$1.75B Assembly Sq. Project to Finally See Groundbreaking
By Thomas Grillo
Reporter
Rendering courtesy of Vanasse Hangen Brustlin
An artist?s rendering of Assembly Square. After years of delay, construction is expected to begin in September.
After a decade of delays and courtroom battles, the $1.75 billion project at Assembly Square in Somerville is expected to break ground after Labor Day.
?We?re on track and moving forward,? Somerville Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone told Banker & Tradesman.
The 50-acre, transit-oriented development wedged between Medford and Charlestown promises 1.75 million square feet of office space, 2,100 condominiums and apartments, a 200-room hotel, 852,000 square feet of retail including Swedish furniture giant IKEA, a new MBTA Orange Line station and more than 160,000 square feet of parkland at the edge of the Mystic River.
Robert Walsh, vice president of Northeast development at Federal Realty Investment Trust, the Maryland-based company that paid $64 million for the parcel in 2005, said it expects to demolish buildings in September on Sturtevant Street, including the Good Time Em-porium, to make way for Ikea and a new road.
?We?re pretty excited about getting started,? he said. ?We expect construction to start soon on the mile-long Assembly Square Drive, the infrastructure backbone for the development, and then the foundation for IKEA will be poured.?
The history of transforming what has been called ?Somerville?s last frontier? has all the ingredients for a real estate development case study. While Boston and Cambridge officials planned waterfront projects without big box stores, a succession of Assembly Square land-owners and Somerville mayors fought to turn the failed Assembly Square Mall into a retail Mecca.
But through a series of lawsuits, the Mystic View Task Force, a citywide advocacy group, forced the city and the developers to abide by zoning requirements for a mixed-use development at the waterfront location.
While some neighborhood organizations routinely fight any kind of development with a NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) approach, Mystic View demanded a denser development, free of sprawling retail stores and a sea of parking lots. It successfully argued the site would be better served with office and research-and-development space, which generates more tax dollars and less traffic than giant stores.
In 2006, Mystic View and Federal ended a decade of lawsuits when a compromise was reached requiring the developer to contribute $15 million toward a $40 million Orange Line stop between the Sullivan Square and Wellington stations to help keep cars off city streets. Since then the developer has sought a series of environmental and other permits to commence construction.
Today, Mystic View members won?t talk about whether the concession for an IKEA, which attracts more than 1 million patrons to its stores annually, was in the best interest of the city.
?That fight is over,? said Sate Senator Patricia Jehlen, a Somerville Democrat and Mystic View member. ?There?s no sense in talking about it anymore.?
Instead, Jehlen said she has focused on making sure the waterfront land swap between Federal Realty and the state Department of Conservation & Recreation was in the public?s interest. The exchange provides the developer with a 1.5 acre parcel that was used by the Winter Hill Yacht Club for boat storage. In return, the state gets a 1.8 acre lot that will be added to the waterfront park. The home rule petition is before the Legislature and is expected to be approved before the session ends, she said.
While many Somerville residents brace for massive traffic jams as shoppers seek IKEA bargains, Elliot Tatelman, whose Jordan?s Furntuire in Avon is across the street from IKEA in Stoughton, said the traffic worries are shortlived.
?The first couple of months were a disaster,? he said. ?We couldn?t do any business, and Costco and Home Depot also suffered be-cause our cusomers could not get down the street. It hurt us, but now that has gone away and traffic flows.?
