like a regular day. Bostons biggest issue is the MBTA basic function and it’s policing. If they can get ridership up on the subway then downtown could come back fully, but that means getting enough trains on the track and not letting people just wreak havoc on the trains if they feel like it. The city conducted a study in office to residential conversions and found there’s only like 19 buildings that would benefit. So it’s aiming for more daycares for workers kids, more minority-owned businesses, more experiential businesses, and to become a 24/7 neighborhood (Seaport was supposed to be that). The city is also hiring a nightlife mayor more or less.
DC is probably dead downtown but I haven’t been downtown DC in a while, I’ve been around the edges. But it’s a larger traditional downtown-MD Allstar noted pale and valleys of activity.
[thanks for the report and comparative assessments; I think you made fair ones here]
Philly’s downtown has tighter streets good for pedestrians and energy but really Philly in general seemed poised for more growth and becoming the brew it city on the east coast. Idk how much of that buzz is back. Philly has always been full of crime and its populaceSeems mostly used to it and appears to be waiting it out in a return to normal. whereas in Boston there seems to have been a major and relatively new uptick in violent crime in its Downtown/Theatre District area in a city ( everywhere else is getting safer, naturally) with a smaller stomach for that sort of thing.
[rest snipped; let us all say a prayer for Baltimore, the first city I'm aware of to have a festival marketplace turn into a dead mall]
Spend a little more time here and you will find plenty of Philadelphians who have pulled out the worry beads over violent crime. But I think you do have a finger on the "toughness" of the locals; most of these people aren't like the guy who started a thread here on C-D asking about places that have Chicago's urbanity and affordability but not its crime, which has scared him away from the place. I offered Philadelphia to the OP fully aware that our crime would scare him away as well.
There haven't been incidents of the type I've heard about on the MBTA on SEPTA yet, but I've noticed that over the past six months or so, many Broad Street Line cars now smell like head shops when you board them, and sometimes, the weed smoke hangs thick in the air.
But I think another reason Bostonians may be freaking out about assaults on the T and in DTX is: Boston has long had noticeably lower violent crime rates than the other cities you discussed here, and (didn't you point this out? I know some Bostonian or former Bostonian did) crime there fell in the pandemic-lockdown years while it rose everywhere else. But to be fair, were someone to get knifed or shot in Rittenhouse Square, it would be big news — it was when a real estate developer I knew did get knifed (and died) in an encounter with a bike courier on a narrow alley just off the square about four years ago.
Shifting gears: I just heard on "Morning Joe" that the Hartford Courant reports that LEGO is moving its US headquarters and 740 jobs out of Connecticut — destination Boston. You might want to keep an ear to the ground to find out where in the Boston area they plan to locate.
Spend a little more time here and you will find plenty of Philadelphians who have pulled out the worry beads over violent crime. But I think you do have a finger on the "toughness" of the locals; most of these people aren't like the guy who started a thread here on C-D asking about places that have Chicago's urbanity and affordability but not its crime, which has scared him away from the place. I offered Philadelphia to the OP fully aware that our crime would scare him away as well.
There haven't been incidents of the type I've heard about on the MBTA on SEPTA yet, but I've noticed that over the past six months or so, many Broad Street Line cars now smell like head shops when you board them, and sometimes, the weed smoke hangs thick in the air.
But I think another reason Bostonians may be freaking out about assaults on the T and in DTX is: Boston has long had noticeably lower violent crime rates than the other cities you discussed here, and (didn't you point this out? I know some Bostonian or former Bostonian did) crime there fell in the pandemic-lockdown years while it rose everywhere else. But to be fair, were someone to get knifed or shot in Rittenhouse Square, it would be big news — it was when a real estate developer I knew did get knifed (and died) in an encounter with a bike courier on a narrow alley just off the square about four years ago.
Shifting gears: I just heard on "Morning Joe" that the Hartford Courant reports that LEGO is moving its US headquarters and 740 jobs out of Connecticut — destination Boston. You might want to keep an ear to the ground to find out where in the Boston area they plan to locate.
Always gonna be some people that avoid Philly; that’s just a given and really not something I don’t understand.
For some people- why risk it for the biscuit? Locals are tough but I’m sure many suburbanites are good off all that:
I wouldn’t say they are freaking out- it’s just general indifference and avoidance. Downtown Crossing was on the up for a few years when the millennium tower and Roche bros and Primark opened up and caffe Nero. But now the vacancies have become visibly apparent and the crime has taken over headlines: I remember the outrage when a group of teens did what was thought to be a racially motivated crime against a white woman.. imagine if there were several shootings/stabbing a in rotten house square over the last year. It’s a relatively big deal. And while visitors and urbanophiles don’t think much of it it’s frequently commented on in eve Rey major news outlet or FB post. The suburban Boston commuter is aware. In November alone a man kidnapped and raped a woman all at a red line stop, she was literally waiting for a train. An armed robber let his gun slip out of his pocket at Airport station a week earlier. A woman was shot at Andrew Station in December. A man was shot and killed on an underground orange line platform a few months prior. A man was shouting racial slurs and attacking people in November as well. And teens have been taking over the intercom making crude announcements and smashing windows out of the trains for TikTok. There’s many incidents. And the question of why does the T not have a visible police presence and why did they stop putting officers in cars years ago?
Also as of today the entirety of the Redlines is a “slow zone” because Ted and orange line tracks are that bad and they’ve been running half the # of neccesary trains for weeks now. Sidenote/ somehow the MBTA has fewer busses running now than it did in 1972, smh. It needs like hundreds of more busses…
Lego is without a doubt going to want to be in Seaport. They’ve said they want to build a new HQ- which or er Ty much rules our downtown crossing. If you want to be attractive to young professionals AND have space for a buildout bd you want to be in Bosotn prior- where else can you even go besides the seaport? Which also is where the Childrens Museum and ICA are located- so there’s awesome synergy. I can’t think of a better place.
Boston has become home to many iconic and pivotal brands. From Boston Beer Conpany to Lego to Liberty Mutual to New Balance to Wayfair to Pfizer and more. People aren’t freaking out they just are making adjustment and acting accordingly. Which simply means avoiding downtown crossing at night or altogether. But it’s lo be been more of a locals/inner city crowd there:
Last edited by BostonBornMassMade; 01-25-2023 at 08:27 AM..
Idk .I don't think Boston is doing that poorly on a comparative basis. Sure the financial district office market is weak as workers telework and DTX retail struggles. But, either downtown Boston is a super tiny area subsumed by more vibrant areas or "downtown Boston" broadly defined seem to be doing ok.
Not best in the country, but ok relative to it's urban peers. NYC is hard to compare against since it is a massive hyper dense city of 8 million people. But, SF and Seattle seem to have been hit a lot harder by the rise in crime/social disorder over the past 3 years. DCs downtown is pretty much dead in the water as it was basically a massive low rise office zone with little residential, destination retail zones. Plus, the city has lots of nodal destination neighborhoods that compete with downtown for foot traffic. https://www.wsj.com/articles/washing...rk-11674534492 https://www.politico.com/news/magazi...on-dc-00078677
Philly is hard to say. It's always have a comparatively small/weak office market and was very mixed use with lots of office to res conversions precovid. The afterwork street level foot traffic is basically recovered. But, it's also seen issues with retail closing and concerns about crime
I'm not sure I would call D.C's downtown dead. Though the teleworking has hurt it. I think that will start to change as some of the tech sectors split between telework and office work. Keep in mind that the tourist will always come to D.C, and many will explore its many walkable neighborhoods.
Last edited by Turnerbro; 01-25-2023 at 10:30 AM..
Lego is without a doubt going to want to be in Seaport. They’ve said they want to build a new HQ- which or er Ty much rules our downtown crossing. If you want to be attractive to young professionals AND have space for a buildout bd you want to be in Bosotn prior- where else can you even go besides the seaport? Which also is where the Childrens Museum and ICA are located- so there’s awesome synergy. I can’t think of a better place.
Seaport seems like a bigger version of Baltimore's Harbor East/Harbor Point or The Wharf/Buzzard's Point/Navy Yard section of DC, with Boston's Downtown Crossing akin to DC's traditional downtown core or Baltimore's even worse traditional downtown with numerous abandoned pockets and a dearth of street level activity.
Unfortunately, unlike the 1960s-80s which was pre-Internet (even though a lot of people loved their TVs at the time, and many still do), the current downwards trend of downtowns will be more challenging to re-invent. On my walk through parts of DC yesterday, Adams Morgan/DuPont/Georgetown were relatively vibrant for being late afternoon on a Tuesday, but as I entered the Golden Triangle section, especially along K Street, I noticed the traffic level felt more typical of a weekend, even though Tuesday tends to be the busiest day to work in the office. All those lobbyists can easily just WFH, and the increase in "for lease' signs really shows in that district which since the 1970s has been DC's most vibrant office district. At 18th/K where I picked up the bus, you're several blocks from the nearest substantial residential district (West End/Dupont/parts of Foggy Bottom), Maybe because its January its quiet, but come spring/summer it should still be much busier for tourists, and that part of Golden Triangle is nicely located between those long-desirable neighborhoods above and the attractions near the Mall, so I wouldn't mind a nice mixture of offices, apartments, hotels, service retail, a supermarket, school, recreational/entertainment center, and some shopping, since for business districts in the 2020s, diversity is key.
Seaport seems like a bigger version of Baltimore's Harbor East/Harbor Point or The Wharf/Buzzard's Point/Navy Yard section of DC, with Boston's Downtown Crossing akin to DC's traditional downtown core or Baltimore's even worse traditional downtown with numerous abandoned pockets and a dearth of street level activity.
You’re right.
Seaport is a much larger more extreme Harbor East pretty much to a tee.
Downtown Crossing is more similar to Downtown Baltimore in that it has some more grit and abandonment and lower end retail but still leaps and bounds better than downtown Baltimore.
Financial District is very akin to Downtown DC but much smaller.
Always gonna be some people that avoid Philly; that’s just a given and really not something I don’t understand.
For some people- why risk it for the biscuit? Locals are tough but I’m sure many suburbanites are good off all that:
I wouldn’t say they are freaking out- it’s just general indifference and avoidance. Downtown Crossing was on the up for a few years when the millennium tower and Roche bros and Primark opened up and caffe Nero. But now the vacancies have become visibly apparent and the crime has taken over headlines: I remember the outrage when a group of teens did what was thought to be a racially motivated crime against a white woman.. imagine if there were several shootings/stabbing a in rotten house square over the last year. It’s a relatively big deal. And while visitors and urbanophiles don’t think much of it it’s frequently commented on in eve Rey major news outlet or FB post. The suburban Boston commuter is aware. In November alone a man kidnapped and raped a woman all at a red line stop, she was literally waiting for a train. An armed robber let his gun slip out of his pocket at Airport station a week earlier. A woman was shot at Andrew Station in December. A man was shot and killed on an underground orange line platform a few months prior. A man was shouting racial slurs and attacking people in November as well. And teens have been taking over the intercom making crude announcements and smashing windows out of the trains for TikTok. There’s many incidents. And the question of why does the T not have a visible police presence and why did they stop putting officers in cars years ago?
Also as of today the entirety of the Redlines is a “slow zone” because Ted and orange line tracks are that bad and they’ve been running half the # of neccesary trains for weeks now. Sidenote/ somehow the MBTA has fewer busses running now than it did in 1972, smh. It needs like hundreds of more busses…
Frankly, it sounds to me like you're taking your life in your hands (relatively speaking) riding the T now. There have been no, or nearly no, incidents like those on SEPTA's rapid transit lines; the one incident I recall getting lots of publicity was a fight on the BSL where a bunch of Black girls beat up on a young Asian girl last year. The mother of one of the attackers turned her in to the SEPTA Police.
The MBTA's physical plant also sounds like it's sinking to the level of Chicago's in the mid-2000s, before the CTA got a cash infusion to bring the tracks back up to snuff.
SEPTA is also planning a revamp of its bus network here. One aspect of the revamp — an end to weekend schedules and a network of routes that run every 15 minutes or more often from 6 am to 9 pm seven days a week — I like a lot, but they're trying not to spend any more money doing this, and I and other transit activists here don't like that because it means some neighborhoods lose bus service completely. What it needs to do is rally support for the money it needs to hire the drivers (there's already a shortage, though), pay them adequately, and buy the additional buses needed to do that without sacrificing neighborhoods.
As for Lego's headquarters: Sounds about right. I worked at the Boston Children's Museum in 1979-80, working on a program that encouraged teens to explore the city and its suburbs using the transit system. We had a mobile workshop housed in a 1954 GM city bus that I learned to drive.
^^A lot of repair is happening on the MBTA during the weekends.
^^My hope's and prayers to the T and its workers--their effort succeeds.
It's amazing to see cities' power expanding/consolidating.
Hope the USA/Boston commercial RE bubble doesn't burst too drastically.
Boston's construction remains robust w/ >60M sq ft (total)
newly opened, opening soon, u/c, approved or in development
partial list leaves out large infill projects all over the City and suburbs; https://www.skyscrapercity.com/threa...562029/page-55
^^The article illustrates well--Boston is really sprawly: 6~7 dense zones w/ a lot of labs/office/ housing currently planned or u/c:
1. Downtown: re; Financial District & DTX *far from done yet: 1000s more residents (Coming) along the edges!
2. The Back Bay/ Copley
3. The Seaport
4. Govt Center/Faneuil Hall/West End/Causeway St
5. The Longwood Medical Area
6. Kendall Sq/ East Cambridge
7. Coming 2025~30:
Fenway & Kenmore Square rises already w/ >5M sq ft >3000 units/
incl 13 highrises ~200-400' opening, u/c, approved or in development.
8. 2028~40 The Dot Ave area of South Boston/ Dorchester rises w/ >17M sq ft
of residential, offices & labs already u/c, approved or in development.
To a Gen X'er, this all seems wayy past crazy.
i was recently quoted 38M sq ft of labs and offices are in u/c
or in development in Boston, Cambridge and North suburbs.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Globe
The Lego Group on Tuesday announced that it would move its North American headquarters from Enfield, Conn., to Boston, a transition expected to bring hundreds of jobs to Massachusetts at a time when concerns are mounting over the state’s ability to compete for big business.
Lego executives said they were drawn here by the region’s talented workforce.
“As we have been continuing to grow the business especially over the last five years, it’s become more and more evident to us that we could grow potentially even faster by being located closer to where the more talent is living,” said Skip Kodak, president of the Lego Group in the Americas.
The toymaker is prepared to bring all of the approximately 740-odd full-time employees it has in Enfield — located along the Massachusetts state line between Springfield and Hartford — to Boston, offering relocation assistance.....
Boston's colleges are expanding while shrinkage is coming nationwide.
That's nuts too.
Where/ when & how soon will Beantown's brain/office/lab bubble burst?
The current expansion has breathed life (finally) into the Boston's half-century long urban renewal.
But, something has to give.
Last edited by odurandina; 01-26-2023 at 12:44 AM..
The MBTA shut down its entire Orange line for a month for repairs in August . 5 months later and it’s shutting down let’s of the orange line for the whole weekend.
Every single stop on the Red line is a slow zone and it now take s45 minutes to go from Quincy to JFK. I read someone sent 2 hours going from Braintree to Fenway due to a combination of slow zones, shuttle busses around closed stations, and transfers.
Let me show you the state of the MBTA…
This is all from yesterday- not this week, just yesterday…:
Yeah, about that. The T announced today the Orange Line would be shut between Ruggles and North Station because of the ongoing Government Center Garage demolition, but a Globe reporter got curious and asked why Ruggles and the T acknowledged it was also to do more work to eliminate the slow zones that it had earlier said it would eliminate during the shutdown, except it turns out they didn't.
As it did this morning, the T is advising Orange Line riders to expect 15 minute delays because despite the alleged infusion of new trains from Springfield, it simply doesn't have enough trains to run even the limited service it began running a few months ago after the feds came down on them for working its dispatchers way too hard.
The MBTA says the Orange Line is experiencing delays of up to 15 minutes due to, no, not just because they don't have enough trains, but also due to "track maintenance" in Malden. Some riders, though, wish it were just 15 minutes. [they said 30+ minutes]
What the T calls a "signal problem" near Maverick has caused a morning commute from hell on the Blue Line.
This all occurred between 9:03 am and 4:52 pm yesterday…
As for downtown… we’ll I just read this comment on a Boston Globe article from the Mayors State of the City Address last night.
mjp96
1/26/23 - 12:29AM
I know the T is not her problem per se - but can't she put some(?) attention to what Downtown Crossing is nowadays? Or Financial District? One downright scary, the other a ghost town.
Nobody even talks about them
This is precisely what I meant by “people seem to have given up”
As for Boston colleges expanding yes and no. The smaller private colleges that serve inner city and lower income/diverse kids are closing. Bay State College just lost Accreditation. Mount Ida College (absorbed into UMASS) got shut down. So did Pine Manor College (absorbed into BC), Newbury College, Wheelock College (absorbed into BU), Atlantic Union College
The percentage of kids going to college in MA is also on the decline and the number of kids in community college is down 30% compared to 2013.. for example Roxbury Community College Enrollment is down 35%. 30% at Middlesex Community College…and on and on.
https://www.boston25news.com/news/lo...APPUHWABQM3KY/
“ According to the State Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, 76.2% of high school graduates from the class of 2015-2016 went on to attend some type of college.
To reverse that trend, districts like Lynn Public Schools are expanding their early college programs, from 450 students last year to more than 700 this fall.
In 2021, just 37 percent of high school graduates in Lynn went on to college. That’s down from 50 percent in 2019.
Last edited by BostonBornMassMade; 01-26-2023 at 07:09 AM..
Lego is without a doubt going to want to be in Seaport. They’ve said they want to build a new HQ- which or er Ty much rules our downtown crossing. If you want to be attractive to young professionals AND have space for a buildout bd you want to be in Bosotn prior- where else can you even go besides the seaport? Which also is where the Childrens Museum and ICA are located- so there’s awesome synergy. I can’t think of a better place:
It's definitely likely that they end up in the Seaport for exactly the reasons you've mentioned. If I was going to bet on it, I'd bet on the Seaport. But I wouldn't go so far as to say "without a doubt." I could see them jumping in on one of the other ongoing mega projects creating new neighborhoods in the city like Boston Landing (where New Balance is), one of the large multi-building Fenway Developments (401 Park, Fenway Center, one of the Red Sox properties, etc.), Bullfinch Crossing, The Hurley Building redevelopment, South Station Tower (technically it's "building an HQ" if the building is under construction when they sign as the anchor tenant and build out the space as they see fit, see: State Street), or even joining in on the Lower Allston redevelopment if they want to really stand out (and be close to both Harvard and MIT). None of those developments have had trouble generating interest. If it wasn't for the 2026 timeline, I could also see them anchoring the Columbia Point redevelopment or even the Sullivan Square project.
Joining one of the existing developments allows them to skip some of the development steps (land acquisition, preliminary permitting, etc.) and saves money while still allowing them the flexibility to get creative with the building itself. Plenty of opportunity for that in the Seaport or the examples above. Sullivan Square and Columbia Point are still further down the road, so Lego would have to lease temporary HQ space (GE did the same thing) until they can build - not sure they'll want to do that.
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