Somerville Infill and Small Developments

Looks decent but seven units? That's it? I guess it's not a huge lot but still. They must be huge units, or be at least 3BR. Latter would be far preferable if it's for families (which it probably won't be).
 
pixelsand8 said:
Looks decent but seven units? That's it? I guess it's not a huge lot but still. They must be huge units, or be at least 3BR. Latter would be far preferable if it's for families (which it probably won't be).
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Developer says that units will range "from 1+ to 3 bedrooms".
 
DigitalSciGuy said:
Looks like it hasn't been a gas station for quite some time.

7 new units isn't bad. Just more blah infill.
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It's a stretch of nowhere Highland Ave. I think it's pretty nice for what it is. Whatever was going to be there was never going to be some architectural marvel. It's housing, unoffensive, has ground floor commercial space that will blend in nicely.
 
Solid small infill. A conversion of a small auto-oriented parcel into dense, urban housing. We need more of this everywhere. For example, the yard/vacant lot on Highland/Cherry next to the other urban residential development going up there. There is incredible demand for market rate housing on this corridor. Build, baby, build.
 
DigitalSciGuy said:
Just more blah infill.
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Great news all the same! I live in (and love) Somerville but it is one of the uglier cities in the world. If we hand it over to our children with blahly infilling every gas station and vinyl-clad fire trap with stuff like this I'll say it was good enough by me. :)

Worth noting—on Highland Ave this is the second-to-last of the full-fledged missing teeth. After this one is built there is only the parking lot across from Dunkin at 157 Highland.

After that some underdeveloped parcels that may be targeted — all single story retail. However, there are not that many vacant storefronts on this street any more.

Somerville Ave and Broadway, by comparison, both have at least a dozen ratty parcels. Many of which are already being targeted.
 
bigeman312 said:
Solid small infill. A conversion of a small auto-oriented parcel into dense, urban housing. We need more of this everywhere. For example, the yard/vacant lot on Highland/Cherry next to the other urban residential development going up there. There is incredible demand for market rate housing on this corridor. Build, baby, build.
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That's just the thing though, we need housing here and I feel like this lot can support way more than 7 units on a four story building no less. I sometimes like to count mailboxes on those squat square brick things you see all over Boston and there are generally 12-16 at least, and these were built in the 70's when housing demand was way less. I don't even care that they aren't architectural marvels, they provide a real need (and personally I like them aesthetically).

This is just my personal opinion but Somerville is blowing opportunity after opportunity on all these infill lots. They are either lacking in density or they suck aesthetically (overgrown suburban townhouse syndrome), often times both. They tend to do ok on the bigger projects (Maxwell Green, Assembly Row), which have excellent density and pretty good design. On the plus side this proposal looks decent aesthetic wise (more retail can make that a real nice neighborhood corner) and the lack of density can be forgiven if they cater to families rather than large luxury 1BR's for young singles making way more than they should.
 
For better or worse, developers seem to be going for the "luxury" (or just below luxury) market. They're going for fewer, more spacious, more comfortable units that will fetch more money, rather than packing in denser units.
 
pixelsand8 said:
...the lack of density can be forgiven if they cater to families rather than large luxury 1BR's for young singles making way more than they should.
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From the City of Somerville:

City of Somerville said:
The Applicant is also requesting a variance for parking in light of the increasing trend of Somerville residents to use non-vehicular modes of transportation. The granting of this variance will allow the Applicant to provide more housing units than what the existing parking requirements would allow to help meet the increasing demand for housing in Somerville. The proposed six parking spaces make practical sense when the unit mix is considered: two one-bedroom units, three two-bedroom units, two -three bedroom units and a three-plus bedroom unit. The Applicant will allocate the parking spaces depending on who the eventual buyers are, but the Applicant is anticipating no parking need for the one bedroom units, which will leave six parking spaces for the five remaining units. The Applicant further believes that one parking space will go to each of the two and three bedroom units, which would leave as many as two parking spaces for the three-plus bedroom unit, which is likely to house a family.
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That is very encouraging.

Also, keep in mind that the lot is only 5544 square feet, which is about 1.5x the size of the triple-decker lots on this block. So, a nice step up in density.

pixelsand8 said:
I sometimes like to count mailboxes on those squat square brick things you see all over Boston and there are generally 12-16 at least, and these were built in the 70's when housing demand was way less.
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I'd bet that many of these brick apartment buildings are built on 10,000-20,000 (~.25-.5 acres) and devote much of their land to useless "green space" and parking.
 
Oh, didn't mean to be incendiary by calling it blah infill. I was really thinking more blah as an inoffensive background character along the lines you guys are saying.

Looking at it again, I think they definitely could've gone another storey or two without it feeling much more imposing or out of place on Highland.
 
bigeman312 said:
I'd bet that many of these brick apartment buildings are built on 10,000-20,000 (~.25-.5 acres) and devote much of their land to useless "green space" and parking.
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A quick tour of google earth shows this mostly to be the case. It honestly doesn't seem so bad when you are walking around the city because the buildings mostly front the sidewalk and the lots are often hidden out of view. All the same, surface lots are surface lots and thus a waste of valuable space. So parking seems to be the sticking point. Worth noting some of these older buildings put it under the housing - 23 Elm and 115 Highland come to mind. I know that's not generally good urbanism but I do think it was done tastefully and unobtrusively in these cases.

Also I was unaware how small this lot was, it seems bigger in person but I guess it makes sense being surrounded by triple deckers. So this is certainly an improvement as to what could of been built there - consider the lot across city hall at Prescott and Highland, bigger than this but still only six units! I still think Somerville has a ways to go to up their density game, and they can do it if they get more creative.
 
From the What's Happening With Project X? thread:
Arlington said:
What is the project at the Porter Sq end of Somerville's Beacon St (a triangular parcel opposite Oxford St and backed up to the Fitchburg train tracks) a former gas station site.

I suspect is already has a thread, but am fuzzy on whether it is in Cambridge or Somerville,

They were pile driving this morning. I'd thought it was just construction staging for an Emerson project, but the pile driving obviously means the site is the project.
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Looks like "Beacon Hotel", a 35-room hotel with a ground-floor restaurant and 29 underground parking spaces. It's the work of Young Construction Company, the same firm working on 315 Broadway in Somerville and the Porter Square Hotel (which is taking forever).

tS9NOWH.jpg


I don't think I'd ever heard of this until now, and I'm kind of surprised something of this size got through the approval process...
 
The old Boys and Girls Club on Washington st. is gone.
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JumboBuc said:
I don't think I'd ever heard of this until now, and I'm kind of surprised something of this size got through the approval process...
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If I remember correctly, there's a bit of controversy about it. Neighbors don't want it and are alleging corruption in city hall is what got it through.
 
The stylization in the render doesn't help any. Straight out of Virtus Walkthrough circa 1993.

Now, seeing this in the style of the 1920's nighttime skyscraper renders would be fun, but equally misleading.
 
Nice to see all those powerlines (especially in the top renderings) are taken down and buried! Is that a requirement for building in Boston and the surrounding cities?
 
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