Boston's Skyline To Add Vertebrae

Posted by: Mike Lydon

23 March 2006 - 5:00am

At long last, Boston's Columbus Center will break ground this year. Upon completion, the 35-story mixed-use project will finally reconnect four blocks of the Back Bay and South End neighborhoods, which have long been separated by Interstate 90.

"When Kenneth A. Himmel finished building Copley Place over the Massachusetts Turnpike in 1984, he figured it would soon be part of a long line of development that would hide the highway and connect neighborhoods.

Two decades later I-90 still divides the city.

'I thought it would all be covered,' said Himmel, who was Copley Place's project manager and is now chief executive of Related Urban Development of New York, a development company. 'It would be a sort of boulevard of height running from downtown.'

This spring, after a decade in the planning, the next project over the turnpike is set to break ground. The $624 million Columbus Center will rise above a 1,500-foot-long deck over the highway, extending the Prudential Center tunnel to the east and joining Boston's historic Back Bay and South End neighborhoods."

Full Story: Building On The Pike

Source: The Boston Globe, March 19, 2006