Proposals for the new 80-story tower planned for Boston’s financial district are due tomorrow, November 13th.
Several major players are supposedly submitting proposals, including, according to the Herald’s Scott Van Voorhis, Beacon Capital, the powerful real estate empire run by the Boston-based Leventhal family, Pru Tower owner Boston Properties and Ritz-Carlton towers developer MDA.
Early odds, however, are favoring Boston’s own Steve Belkin, founder, and chairman of Trans-National Group (TNG), a direct marketer of financial, travel, and other services. Belkin is also part-owner of the Atlanta Hawks (NBA) and Atlanta Thrashers (NHL) and is enmeshed (?!) in a protracted legal battle with the other owners over who should have control of the teams.
Belkin owns a mid-rise building next to the parking garage on which the high-rise tower would be built.
Apparently, he has been in talks with starchitect Renzo Piano about designing the new building. The piano is well-known in the architecture world. He is most famous for his radical design for the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (the inside-out building), the new New York Times tower, currently under construction, as well as others, including the new London Bridge (Shard London) Tower (pictured here).
It would be great to have some fancy designs for a new building in Boston. I’m not a fan of plans for the tower, because I think it pits the city against private landowners, unfairly, but, I guess I’m in the minority on that one.
