Assembly Square Infill and Small Developments | Somerville

8 and 5 we know of but 7A and 7B would be great news if those are u/c as well. Are you sure you saw these u/c and not staged equipment for 8 and 5?
 
Driving by the other day, I noticed a lot of dirt moved around on 7A/B as well. Not sure if it's construction, or just a dumping ground for materials from the U/C sites. Puma and the project at 8 are definitely U/C.
 
It could be the dirt from digging the foundations next door. Hopefully they are u/c though.
 
is there any movement on Partners Phase II?
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Partners went from nearly no employees working from home, to having most employees work from home (in some capacity) in the short time since the new partners building was erected. There's still a lot of empty cubicles in this building. I don't see Partners doing Phase 2 any time soon, if ever.
 
AssemblyMoe said:
Partners went from nearly no employees working from home, to having most employees work from home (in some capacity) in the short time since the new partners building was erected. There's still a lot of empty cubicles in this building. I don't see Partners doing Phase 2 any time soon, if ever.
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Thank you for pointing this out. As we debate the potentially seismic shift that might take place with the advent of autonomous vehicles, the change in how and where we work stands to have a far greater impact to urban form and the vitality of our business districts.

Though I generally reject the notion that HYM's template for the Suffolk Downs development is Assembly Row, I have attempted to introduce the Partners incentivization of working remotely to stave off the concerns of some of my neighbors about rush-hour traffic. As time goes by (recognizing a 15-20 year build out) the proposed office space at Suffolk Downs may only be 50% occupied on any given day.
 
The shifting work hours are going to start to affect nearly everything where not only are many more people working remotely, but the 9-5/m-f model is quickly becoming outdated. With regards to transit the commuter rail being so closely tied to this schedule is going to make it less and less effective at meeting real world demand in the near future.
 
People have been saying remote work is going to take off any day now for 20 years. It hasn't happened yet, but surely it will any day now...
 
fattony said:
People have been saying remote work is going to take off any day now for 20 years. It hasn't happened yet, but surely it will any day now...
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18 of the 31 people at my company WFH and have for at least 8 years. well more than half my friends WFH at least some of the week.

"it" has happened, just not at your business i guess?
 
fattony said:
People have been saying remote work is going to take off any day now for 20 years. It hasn't happened yet, but surely it will any day now...
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This.

If "you can now work from anywhere outside of the office and still be successful" were true we wouldn't be witnessing employment growth in high-cost cities and economic downturn in low-cost cities, we'd be witnessing the opposite.

Technological advances have caused workers to centralize more, not less.

EDIT: This doesn't mean that nobody works from home. Some have in the past, some do now, and some will in the future. What it means is that the ability to work from home is not a force changing the nature and location of work in any fundamental way.
 
JumboBuc said:
This.

If "you can now work from anywhere outside of the office and still be successful" were true we wouldn't be witnessing employment growth in high-cost cities and economic downturn in low-cost cities, we'd be witnessing the opposite.

Technological advances have caused workers to centralize more, not less.

EDIT: This doesn't mean that nobody works from home. Some have in the past, some do now, and some will in the future. What it means is that the ability to work from home is not a force changing the nature and location of work in any fundamental way.
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What is with this tone deaf conversation? Housing costs are skyrocketing in secondary cities. People who work in Boston but can work remotely but want to be close enough to stop in the office once a week are moving to places like Portland ME causing a housing shortage more severe than what's being seen in Boston and its inner suburbs.

The centralization has more to do with a preference amongst people these days for walkable cities. This includes the increased desirability of smaller cities.

Not all jobs allow for remote work (like my own) but implying that remote work isn't a factor at all in where people choose to live is not accurate. It's having a major impact on smaller cities a fair distance away from major economic hubs.
 
Jouhou said:
What is with this tone deaf conversation? Housing costs are skyrocketing in secondary cities. People who work in Boston but can work remotely but want to be close enough to stop in the office once a week are moving to places like Portland ME causing a housing shortage more severe than what's being seen in Boston and its inner suburbs.
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I don't think the housing shortage is more severe in Portland ME than Boston MA. It's still much cheaper to live and get an apartment in Portland ME.

The issue with WFH is that for many jobs, WFH makes it more likely that your job will be outsourced. Of course it depends on the industry, something like sales (where the job has very concrete measurable metrics) WFM makes a ton of sense (unless you're going to clients).
 
JumboBuc said:
This.

If "you can now work from anywhere outside of the office and still be successful" were true we wouldn't be witnessing employment growth in high-cost cities and economic downturn in low-cost cities, we'd be witnessing the opposite.

Technological advances have caused workers to centralize more, not less.

EDIT: This doesn't mean that nobody works from home. Some have in the past, some do now, and some will in the future. What it means is that the ability to work from home is not a force changing the nature and location of work in any fundamental way.
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Agreed.

Jouhou said:
What is with this tone deaf conversation? Housing costs are skyrocketing in secondary cities. People who work in Boston but can work remotely but want to be close enough to stop in the office once a week are moving to places like Portland ME causing a housing shortage more severe than what's being seen in Boston and its inner suburbs.

The centralization has more to do with a preference amongst people these days for walkable cities. This includes the increased desirability of smaller cities.

Not all jobs allow for remote work (like my own) but implying that remote work isn't a factor at all in where people choose to live is not accurate. It's having a major impact on smaller cities a fair distance away from major economic hubs.
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And I don't think he is tone deaf at all. You simply cannot compare the Portland housing market to Boston. I'm sure its getting tougher there, but not like here. I'm glad you have WFH job if it is working for you. There is room in this world for all sorts of live/work arrangements. However, WFH does not represent a meaningful percentage of US jobs. I would be shocked if it were more than 1% of jobs.

EDIT: So the number is close to 3% of American jobs work from home at least half the time. According to my calculations, its growing about 6.6% per year (115% increase from 2005 to 2017). That's not nothing, but its not remaking the landscape of the country either.
 
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fattony said:
People have been saying remote work is going to take off any day now for 20 years. It hasn't happened yet, but surely it will any day now...
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It happened... it's just that those jobs are in India and China.
 
tysmith95 said:
I don't think the housing shortage is more severe in Portland ME than Boston MA. It's still much cheaper to live and get an apartment in Portland ME.

The issue with WFH is that for many jobs, WFH makes it more likely that your job will be outsourced. Of course it depends on the industry, something like sales (where the job has very concrete measurable metrics) WFM makes a ton of sense (unless you're going to clients).
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The housing and apartment vacancy rate has been lower. Prices and land value aren't so volatile that they'd shoot up to Boston prices in that scenario. There was a while where the housing vacancy rate in Portland was 0.0% and it had everything to do with Boston transplants.

My little brother got driven out of his apartment on munjoy hill because of the phenomenon. That's not traditionally a desirable neighborhood btw. People from Boston are literally displacing locals who can't make as much money because pay is simply lower in maine. Landlords can make more money from people earning Boston pay.

Also, for clarification "(like my own)" meant I can't work from home, for multiple reasons.
 
Agree with fattony and Jumbo here 20 years ago the expectation was that we'd all be working from home, but large employers are changing their tune.

My employer has for the most part gotten rid of permanent work from homes. You either reported to an office or you didn't keep your job. IBM did something similar forcing its workers to now move to its offices in 6 cities (the usual suspects - Boston, NY, Austin, SF, etc etc). I thought another big tech company (Verizon maybe) did the same.

Anecdotally I also agree from experience that its easier to lay off the people who you never see vs the ones you interact with every day.

The good news IMHO is that employers are much more flexible in letting you taking a one off wfh day to tend to a doctors' appointment or kiddie event. Its just the wfh most of the week people who are starting to get squeezed.
 
I hesitate to throw my hat in the ring here, but enterprise decentralization/remote work as it's discussed today is very different than the conversation that was going on over the past two decades. The increased reliability, security and speeds of internet connectivity are literally (and quickly) fueling a massive shift away from the HQ-centric enterprise model. Not to get bogged down in jargon, but cloud migration and the retirement of data-center-centric enterprise network architectures (ie. no need to backhaul web traffic from the edge back to the data center at HQ) are having a huge impact, making it more cost-effective to embrace a remote workforce (and often with increases to productivity, lower infrastructure costs, etc.).

It's true that WFH/remote work has been a buzzing topic for the past few decades, but there are material changes to how enterprises work (and teams communicate) that aren't pipe dreams or theoretical -- the way EVERYONE works is changing, period.

#endrant!
 
Jouhou said:
My little brother got driven out of his apartment on munjoy hill because of the phenomenon. That's not traditionally a desirable neighborhood btw....
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Munjoy Hill is right by the Eastern Prom, adjacent and walkable to downtown. I could easily see that becoming a new "it" neighborhood for Portland. With a location like that, it's certainly a natural progression in the growth of that city!
 
budman3 said:
I hesitate to throw my hat in the ring here, but enterprise decentralization/remote work as it's discussed today is very different than the conversation that was going on over the past two decades. The increased reliability, security and speeds of internet connectivity are literally (and quickly) fueling a massive shift away from the HQ-centric enterprise model. Not to get bogged down in jargon, but cloud migration and the retirement of data-center-centric enterprise network architectures (ie. no need to backhaul web traffic from the edge back to the data center at HQ) are having a huge impact, making it more cost-effective to embrace a remote workforce (and often with increases to productivity, lower infrastructure costs, etc.).

It's true that WFH/remote work has been a buzzing topic for the past few decades, but there are material changes to how enterprises work (and teams communicate) that aren't pipe dreams or theoretical -- the way EVERYONE works is changing, period.

#endrant!
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I don't think anyone debates that it is increasingly technologically feasible to transmit data between a central office and a remote worker. But the technological feasibility of data transmission isn't the deciding factor here.

So much of what makes office work work is far squishier than just the transmission of data. The best productivity comes when people collaborate and interface in natural, unscripted ways. And as some have wisely said, the jobs that can easily be done remotely have already been outsourced. Employers that locate in high-rent parts of the country (e.g., Boston) are thus largely either location-specific (e.g., services) or locate in the high-rent areas because they value interpersonal communications that take place in those high-rent areas.

If you can do your job from home, fantastic! But if you can't do your job from home or can't be as productive from home, then there is a very small probability that any approaching technological developments are going to change that. And the high-paying "jobs of tomorrow" are increasingly the type that value the subtleties of interpersonal interaction and aren't amenable to colleagues being scattered all over.

But anyway, one could write an entire book on this topic. I'm actually pretty sure that many already have...
 
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DZH22 said:
Munjoy Hill is right by the Eastern Prom, adjacent and walkable to downtown. I could easily see that becoming a new "it" neighborhood for Portland. With a location like that, it's certainly a natural progression in the growth of that city!
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I lived there more than 10 years ago and Munjoy Hill was pretty popular/desirable back then. It's already somewhat of an "it" neighborhood and it kind of has been for a while. Just take a walk down Washington Ave between Cumberland and Walnut and you'll see Kombucha shops, craft distilleries, craft breweries, meaderies, outposts of Duckfat and Island Creek, an organic market, trendy ethnic restaurants, etc. Pretty fairly established. Aside from the Parkside neighborhood (which was never that bad), all of the peninsula has been desirable for some time.
 
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