The Filenes site on lower Washington near Downtown Crossing at Hayward Place will soon restart construction. Initially, the location was proposed to be the site of a massive construction effort for Filenes however three years ago it was put on hold and this subsequently left a large vacant plot that has been extremely unattractive, many residents have classified it as an eye sore.
New York and Boston seem to agree on one thing, at least outside of the sports arena. This is because New Yorks Vornade Realty Trust and Boston based firm Millennium Partners have partnered up with hopes of building not only a store that will thrive and help revive the Downtown Crossing area, but that will be a beautifully designed staple of Boston for years.
As a now two hundred million dollar project designed by Handel Architects also of New York, the plans that were proposed in 2008 called for much more than a Filenes Basement establishment. Offices, residential units, a hotel and other retail spaces were initially the idea that would have set developers back seven hundred and fifty million dollars. Despite this decrease in scale of the project, due to the recent stalemate the large plot of land has endured, the plans nonetheless are ones to get very excited about for Filenes, the Downtown Crossing, and Boston as a whole!
More Information: BizJournals.com
