Nicholas Torres

Challenge

Design a transit-oriented, human scaled master plan for Columbia Point, reconnecting back to Dorchester and UMass Boston.

 

Vision

Columbia Point, part of the Dorchester neighborhood is currently home to UMass Boston, the Harbor Point Apartment Complex, Sovereign Bank Regional Headquarters, The Boston Globe, and the former Bayside Expo Center. However due to piecemeal development over the past several decades the peninsula with excellent transportation connections and dramatic water views has languished under auto-dominance and lack of coordination. The goal of this redevelopment proposal is to re-design the peninsula into a cohesive urban environment taking advantage of its natural environment and connectivness. The new fabric is laid out in a grid system consisting of three main hubs, a commercial hub, a community hub, and an institutional. From each of these hubs the transportation nodes (road, rail, and green) radiate into the surrounding neighborhoods of Dorchester, Savin Hill, and South Boston, re-connecting the peninsula back to the city. As the southern end of the Innovation Corridor the commercial core will be attractive to the growing biomedical industry and the amount of new mixed income housing created will help keep graduates in the city. UMass Boston will be reconnected as well by integrating Mount Vernon Street into the campus gateway and the campus itself will be urbanized. Our ultimate goal is to have an inclusive, vibrant community, easily connected to the city, and become a new hub of development for Boston.