Boston's 'Midtown': A Revitalized Back Bay Complex

The Prudential Center renewal brings back new restaurants, stores, and pedestrians.

1 minute read

April 9, 2002, 2:00 PM PDT

By Abhijeet Chavan @http://twitter.com/legalaidtech


Since it opened in 1965, the Prudential Center has been trying to get its mix of retail tenants right and not always succeeding - at least from the standpoint of a city planner. The center has generated plenty of money from its office-building tenants and the residents in its high rises, but if the goal was also to use a combination of retail, housing, offices, and restaurants to knit itself into the fabric of the city, signs of success came only after developers abandoned their original plan of operating a complex that had more in common with suburban malls than its Back Bay neighborhood.

Thanks to Sarah Perz

Tuesday, April 9, 2002 in The Boston Globe

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