Assembly Square Infill and Small Developments | Somerville

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I'm happy to see Puma/FR is adding public art to the above ground garage. Obviously above-ground parking is less than ideal in the first place to look at, but it's nice to see the effort. Assembly Row appears to be evolving with each now garage they've put in, and certainly earns kudos for their efforts.

If a Metro Rock or Brooklyn Boulders-style rock climb gym ever decided to come to Assembly Row, I'd love to see a future garage facade integrate a rock wall. A colleague showed me photos of the High Point Climbing and Fitness rock wall in Chattanooga, TN, and I've been obsessed ever since about the prospect of a similar treatment to above ground garage(s) in the Boston area. Assembly Row might be a great spot for such a venue.

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dshoost88 said:
I'm happy to see Puma/FR is adding public art to the above ground garage. Obviously above-ground parking is less than ideal in the first place to look at, but it's nice to see the effort. Assembly Row appears to be evolving with each now garage they've put in, and certainly earns kudos for their efforts.

If a Metro Rock or Brooklyn Boulders-style rock climb gym ever decided to come to Assembly Row, I'd love to see a future garage facade integrate a rock wall. A colleague showed me photos of the High Point Climbing and Fitness rock wall in Chattanooga, TN, and I've been obsessed ever since about the prospect of a similar treatment to above ground garage(s) in the Boston area. Assembly Row might be a great spot for such a venue.

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Well I guess so, but that particular public art is really creepy...

The rock wall is a great idea, but you do need space for a platform.
 
cden4 said:
It really seems like they are building a LOT of parking overall.
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Yes. Right next to the T station fence, for extra-symbolic cromulence.

I *get* at the superficial level that 'early' Assembly went with a higher parking ratio than we would've all preferred seeing. Means to an end for kickstarting it and blah blah blah. But now that we're a generation deep into the infilling some evolution on the matter should've been in order with site master plans to gradually take those ratios down on new construction now that transit is well-established here and about to get loads more frequent with the OLT service increases. Rather, they seem to be treating the early high bar for parking as the forever precedent. And that's really not how you complete a follow-through on densification.

I mean, it's not like they started off on the Alewife wrongest foot or anything. But these targets were never meant to be static, and were supposed to evolve to track with increasing density. So it's a little disappointing that bullheaded conventional wisdom is overruling. They're going to quickly wish they had a couple fewer garages clogging up the ground floors.
 
The one positive is the garages leave lots of room for demolition and future infill once its built out. This way it can kind of have a smidge of organic growth later on layered into the masterplan after its built out and a means for the market to dictate what needs to be added as the finishing touches. It will honestly be welcomed to a heavily masterplanned neighborhood.
 
They got all sorts of special funding and partnerships from Audi (I believe) and others experimenting how to design some of the garages to be later retrofitted into habitable office space.

I will admit, the 3-for-free parking payment structure is very attractive if you're looking for a short trip.. I also have never really noticed any garage being full (sometimes some of them have been nearly empty during peak/dinner, pre-pandemic). It's overkill, IMO.
 
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