FleetCenter/ North Station's Future?

Two parter here.....

Has the FleetCenter/North Station become the Bank of America Center/North Station yet?

Also, is there any progress being made on the development of the new North Station (not the Superstation), now that the Big Dig is wrapping up?

-JH

To answer the first, NO

Second question, not sure.

Bank of America and the Fleet Center are currently in the process of finding a third party to purchase the naming rights of the Fleet Center going forward.

The former Boston Garden site, now a parking lot between Causeway Street and the FleetCenter, is owned by the FleetCenter. They plan to develop it, but haven't presented any plans for it yet. Right now they seem more interested in building an apartment tower behind and to the west of the FleetCenter, near Lowell Street.

Very soon, a subway headhouse will open on the north side of Causeway Street, near (but not quite at) the east entrance to the FleetCenter.

The Fleet name officially disappears from ATMs and bank branches throughout New England on December 20, but the FleetCenter name will live on until its owners and the bank can come to some agreement. The current naming-rights contract obligates B of A to continue to pay an annual fee to keep a name they no longer want to have!

And many people thought that Fleet Center sounded better than the Shawmut Center

I don't agree, but that name change at least spared us the problem of people getting off at Shawmut station looking for it ...

BofA had announced that it was going to be the Boston Garden again. DId this plan die??

Also, when is the new North Station being built??? Or did that die too???

The Bank of America had floated the idea of calling the Your Name Here Center the New Garden -- which would have been a wonderful thing for us traditionalist sports fans -- but they were shot down by the building's owner, Delaware North (Jeremy Jacobs), which feared that such a public-spirited gesture would prevent them from selling naming rights in the future.

The "new" North Station is the subway station currently under construction. The rail facility under the New Garden is what it is.

To rename it at all, whether to BofA Center or New Boston Garden or anything else, BofA has to renegotiate the contract, which right now runs through 2010 and doesn't allow for another renaming. So they're now negotiating about how BofA can get out of the contract.

Some day, the new development on the old Garden site will include an adequate North Station railroad lobby, but it's not even at the proposal stage yet.

The subway station is pretty much finished already, except for the new headhouse which looks to me a few weeks away from opening.

I think the T made a mistake, because you could have made North Station into a wonderful transit hub, but by not buying the property from Jeremy Jacobs, the land is still undeveloped, and since Jacobs would rather be playing polo somewhere in Buffalo then worry about here, the land may stay undeveloped for a while longer.

Just one comment. I am not a moderator, but I do believe this thread needs to stay on the topic of North Station. While it is interesting to see what the FleetCenter might be renamed, as a sports arena, I don't see it being relevant at all to anything this forum deals with. But as long as we talk about North Station, a major RAILROAD station, we should be fine and conforming to rules.

A mixed use development would be the best use fro the old North Station/Garden parcel. One that includes a mix of offices, retail (ideally a supermarket), food service and a new waiting room for North Station.

A hotel would be nice, too. Traditionally, hotels have been built next to major urban railroad stations. We used to have a perfectly good one here, until the Hotel Madison/Manger was removed to make way for the ugly, useless, and unneeded O'Neill Federal Building.

I can't blame the Jacobs family too much for the undeveloped site. Until the Green Line el was demolished, this was not an attractive location for any kind of new development.

I haven't heard anything specific about it in ages. It was my understanding (another vague, unsubstantiated memory) that a criterion for any development there was inclusion of a public station space, with the commensurate amenities. I recall talking to someone in planning at the T several years ago who confirmed this. I have no idea what the status of the land is now, but I'd imagine anything to go there would still be bound to such guidelines.

Doesn't Delaware North only own the air rights above the parcel?

The assessed owner of the former Garden Parcel (80 Causeway St) is the Boston Garden Arena Corp. There are no details on the ownership of air rights. Incidentially, the parcel that the Fleet Center sits on is owned by the MBTA, so there are obviously air rights above that..

Assessing online