Elkus/Manfredi Architects
Pull the 11-story building back from the curb and wrap a continuous 15-foot wide sidewalk all around. Add walls of vines at the street level. Make the edges “friendly” for pedestrians with a café, stores, and a little plaza that spills down pedestal steps to the sidewalk.
Now lay on lots of translucent glass and metal grill work over the first two stories with narrow spandrels so people can see in and out. Inflect the façade on the east to “receive” you.
Those are some of the new ingredients that developer Carter Winstanley added to his new 100 College Street medical office building in a presentation before the City Plan Commission Tuesday night, changes that came in response to years of lobbying by critics of his project.
They were enough for the site plan review of the structure to sail to a unanimous vote of approval, although commissioners added a dozen conditions and pages of comments of city departments to be resolved over the coming months. They concern lighting, signage, design of underground tunnels (including creation of an emergency command center), and whether the railings all around the building be made of painted steel or anodized aluminum.
In a related unanimous vote by the commissioners, Winstanley also received permission to proceed with a 850-car garage that will serve 100 College and be built immediately to the west and beside the Air Rights Garage.
100 College is the debut building in the $140 million first phase of the city’s ambitious Downtown Crossing project, whose aim is to cover the Route 34 highway to buildings and sidewalks and plazas that link downtown with the medical district.
Winstanley already has a major tenant for his 417,000-square foot, 11-story building: Alexion Pharmaceuticals, which plans to bring 350 jobs there by moving its headquarters from Cheshire.
If all goes well, construction could begin in June 2013 and finish 24 months later, Winstanley said. The plan involves a complex choreography with Downtown Crossing’s infilling of Route 34, the creation of new roads that tunnel under the new structure and directly into its garage and Air Rights, along with other major infrastructure work.
Elkus/Manfredi Architects
The changes to the building came about after Aug. 6, when the Board of Alderman approved a development and land disposition agreement that called on Winstanley to make the project more pedestrian-friendly and to add the 15-foot sidewalks.
Winstanley credited the subsequent changes to the charge he was given by the alders and in part to a peer review process of the initial designs conducted by the Boston-based Chan Krieger firm.
Winstanley said that for him the biggest and most difficult adjustment was eliminating the “plinth” or platform that he’d conceived the building sitting on as a zone of safety for its users. Now the sidewalk does that for users as well as pedestrians, commissioners agreed.
Over seven years and 70 plus meetings, the building and Downtown Crossing has had many critics, especially in the city’s bicycling community.
In particular they called termed the so called “urban boulevards” into which MLK Boulevard and South Frontage Road are to be transformed far too car-centric.
Only one critic was in evidence Tuesday night. Although she termed an 850-car garage “heartbreaking,” The Urban Design League’s President Anstress Farwell complimented Winstanley on the enormous progress of his design for 100 College. She also took some credit for it.
“It was a huge public effort to make that happen [the adoption of 15-foot sidewalks],” Farwell said after the meeting. She praised the Board of Aldermen for inserting that requirement into the development agreement.
Sidewalks Leading Where? A Building for the Birds?
Before passage of both items, commissioners peppered Winstanley, his engineer, Ted DeSantos; and his architect, David Manfredi, with questions.
“I admire that you’ve got a nice pedestrian opportunity. But who’s going to walk on the other three sides, apart from College?” asked commission Chair Ed Mattison. “If this is going to be meaningful you’ve got to make those two sidewalks paths go somewhere.”
“I have to agree with you, but someone’s got to do it first,” DeSantos replied.
Commissioner Roy Smith, Jr. said he foresees a “nightmare” at rush hour as cars from both the 100 College garage and Air Rights garage both exit onto route 34.
“I respectfully disagree,” said DeSantos. Just as each garage has a dedicated lane entering from Route 34 under the buildings, so there’s a dedicated lane leaving each garage, he said.
Finally Westville Alderman Adam Marchand, the commision’s aldermanic representative, asked about birds, specifically if coatings on the glass wouldn’t cause birds to fly en masse into 100 College.
“I’m very aware of the bird issue,” Carter Winstanley said. “It’s migrating birds. It’s an elevation issue. I’d suggest we’re not at a height for migrating birds to run into us.”