The new "One Davis Square"

[billharnois.livejournal.com]

Here's what the new One Davis Square building will look like in Fall 2007.

Comments

[inahandbasket]

eww, they're dropping a GYM in there?
That sucks.

[ron_newman]

Thanks. Where did you find that photo?

(And to the first commenter -- what's wrong with a gym?)

[georgy.livejournal.com]

Haha, look closely and you can see that the Someday is "open" in this picture :-) Wishful thinking!

[ron_newman]

I just hope the developer follows through on his promise to bring the non-profits back into his office space. With a change of governors, maybe we can get the DTA office back as well.

[nomirena.livejournal.com]

It looks like BU.

[nomacmac.livejournal.com]

It's going cause traffic hell when people double park 'just for a minute' to run in and pick up a prescrition, cigarettes, drop off someone at the gym, etc... I can't believe they got away without putting in any parking.

[cook-ting.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty psyched for a gym and a CVS is just fine. Maybe Brooks won't be able to hack the competition, fold and we can get Trader Joe's into that slot. That would cover just about everything for me.

Parking

[chumbolly.livejournal.com]

I'm always surprised when people living in dense urban neighborhoods insist new developments need parking. It's pretty straightforward: you can not have a dense, walkable, vibrant neighborhood with lots of parking. I paid a freaking huge premium for a house near Davis because I like its density; if I wanted parking convenience, I'd have moved to Pheonix. Parking lots create huge deadspaces, and parking garages with small footprints are almost as bad because they pull in car traffic.

Final word on this: compare Porter to Davis. Porter sure has plenty of parking, and it sure sucks.

The design of this building is better than I would have expected. It meets the street well.

[philbot.livejournal.com]

Yay to a gym and a half-hearted yay to a CVS. I didn't mind walking to Brooks, and Store 24 is right by my house anyway.

I still want a bar with pool tables, but oh well.

The street

[an-art-worker.livejournal.com]

It's rather a shame that such a prominent street level set of windows will have no visual appeal: no window shopping or changing displays of any significance. The Porter CVS is basically dead on the street from the outside. ZZZZZBe nice if they did something "live" like Cambridge Trust in Harvard Sq.

FYI, BSC signed the lease in August

[ariwriter.livejournal.com]

Taken from an August story in the Boston Business Journal (http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/08/21/newscolumn3.html?page=2):

...BSC also recently signed a lease for a new 15,000 square-foot club to be located in a new 54,000 square-foot building at One Davis Square.

The health club will be on the second floor with a 14,000 square-foot CVS serving as the anchor tenant on the first floor. Mark Browne, of Browne Realty Advisors Inc. represented CVS and the developer in the lease.

[youandwhosearmy.livejournal.com]

There goes the last of the free and easy parking spaces in Davis Sq.

[cos]

I don't think that building is as ugly as people are saying it is. My reaction is kinda ho-hum, nothing special. I do think it's out of place for Davis, though. It looks like the sort of building that'd fit right into today's Porter Square :)

As someone who drives to Davis a couple of times a week, I'm also glad they filled the whole lot and didn't include parking. It does make my anger at excessive T fares go up a notch. But Davis should remain dense.

holy macanoli....

[sarah-katie.livejournal.com]

wow... i heart davis sq... but i'm not sure i heart the new "hipster" look. then again.... i suppose it's better than whole foods... and maybe there will be a pool.