The third annual Curbed Boston Cup, our award for the Hub neighborhood of the year, has kicked off, with 16 enclaves vying for the prestigious fake trophy. We'll have two match-ups per day through today, and all the results and the full tourney bracket will be reviewed on Friday. Voting for each pairing ends after 24 hours. Let the eliminations continue!
Now up, Downtown Crossing and Fenway.
Downtown Crossing was perhaps the region's changing-est neighborhood of 2013, and that because of four (we think) syllables: Millennium. First, there was the grand groundbreaking for Millennium Tower (see photo), the soaring filler for the old Filene's site. Then there was the official opening for Millennium Place, the luxury condo complex that's almost entirely sold out. Such doings were notable enough on their own, but it's what they portend that really counts: a rejuvenation of Downtown Crossing into the kind of neighborhood that folks don't scamper away from after 5 PM. We'll have to wait and see if it really happens, of course, but, if it does, we'll know that 2013 was the year it all started.
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It would be difficult to overstate the amount of new development dropping in Fenway. We mapped it all in mid-October, but just as soon as we published that map of projects like the Viridian (rendered), the Landmark Center expansion, Symphony Court and the new Marriott, news broke of more fresh Fenway development, namely 1271 Boylston (where the Howard Johnson is now). Not only all this, but the neighborhood played unintentional host to one of year's more robust real estate debates: How freakin' tall can and should developers build in Boston?
· Millennium Place: Boston's 'Inner-City Country Club' [Curbed Boston]
· Millennium Place Notches a New Biggest Sale Yet [Curbed Boston]
· The Millennium Tower Groundbreaking in Photos! [Curbed Boston]
· Our Updated Full Count of Construction Around Fenway [Curbed Boston]
· 1271 Boylston Joining Fenway Development Party [Curbed Boston]
· 1350 Boylston and the Battle for Building Boston [Curbed Boston]