Assembly Square Infill and Small Developments | Somerville

Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

From Boston.com: "Federal Realty buys site of unrealized Ikea in Somerville"

http://www.boston.com/yourtown/news...ys_site_of_unrealized_ikea_in_somerville.html

Fifteen months after Ikea announced it would not build a store in Somerville, the furniture giant has sold its property in Assembly Square for just over $18 million.

Federal Realty Investment Trust finalized its purchase of the 12-acre site at the beginning of October and is developing plans for a mix of residential, office and retail space on the property, said Don Briggs, the president of Federal Realty Boston, Tuesday.

“Obviously we’ve made a huge investment in the neighborhood here,” Briggs said. “We think that owning this additional 12 acres will just expand the value of that investment.”

Next to its new property, Federal Realty is already investing $1.2 million to build Assembly Row on 45 acres that will include outlet stores, upscale apartments, restaurants and office space. Federal Realty’s partner AvalonBay Communities is already building the first 450 apartments and the first units could be ready before the end of this year.

About $130 million in state and federal funding has also been invested to build roads, utilities and an MBTA Orange Line stop in Assembly Square.

Ikea first became involved in Assembly Square in the late 1990s, but announced in July 2012 that it would no longer seek to build a 340,000 square foot store in Somerville. The Swedish retailer said it believes its store in Stoughton is sufficient for Massachusetts.

Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone said Tuesday that while it would have been good to have Ikea in Assembly Square, the city now has an opportunity to unlock and even better use for the 12-acre property as infrastructure improvements are in place and the T stop is set to open next summer.

Federal Realty has been exploring building a 100,000-square-foot supermarket on the former Ikea property, but it would require the city’s approval of a change to zoning laws, which now limit buildings at the site to no more than 50,000 square feet.

Curtatone said there have been community concerns about a large single-story grocery store on the property, but he believes there is still potential for a grocery store if it is done the right way and is built on a more urban scale. The mayor said he thinks that could be done without needing a zoning change.

Briggs said Federal Realty is still exploring the idea for a grocery store as it develops a master plan for the property. He said he’s hoping that the company will be able to present its master plan to the city before the end of the year.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

This is good news I think.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Partners HealthCare to be anchor tenant in first office building at Somerville’s Assembly Row
By Robert Weisman / Globe Staff / December 5, 2013


Partners HealthCare System, the state’s largest hospital and physician organization, will consolidate administrative operations from 14 sites in eastern Massachusetts and move 4,500 non-hospital employees into 650,000 to 700,000 square feet in a new office building scheduled to open at Somerville’s massive Assembly Row development in late 2016.


http://www.boston.com/business/2013...ssembly-row/IwElEOkUWyqlfR19hDpJ2J/story.html
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

That's great news because it will help push along the second phase of the build out.

I'm excited to see the whole site get developed, particularly with the new ikea site which can be used for at least 3 more buildings.

I would love to see the assemply square market place get gobbled up into this development and built out removing all the surface lots and creating an extremely dense neighborhood.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Waaaah. Daddy's not happy.

Menino irate over Partners move to Assembly Row
By Robert Weisman, Boston Globe, December 05, 2013

Partners HealthCare System, in a move that has infuriated Mayor Thomas M. Menino, said Thursday it will merge administrative operations in the Boston area, relocating 4,500 nonhospital employees into a giant office complex opening at Somerville’s Assembly Row in late 2016.

Menino said he had urged Partners executives for the past four months to consolidate on a parcel in Roxbury.

“I’m very disappointed,” Menino said. “Partners has an obligation to this city, where they have acres and acres of tax-exempt property. This could have been their opportunity to help revitalize Roxbury. Every time they had a problem, they called me and I was there for them. The social conscience has gone out of Partners. This is all about their bottom line.”

The mayor said he was told by Partners chief executive Gary L. Gottlieb Wednesday that the health care group had not made a final decision, only to learn a day later it had settled on Somerville. Menino, who will step down from office in January, said he intends to appeal the move to the Partners board.

Partners vice president Rich Copp would not comment specifically on Gottlieb’s conversation with Menino, but he acknowledged Partners — the state’s largest hospital and physician organization — had worked with city officials to explore potential sites in Boston.

“The decision was based on creating a more effective and efficient work environment for our employees and reducing costs,” Copp said. He said the consolidation of 14 sites is expected to shave Partners’s costs by about $10 million a year.

Partners began searching for a central administrative site because most of its leases at nonhospital locations are set to expire between 2016 and 2018. While the health care system will move out of sites in Charlestown, Wellesley, Needham, and elsewhere, its corporate headquarters, now in the Prudential Center, will remain in Boston, said Copp.

The shift to Somerville will reduce Partners’ overall space in Boston by only about 7 percent, he said. In addition to the corporate offices, that space includes Massachusetts General and Brigham and Women’s hospitals, as well as Brigham-affiliated Faulkner Hospital and Spaulding Rehabilitation Network sites. Partners also owns Neighborhood Health Plan and runs administrative offices and research labs in the Longwood Medical Area and Charlestown.

“We are deeply committed to the city, and there will be no changes with our hospitals and services in Boston,” Copp said. “We will maintain our corporate headquarters and more than 10 million square feet in the city.”

Boston’s loss will be Somerville’s gain. Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone of Somerville said the thousands of arriving Partners employees would be a catalyst for Assembly Row, creating traffic for the stores and restaurants opening there. Partners expects to occupy 650,000 to 700,000 square feet at the site.

“We’re really excited because this is exactly the type of tenant we hoped for,” Curtatone said. “When you have a renowned organization like Partners, it opens the door for many things. We’re hoping to get research and development in there, and this will shine a bright light on this project. That’s a conversation we want to have with Partners.”

Curtatone said about $130 million in city, state, and federal funds have been invested over the past five or six years in Assembly Row, one of the largest mixed-use developments in Massachusetts. He said Somerville hopes to attract “spillover” from the high-tech and life sciences cluster in Cambridge’s Kendall Square, about 2 miles way.

In an e-mail to employees Thursday afternoon, Partners chief financial officer Peter Markell said the move “will help us unite the organization around our mission . . . Equally important, it will remove one of the most common obstacles to getting our work done — geography. We can waste a lot of time and effort trying to track down and communicate with our co-workers.”

Many details about Partners’s new space on Assembly Row are still being negotiated, including the ownership structure of the office complex and whether it will include shops and restaurants, said Don Briggs, senior vice president at Federal Realty Investment Trust. The firm is developing Assembly Row as a $1.2 billion project on 45 acres of former industrial property along the Mystic River that once housed a Ford Motor Co. factory.

Under an “initial conceptual plan,” he said, Partners will occupy two separate but connected buildings, one taller than the other, behind the Home Depot on a site once planned for Ikea, the Swedish furniture and homegoods chain that ultimately abandoned plans to move there. Partners also has reserved an option to take up to 1.1 million square feet in the complex, Briggs said.

“This is tremendous,” Briggs said of the Partners commitment. “It really validates the investments we’ve made to date.”

Assembly Row will have a total of as much as 2.5 million square feet of office space, including a 100,000-square-foot building already under construction on the Mystic River.

The development will also include outlet stores, restaurants, hundreds of residences, a revitalized riverfront park, and a new Orange Line MBTA station. Developers already have lined up several high-profile retail tenants, including the Legoland Discovery Center, Nike, Brooks Brothers, French cookware maker Le Creuset, women’s clothier Chico’s, and the ice cream shop J.P. Licks. AMC Theaters is also opening a 12-screen cinema on the property.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

Now, could we still get that grocery store (Wegman's, please?) on the first floor of the new Partners building?
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

What is this 'Assembly Row' the article talks about? This thread is about Assembly Square. ;)

Edit::eek: Oh, this subdevelopment actually is called Assembly Row. I thought I was just being facetious about a mistake in the article.
 
I have to agree with Menino on this point:

“I’m very disappointed,” Menino said. “Partners has an obligation to this city, where they have acres and acres of tax-exempt property. This could have been their opportunity to help revitalize Roxbury. Every time they had a problem, they called me and I was there for them. The social conscience has gone out of Partners. This is all about their bottom line.”
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

One more month, then we can just ignore him when he does this. Well...all of us except the students in his BU class whose grades depend on nodding affirmatively while he says "It's not faaaaair!".

That' would be me...
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

That' would be me...

He's not even going to be teaching, just... something? Researching? Which is disappointing, really - I'd sit in on that class just for the entertainment value.
 
Re: Assembly Square Redevelopment

He's not even going to be teaching, just... something? Researching? Which is disappointing, really - I'd sit in on that class just for the entertainment value.

Stored in a portable box and wheeled out for some Greatest Hits Meninoisms whenever Bob Brown has to go on a fundraising trip to visit a group of wealthy Dubai businessmen over a round of sake bombs? Like they've been doing to Elie Wiesel for the last 20 years?


Shit...I'd just have the BU Engineering Dept. develop an animatronic Chuck-E-Cheese robot out of his likeness and mannerisms. It'd be easier to stow in the overhead compartment on a chartered jet than Hizzoner himself.
 
The Partner's move is to the old IKEA spot. I overlooked this and just assumed they would be in the pre-planned Assembly Row office. This should add some added height (over what they originally wanted-1 story supermarket) and maybe they can still add more housing there.

With Station Landing up a stop, Assembly here, and Northpoint on the other side, its really a shame that Boston isn't working on some master Sullivan Sq. redesign to capitalize on this Orange line growth. Somerville is doing good with it's sq. plannings for the GLX. This would be a great fresh start for Walsh, as Fenway and Seaport seem to have reach a point of self-sustaining growth.
 
Pretty sure the Sullivan Square redesign is part of the larger Rutherford Ave redesign, isn't it?
 
Pretty sure the Sullivan Square redesign is part of the larger Rutherford Ave redesign, isn't it?

Is there a thread to discuss this? To me its just a flat out crime that Sullivan Sq languishes so close in.

Meanwhile, are there opening dates set for Assembly Row "coming in 2014?"
 
The Partner's move is to the old IKEA spot. I overlooked this and just assumed they would be in the pre-planned Assembly Row office. This should add some added height (over what they originally wanted-1 story supermarket) and maybe they can still add more housing there.

With Station Landing up a stop, Assembly here, and Northpoint on the other side, its really a shame that Boston isn't working on some master Sullivan Sq. redesign to capitalize on this Orange line growth. Somerville is doing good with it's sq. plannings for the GLX. This would be a great fresh start for Walsh, as Fenway and Seaport seem to have reach a point of self-sustaining growth.

Wow, I din't realize Partners was building on the IKEA site either. I just assumed they were going into the spec building now under construction. Should be a positive tipping point here.
 
Larry, you're a journalist; if you want to call someone a racist, don't dilly-dally about, just come out and say it.

Partners’ snub is Roxbury’s loss
By Lawrence Harmon | Boston Globe | DECEMBER 14, 2013

PARTNERS HEALTHCARE SYSTEM, the state’s largest hospital and physician organization, delivered some withering news to Boston this week: The medical group is opting for Somerville over Boston as the future site for the merger of administrative services involving 4,500 employees.

From a pure real-estate perspective, Assembly Row in Somerville makes perfect sense for Partners. The health care group gets to consolidate 14 administrative and back office sites in one upwardly mobile location graced with access to Interstate 93 and a future subway stop at its doorstep. Its neighbors will include top-of-the-line shops and services, including Brooks Brothers, Le Creuset French cookware, and Legoland Discovery Center. What’s not to like about this setup?

Basically, everything. As a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, Partners should adopt a higher standard of practice when siting its facilities. The hospital group, which includes Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Spaulding Rehabilitation Network, is at the top of the healing professions. But its role isn’t limited to clinical medicine. The group also has the responsibility to heal communities, especially if presented with an obvious opportunity. Its own mission statement speaks to a need “to touch the communities we serve.’’

A few months ago, Boston city officials and Partners started to discuss how the hospital group’s consolidation plan might also yield better job, educational, and economic opportunities for struggling Bostonians. City officials pitched potential sites in the Charlestown Navy Yard and Allston. But the real effort focused on so-called Parcel 3 at the intersection of Tremont and Whittier streets in Roxbury, which sits across from Boston Police Headquarters.

This edge of Roxbury has never fully recovered from an effort in the 1970s to build a superhighway connector through the area. The misguided highway project was abandoned. Sadly, so was the neighborhood for many years. Parcel 3, however, still shows strong potential as a development site, including good T access and proximity to the Longwood Medical Center. The creation of 700,000 square feet of new office space and the arrival of thousands of workers would have been a game-changer for Roxbury on a par with the construction of the Vertex headquarters in the city’s burgeoning Innovation District.

As a nonprofit, mission-driven organization, Partners should adopt a higher standard of practice when siting its facilities.

Parcel 3’s neighbors include Roxbury Community College and the Madison Park Technical Vocational High School. These institutions are ready to work with Partners to design courses that fit the job market. Careers in information technology, finance, medical record keeping, software services, and other areas would have been just steps away. So would talented administrators who could serve as adjunct professors and mentors.

Few understand how this works better than Partners president Gary Gottlieb. He chairs the board of the Boston Private Industry Council, which specializes in putting low-income Boston students on career pathways. And there is no shortage of corporate philanthropists on the Partners board, which makes the choice all the more surprising and disappointing.

“We presumed we were preaching to the choir,’’ said Boston Redevelopment Authority director Peter Meade, “when we might have been singing to a heretic.’’

Partners vice president Rich Copp stressed that the organization will continue to maintain its corporate headquarters and roughly 10 million square feet of space in Boston. But Partners estimates that it would cost $50 million more to build the project in Boston than it will in Somerville. And that didn’t sit well with an organization struggling to bring down the cost of health care, said Copp.

Mayor Tom Menino scoffs at the $50 million price differential and called Partners’ decision “a big disgrace.’’ Besides, say members of the Menino administration, Partners is sitting pretty on almost $3 billion worth of tax-exempt property in the city. If taxed at the commercial rate, Partners would have to pony up $92 million annually, according to the city assessor’s office. Meanwhile, it pitches in about $14 million in voluntary payments in lieu of taxes and community benefits.

It’s safe to assume that Partners would have warmed up to the parcel in Roxbury if Menino had been sticking around for another four years. After all, he understands power and how to wield it to help the city’s poor. With Menino out of the way, however, the temptation to embrace a hot new address in Somerville could only grow stronger.

That still leaves one problem: When Partners slammed the door on Roxbury, the health care leader fractured its own value system.

Lawrence Harmon can be reached at harmon@globe.com.
 
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How the hell does Larry Harmon conclude that Partners Healthcare is at fault for the lack of construction on Parcel 3? Does he follow development in the city? No? Then he might want to read all about Parcel 3 on the ArchBoston.org website where projects were discussed as long as seven years ago - SEVEN - and yet there's nothing there except weeds and used condoms (sorry 'bout that).

EDIT: Oh, and the last proposal for Parcel 3 included 300,000 square feet of office space whereas Partners needs 650,000-700,000 square feet of space.

Here's a link to the NCAAA / Elma Lewis Partners page where they discuss getting things going ... in 2010.

http://www.ncaaa.org/parcel3.html
 
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The Partner's move is to the old IKEA spot. I overlooked this and just assumed they would be in the pre-planned Assembly Row office.

Um, are we sure what "former IKEA" parcel means here? There's former, and there's former former.

Assembly Row is being built on what was the first IKEA parcel (c. 1996), which had nicer riverfront that IKEA wasn't going to take advantage of.

The last (and most recent) IKEA parcel became so in a swap (c. 2006) with the Assembly Row developers. So basically any place Partner's builds on near the T will be a former IKEA site one way or the other.

Is there a source that says Partners is building on the parcel IKEA most recently gave up?
 

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