(NECN: Peter Howe, Boston) After 13 years of false starts and controversy, Boston's proposed Columbus Center development is officially dead -- adding to a minor epidemic of big, empty holes around the city that may stay empty for years until the economy turns around.
Columbus Center was going to be built over the Mass. Turnpike Extension between Clarendon and Arlington Streets and adjacent on-land parcels, another skyscraper extending the chain of development over the Pike that begins with the John B. Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center and Prudential Center and continues through Copley Place and the John Hancock Garage.
But after years of going nowhere, Columbus Center's California-based investors finally formally pulled the plug Wednesday.
"The developer used his best efforts -- it's no question about it -- but then not getting any traction,'' John F. Palmieri, director of the Boston Redevelopment Authority, said in an NECN interview. "The economy hasn't been helpful.''
While officially it's a state-controlled development parcel, for Palmieri and his boss, Mayor Thomas M. Menino, the Columbus Center location is now the city's latest big hole that needs to be filled.
At Washington and Franklin Streets in the footprint of the old Filene's department store, plans for a 40-story office-hotel-condo-retail complex are moribund, leaving a crater in the heart of Downtown Crossing and the skeleton-like facades of parts of the old flagship Filene's.
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Over in Allston, dozens of acres cleared by Harvard University for a planned science campus could be idle for years or decades after Harvard's endowment plunged by billions of dollars and President Drew Gilpin Faust suspended the project indefinitely. On the South Boston Waterfront, meanwhile, acre after acre of planned development sites remain open-air parking lots as projects sit on hold.
Accoding to realty experts Jones Lange LaSalle, downtown Boston at the end of the fourth quarter of 2009 had a 17.4 percent office vacancy rate. That was up from 13.9 percent a year ago. A total of 1.9 million square feet -- more than a whole Prudential Center -- become vacant last year or opened without tenants, as 1.8 million square feet of new building remained technically "under construction." All those trends have driven rents down 19.2 percent over the last year, according to JLL.
What that means: barring a miracle economic rebound, Boston's probably going to have to live with these very big holes for a very long time.
"The normal churn of a city has stopped, and that creates these weird spaces that something has to be done with,'' says architect Luke Voiland of Shepley Bulfinch architects on the South Boston Waterfront.
We asked Voiland and his colleague Tad Jusczyk to brainstorm: What can you do with those big holes? They said that viewed over the long term, they could inspire architects who would have literally once-in-a-century opportunities to put in temporary attractions or features before prime development parcels, like the old Filene's site, inevitably draw some kind of new construction once the economy gets back to something more like normal.
Some of their whimsical ideas included wrapping a white sheath over scaffolding and using it to project short films without sound to attract pedestrians and viewers, to "activate the street life" and "get people engaged with the city again.'' Voiland even imagined installing nets that plants could grow on to attract birds and butterflies in normally all-urban spaces.
As reported by realty publication Banker & Tradesman earlier this week, one scheme that's being floated for the Filene's site is to have its owners go ahead and build a revenue-generating underground parking garage with the footings for the planned future skyscraper, and then cover it over with a low-rise retail building. It's the kind of building that developers, taking inspiration from gardeners, sometimes call 'ground cover,' and could temporarily weave back the streetscape of Downtown Crossing while removing the blight of the Vornado Realty Trust open-air construction pit. Said Jusczyk, "There are a number of exciting possibilities for these sites for temporary structures that could bring new life to the city.''
As Mayor Menino's redevelopment chief, Palmieri said he is all ears -- but still committed to job one
"We're prepared to consider looking at uses that would keep a site active until development occurs, but really, the principal goal here is to get these projects built and jobs created,'' Palmieri said. "Development is really what we need to do, and in terms of any other interim activity, of course we'd be open to that, but our eyes are on the ball in terms of getting people working and construction started. We need to create jobs. We need to expand the tax base. And so the mayor's principal mission is to find a way to get these development projects started.''
