Updated: As Aldermen Ted notes in the comments, the public hearing on the developer’s special permit application is September, 11 at 7:00 PM in City Hall.
It’s hard to describe how right is the proposed replacement for the Skipjacks/International Bike complex on Needham St.
Skipjack/IBC site as proposed
Skipjack/IBC site currently
On the Skipjack side, what was a street front of half parking and half restaurant will be all storefront. On the IBC side, where there is a parking lot in nearly the full front set-back (the area between the street and the building) with what can only be charitably described as a dog’s breakfast of a sidewalk, there will be storefront. Along the whole site will be a generous sidewalk.
All parking will be in the back and shared. Five curbcuts* will be reduced to two, one of which is single lane.
The site will go from being one of the worst parcels to walk along to a parcel thatnicely defines the street and provides first-class pedestrian accommodations.
This is a significant improvement.
It’s not perfect, but let’s save criticisms for another day.
*Curbcuts as used here describes a break in the sidewalk for a parking lot driveway.
The public hearing on this petition will be held on Tuesday, September 11, 2012 at 7PM in the Aldermanic Chamber at City Hall.
If anyone is interested, the developer, Bierbrier Development, has done a similar project on Mass. Ave. in Arlington.
Would the new rail trail be back where the trees are in the upper left corner?
When I met with the developer and his attorney recently to discuss the special permit process, they showed me some renderings of the proposed project. I expect these slides will be part of the developer’s Power Point presentation at the public hearing, and I will try to get them posted on the aldermanic website so people can see what the project will actually look like. (The renderings will probably also be reproduced in the planning department memo that will be posted prior to the public hearing).
Also. I am informed that, based on the analysis of parking demand prepared by the developer’s consultant, the developer has decided to reduce the square footage of the restaurants from 5500 to 5000 sf and the number of restaurant seats requested from 150 to 110, thereby reducing the requested parking waiver from 20 to 8 spaces.
@Greg, I believe you are correct that the proposed rail trail is in the upper left hand corner of the pictures, behind the Avalon Bay apartments.
The project looks similar to the project further up where Jos A Bank/Panera is located. Is this the same developer Ted, and is this an appropriate comparison in terms of footprint? (That might not be Newton, just inquiring…)
Hoss,
I think there are a few significant differences between this and the Jos. A. Bank/Panera complex. The Skipjacks/IBC project appears to be much more orientated towards Needham St. than the JAB/Panera complex is to Highland St. There is a nice wide sidewalk in front of the Skipjacks/IBC project, at store level. The sidewalk along Highland St. is kinda mean, at least a half-story below the store entrances, and is primarily designed to get people passed the stores, not into the stores. With the Skipjacks/IBC project, I would expect/hope that the primary entrance is from Needham St.
Maybe Alderman Ted can weigh in with his observations of the renderings.
I think Sean nailed it.
Based on the renderings I saw, this will be two retail buildings on grade with a restaurant/cafe anchoring either end. There will be a significant amount of landscaping with tress to provide shade and bushes to soften the hardscape in front of the buildings. Architecturally, there will be parapets for signage and as a design element that ties the two buildings together. The buildings will have a transparent streetscape, which means that there will be windows facing the street which allow people to see what is happening inside each of the stores/restarurants. The project includes a modest freestanding sign next to the entrance between the two buildings with the names of the stores. There will also be entrances at the front and rear, so that customers can access each store and restaurant from either the parking lot or the sidewalk.
So this is very different from Jos Bank/Panera in Needham, which is as Sean describes it.
Here is the website for Bierbrier Development, which has pictures and site plans of each of its projects. I don’t believe this is the same developer of Jos A Bank/Panera in Needham.
It will be helpful for the approving committee and BoA to have some benchmark comparison in terms of footprint and parking. There are a few small developments in this strip that seems somewhat similar and I confess that in each case I’ve taken a neighboring business parking at times. Those being (1) Jos A Bank area (where there has been a mattress store and now a bath design store which has frequent open spaces), the New England Soup area (where there has been a tile place, cell phone place and design place with frequent open spaces), and the small shopping area next to Upper Falls Liquors where there is a florist (a good one!), a cleaners and a salon.
The former Skipjacks always had a sign on the front door warning of a business across the way that would tow overflow parking. There are no overflow business parking in this plot similar to the three areas that I mentioned where overflow parking can be passively tolerated. That, in addition to the drive-thru ban that McDonalds was slapped has me wondering what the BoA might do here? Fast food = Newton Baaaaaad! Upscale eats = Newton accepted!!!
The issue is parking without question.
Hoss,
As I note in the post, one of the improvements the development promises is shared parking. Today (or at least when Skipjack’s was open), you couldn’t park in Skipjack’s spaces and go to IBC or vice-versa. That was terribly inefficient as the two uses (bike store and restaurant) were largely complementary in their parking demand. There are lots of spaces in the Skipjack’s lot on a Saturday afternoon when the bike store is busy and lots of empty IBC spaces of an evening when the bike store was closed and the restaurant was open.
By making a single parking lot for the different uses, you can have less parking for more development. More shared parking on Needham St. will consolidate the uses (good for pedestrians), potentially increase development, and almost certainly reduce the oversupply of parking along the street.
It’s too bad that the development won’t share parking with the building just to the east, whose parking lot is never more than half full. If you read the planning memo, the developer is limiting the number of seats to conform to (out-of-date) ratios of seats to available spaces.
Drive-thru is bad because it encourages driving on the street, not because it’s fast food.