Assembly Square Infill and Small Developments | Somerville

Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Cueing up the broken record again...why is the architecture here so screamingly crappy? Looks like a set for some kind of sixth rate steam punk movie. Apparently the best efforts of hundreds of people came to this: an entire neighborhood of 500 Boylston grade shlock. Profoundly embarrassing.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

It should be much denser. Build up more so you can get 5000 units and more office. It will help the retail and make more use of the T stop being build.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

I hope the production values of the architecture are as good as they were for that film.

Excepting the language. "In the heart of the innovation population"?
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

czsz said:
I hope the production values of the architecture are as good as they were for that film.

Excepting the language. "In the heart of the innovation population"?
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"Closer to downtown Boston than most of Boston."
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

I love the antagonistic jab at the Seaport. I wish all T accessible cities would get in the act. A little competition would be a good thing.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Brad Plaid said:
Cueing up the broken record again...why is the architecture here so screamingly crappy? Looks like a set for some kind of sixth rate steam punk movie. Apparently the best efforts of hundreds of people came to this: an entire neighborhood of 500 Boylston grade shlock. Profoundly embarrassing.
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I have to disagree. This is no worse than 90% of the projects under discussion on the forum, and better than many of the more prominent ones (Kensington and much of the Seaport, of course, being Exhibits A and B). Given that this is an untested (or, worse, failed) retail/industrial deadzone in Somerville, and so many projects worse than this are prime Boston real estate, I'd say Assembly Square is doing all right.

As for 500 Boylston (itself better than almost anything going up today): I see nothing in that video that looks remotely like it. The Assembly Square renders are more in line with the current fashion of fake-masonry pre-cast mixed with glass for a pastiched-up facade - a higher-quality version of Seaport favorites like One Marina Park Drive.

That can arguably be called PoMo, but it's certainly not of the same variety of ornate, heroic PoMo that 500 Boylston is. The only building in the video where I see similarities with 500 Bolyston is the low-rise on the right starting at 0:56, which looks like a poor man's imitation of Louis Sullivan-style carved metalwork. A poor man's Louis Sullivan is still a lot better than a Kensington.

IMO, if anything, the architecture here reminds me a lot of the Fenway-area development, which I think is a net plus. I'm OK with it.
 
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Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Brad Plaid said:
Cueing up the broken record again...why is the architecture here so screamingly crappy? Looks like a set for some kind of sixth rate steam punk movie. Apparently the best efforts of hundreds of people came to this: an entire neighborhood of 500 Boylston grade shlock. Profoundly embarrassing.
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I thought it was obvious that the steam punk nature of the film is a reference to Assembly Square's past.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

I'd rather good urbanism than good architecture. Ideally, we'd have both, though we rarely get either. This project is trying hard to sell itself as good urbanism, but looking at the plan and the way many of these buildings are configured, I'm skeptical. The project seems heavily autocentric and introverted.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Is it so much to ask that a place promoting itself as the future actually look something like the future? The majority of these buildings reference the past with the usual dumbed down, tacked on historicism that is the sad norm everywhere in this country. The Age of McMansions cannot pass soon enough for me.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

briv said:
I'd rather good urbanism than good architecture. Ideally, we'd have both, though we rarely get either. This project is trying hard to sell itself as good urbanism, but looking at the plan and the way many of these buildings are configured, I'm skeptical. The project seems heavily autocentric and introverted.
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It's hard for this development to not be "introverted", it's hamstrung by Assembly Marketplace/Home Depot/Rte 28 on one side and by the Mystic River on the other. You're not going to get a development in this area that's not easily accessible to cars, Medford and Somerville are car-dominated cities due to the dearth of rail transit. Even when GLX comes to Somerville and Medford Hills, anyone from those cities is going to need to drive if they want to shop at Assembly Row, unless they live in Wellington, or take the T in to North Station and backtrack to Assembly. The developers don't want to bar a large portion of their potential customers in the surrounding communities from accessing the development.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

http://bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/2013/05/somerville_office_project_will_be_built_on_spec

By: Donna Goodison
Federal Realty Investment Trust will break ground tomorrow on a speculative office building at its $1.5 billion Assembly Row development in Somerville.

The 100,000-square-foot, Class A office building is the last piece of the first phase of the Rockville, Md.’s mixed-use project along the Mystic River. The building will include 30,000 square feet of retail space.

Construction is progressing on schedule at Assembly Row, according to an advisory from the company today. A six-acre waterfront park is slated to open this summer and pre-leasing activities for residential units are set to begin. Shops, restaurants and entertainment venues will celebrate their grand-openings next spring, and a new Orange Line MBTA station is scheduled to open in the summer of 2014.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Why is this one moving a long fast, but North Point is moving at a snail's pace?
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Staging set up to build a pedestrian underpass connecting the Mystic River paths in Ten Hills to this new park at Assembly Square. This would create an uninterrupted path from Route 16 to Draw 7 Park. However, Friends of the Community Path advocacy group say there may be a delay in construction this summer because of the herring run.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Officejab said:
http://bostonherald.com/business/real_estate/2013/05/somerville_office_project_will_be_built_on_spec

By: Donna Goodison
Federal Realty Investment Trust will break ground tomorrow on a speculative office building at its $1.5 billion Assembly Row development in Somerville.

The 100,000-square-foot, Class A office building is the last piece of the first phase of the Rockville, Md.’s mixed-use project along the Mystic River. The building will include 30,000 square feet of retail space.

Construction is progressing on schedule at Assembly Row, according to an advisory from the company today. A six-acre waterfront park is slated to open this summer and pre-leasing activities for residential units are set to begin. Shops, restaurants and entertainment venues will celebrate their grand-openings next spring, and a new Orange Line MBTA station is scheduled to open in the summer of 2014.
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Interesting that 30% of the "office" building is devoted to retail. Or is the building 130,000 square feet comprised of 100,000 square feet of office space and 30,000 of retail?
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news/somerville/2013/05/photos_groundbreaking_at_assem.html

More from today's groundbreaking on the 4-story building with 30,000 sq. ft retail on ground level and top 3 floors with 100,000 sq. ft is offices.

My belief is that FRIT decided on the offices given the fact that the T station won't be in operation until Fall 2014. Also, the Board of Alderman seem to be dragging their feet on accepting the one-story supermarket, surprising enough the city wants more density near the T station while FRIT says they would build only if their is enough demand for the offices.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

STEP has been pushing for more density near the station.
 
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