THE MANHATTANIZATION OF BOSTON: Those deluxe apartments in the sky (where dinner can be ordered from room service) are no longer just a Big Apple thing.
Yankees vs. Sox. Jets vs. Pats. New York Marathon vs. Boston Marathon. Central Park vs. Boston Common. MoMA vs. ICA. Luxury condos with great views of the Manhattan skyline at $2,000 a square foot and up vs. views of Boston Harbor at $1,000 a square foot and up. It’s one more chapter in the Big Apple vs. the Hub of the Universe, for those who revel in the competition. New York has led the way in super-luxury high-rise living. But elite lifestyles in little old Boston are catching up.
“The Boston market typically tracks the New York market by a three- to four-year delay,” says Brian Fallon, developer of the new InterContinental Boston Hotel and Residences at the InterContinental, which opened in November. “It’s really only this last round of projects that have had a fully edited, refined design sense relating to the interior, coupled with full services akin to a five-star hotel.”
The buyers of these units, which typically cost more than $1 million for a small one, are looking not only for aesthetic flourishes – woodwork, marble, chrome – but also for convenience. Whether still engaged in busy lifestyles or in retirement, they want kitchens with the latest gadgets, health clubs an elevator ride away, and concierge or even full hotel-style services. According to Kevin Ahearn, president of Otis & Ahearn, which markets the InterContinental and other luxury condos, the buyers here are no different from those in New York. “It started with empty nesters, but it’s expanded to young professionals and everything in between – very affluent, financial services, entrepreneurs, family money, a little bit of international, all of the above.”
The trend began with the residences at the Ritz-Carlton Boston (now the Taj Boston) in the early 1980s and, later in that decade, expanded with the Four Seasons Hotel Boston and its 100 condos on top – which, by the way, sold slowly. The Heritage on the Garden in 1988 was the first in the city to offer a host of services – ranging from 24-hour concierge presence to valet parking to room service delivered from a restaurant on china – without attaching them to a hotel. Developer Ronald M. Druker says he checked out New York when working on designs for the Heritage, which, like the Taj and the Four Seasons, overlooks the Public Garden. “I went to visit Cesar Pelli’s Museum Tower and also The Dakota, which was built in a prior century. They had everything from dog walking to taking packages to looking after your goldfish, as it were.”
If Boston’s trend toward high-end, full-service living caught fire in the 1980s, it took a break well into the 1990s, when the economy fizzled. During that time, luxury and money clung to the town houses in the Back Bay or the handsome old brick buildings on Beacon Hill...[READ MORE]
Music
Featured Artist: Electric Soft Parade
"It still confuses the fuck out of me, trying to define the kind of music we play! I guess at the moment, it's trying to emulate Robert Wyatt, Pet Shop Boys, Neu and the Mission of Burma all at once..." - Tom White, THE ELECTRIC SOFT PARADE
The Electric Soft Parade's new record No Need To Be Downhearted comes out April 24th on Better Looking Records/East West, but you can preview "If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know" before the record comes out. While you're at it, check out "Kick in the Teeth", from their previously released Human Body EP.
The Electric Soft Parade - "If That's The Case, Then I Don't Know"
Electric Soft Parade - "Kick in the Teeth"
Electric Soft Parade website