Before revealing the newest design for his skyscraper complex on the Boston waterfront, developer Donald Chiofaro called it "unabashedly forward-looking without being dismissive of its context."
Critics promptly dismissed the 1.3 million-square-foot development as out of place amid the surrounding properties near Central Wharf.
"It will overwhelm the neighborhood," said Meredith Rosenberg, a Harbor Towers resident and member of a committee advising the Boston Redevelopment Authority on waterfront development. "If we are relaxing the state guidelines on the waterfront, what else is going to happen with other sites? Is the sky the limit with these other sites that are up for development as well?"
The designs also drew support from some neighborhood residents, more than 100 of whom attended a community meeting Wednesday to see sketches of the entire buildings for the first time.
Renderings by Kohn Pedersen Fox Assoc. and ADD Inc. showed a pair of towers with angular tops and tapered sides. The taller, at 600 feet, would have a terra cotta exterior and contain 120 luxury condos and a 250- to 300-room hotel on the upper floors and three floors of retail and restaurant space on the bottom.
The second tower, at 550 feet, would have a more conventional glass exterior and contain 700,000 square feet of office space.
The buildings would take the place of the eight-story Harbor Towers garage owned by Chiofaro Co. on a 1.3-acre site wedged between the New England Aquarium and the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway. The garage was built at the same time as the pair of 40-story Harbor Towers residential buildings in the late 1960s and contains public parking and deeded parking for the condo owners.
Dorothy Keville, a Harbor Towers resident, spoke on behalf of 10 neighbors who support the project. Keville bought her condo a year ago and said she was satisfied with Chiofaro’s assurances that residents’ parking would not be disrupted during construction.
"That’s the only thing I’ve heard in the building: `Where are we going to park?’ They’re all complaining about the parking, but he’s addressed that," Keville said after the meeting.
Critics, however, said the BRA appears to be rewriting its regulations to suit specific projects including Chiofaro’s. The maximum height for development on the garage parcel is 200 feet.
The BRA is drawing up a municipal harbor plan that would give it the power to waive height and density regulations for waterfront developments. In return, developers would be required to provide trade-offs in the form of improvements to public access along the harbor, either on their own properties or elsewhere along the waterfront between Seaport Boulevard and Christopher Columbus Park.
Chiofaro’s consultants listed potential upgrades such as protecting the MBTA’s Aquarium station from flooding, building a park on the end of Long Wharf, subsidizing harbor islands ferries and paying for maintenance and programs on the Greenway and Christopher Columbus Park.
Earlier in the day, trustees of the two Harbor Towers condo associations had released a letter opposing the project in its current form.
"Since modern urban planning began here in Boston in the early 1960s, it has been customary and an article of faith that we do not build huge skyscrapers and excessive density on our waterfront," stated the letter signed by trustees chairs Marcelle Willock and Neal Hartman.
The BRA would begin its formal review of the project after Chiofaro files an application under the agency’s major development guidelines.
