THIS MONTH: A 24/7, URBAN LIFESTYLE | NEXT MONTH: GO WEST – SPRINGFIELD & BEYOND SOUNDPROOFING A ‘JENGA PUZZLE’ Architects and acoustical engineers designed Emerson College’s Paramount Center like a Jenga puzzle to control sound from the nine-story, 180,000-square-foot, mixed-use complex: • The main blocks of the puzzle include the 590-seat Paramount Theatre live performance venue, a 170-seat film screening room, a 200-seat black box theater, a sound stage, a scene/prop shop, rehearsal studios, six practice rooms, four classrooms, and 20 faculty offices; • 60,000 square feet of new residence space for housing 262 students fill the upper four floors; • On the lower level is a 150-seat tenant restaurant on Washington Street and a dedicated student cafeteria; • The design team devised clever ways of maintaining acoustical isolation between floors and rooms, adding concrete floating-slab floors, springisolated ceilings and double wall construction where appropriate.
MAY 28, 2012
A BANKER & TRADESMAN COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE SPECIAL SECTION
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KICKER: HED: SUBHED: Retail, Restaurants, Residential Projects Create Exciting Scene
HISTORIC GEMS
While new developments are transforming Boston’s landscape, preservation groups are working to refurbish historic buildings throughout the city for modern uses: • Historic Boston Inc. (HBI) recently restored the 1859 Eustis Street Fire House in Dudley Square, the oldest fire house in Boston, into a showcase that now houses HBI’s offices; • The city of Boston recently broke ground on a City Hall annex in Roxbury’s Dudley Square that includes rehabilitating the Ferdinand’s Blue Store, a longshuttered Roxbury landmark; • Nuestra Comunidad has rehabilitated the former Hotel Dartmouth and Palladio Hall, a former dance hall, both in Dudley Square; • Urban Edge has converted a former electric substation to a television studio in Egleston Square; • Madison Park CDC has turned the abandoned Hibernian Hall in Roxbury into a popular performance center. • HBI helped the owner of the 1890s Golden Building in Fields Corner restore and update the old commercial building.
18-HOUR CITY
TRANSFORMED, BOSTON BUZZES WITH LATE NIGHT ACTIVITY BY JIM CRONIN | BANKER & TRADESMAN STAFF WRITER
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n internationally acclaimed museum on its waterfront. Celebrity chefs with restaurants in different neighborhoods. People starting work downtown at 8 a.m., going to dinner at 8 or 9 p.m. and staying in town until 11 p.m. or midnight to catch a movie. This 18-hour city is the “new Boston,” a place where luxury apartments, high-end office space and entertainment venues have become the norm. This is not your father’s Boston, where people came downtown to work and buzzed
right back out to the suburbs, avoiding areas like the Combat Zone, South Boston and most of downtown like the plague. And unless the Red Sox were playing or you attended Boston University, there was nothing to do in the Fenway neighborhood but wander around
desolate streets and abandoned warehouses. But many know the new story. Ritzy towers, college dorms and shiny new theaters for screen and stage have replaced most of the former crime-ridden corners of the Combat Zone, while Centerfolds and the Glass Slipper reside quietly as the neighborhood’s “Gentlemen’s Clubs.” In the Fenway, new restaurants abound, City Hall has created an entertainment district for Lansdowne Street and formerly floundering Fenway Park has been remade by new ownership. Continued on Page B9
INSIDER INSIGHTS
Stephanie Wasser, executive director of the Urban Land Institute, Boston Council, tells us how ULI’s programs are helping towns realize their visions – and doing it on time and under budget. PAGE B2
STRETCHED TO THE LIMIT
The 2009 Stretch Energy Code mandate is the government’s attempt to promote energy efficiency. It sounds good, but it has developers seeing red – not green. PAGE B7
Mitigating Noise In Mixed-Use Buildings
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BY JEFF FULLERTON | SPECIAL TO BANKER & TRADESMAN
ost people readily acknowledge that cities are bustling, active and noisy places throughout the day. The allure for developers is to extend that vibrancy and activity into the night. Mixed-use developments help to accomplish this by combining retail, residential, and commercial uses in one exciting building or complex. But this dense, urban design poses several significant acoustical issues. How can a developer provide the excitement of street-level shops and restaurants while calming their noise and not impacting the
late night office workers and high-end residences above them? How can architects design urban destinations that don’t disturb the neighbors upstairs? Architects and acoustical consultants use several approaches to mitigate noise and create enhanced sound isolation between, above and below bustling and noisesensitive spaces in mixed-use buildings. First, simple ideas such as locating noise-sensitive areas far from the sidewalk helps to shield them from outside noise, and placing mechanical systems on the rooftop or a Continued on Page B3
JEFF FULLERTON