Assembly Square Infill and Small Developments | Somerville

Block 8 is 23 stories. That would make its taller than the partners building.
 
How many more garages can they shoehorn into Assembly Square? It's infuriating. I can't comprehend the logic.
 
^ have you tried to park over there? ha.

Not trying to start a transportation argument here, it is what it is at assembly right now
 
Downburst said:
How many more garages can they shoehorn into Assembly Square? It's infuriating. I can't comprehend the logic.
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Just because Assembly has a T stop, don't assume it is behaving like transit-oriented development.

Assembly has a very suburban draw.
 
JeffDowntown said:
Just because Assembly has a T stop, don't assume it is behaving like transit-oriented development.

Assembly has a very suburban draw.
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Often I imagine a world where all large developers do a feasibility analysis to compare the cost of constructing parking for x,000's of cars vs. paying into a scandal-free transit agency's pot of future development money to extend transit lines.

If the cost of construction for a parking garage is ~$30,000/space, then a 5,000-space network of garage parking comparable to that of Assembly Row could cost them as much as $150 million. For that same cost they could:
- Increase bus service to the property, including dedicated bus lanes in nearby communities.
- Extend the orange line 1 mile north to Wyoming or Melrose Cedar Park (that would be a start).
- Improve pedestrian/bicycle connectivity to the rest of Somerville (maybe with box culverts under I-93, better signage, more dedicated lanes...)

That's where my imagination goes for Assembly Row...
 
jass said:
Maybe the garages all shouldnt be free
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The garages are fully set up to charge for parking. It's coming...

I suspect one problem is that the outdoor lots are not set up to charge, and if the garages charge but the lots don't it'd cause problems for the "Marketplace" stores served by the lots.
 
jass said:
Maybe the garages all shouldnt be free
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At least, as structured parking, there's an economic limit on how many spaces can be created and how quickly, and the developer has more of an incentive to fill them (rather than have endless slack parking)

And the costs have been passed along to visitors via retail rents...I know that a trip to Assembly ends up being expensive (the movies, the ice cream, the Legos), even if the parking appears free, the fact that the cost of parking is high and being passed along via retail economics means it still isn't quite the autopia that the Burlington Mall is.

And they do have the islands/bollards for when they do start charging for parking.
 
Fine, fine, I may have been too quick to judge/feeling particularly anti-car last night. I only take public transit so I wouldn't know the difficult of parking here. To me, it feels like an unnecessary amount of parking, and I'd be truly curious to see how often these garages are at capacity and/or what their average capacity is.
 
Downburst said:
Fine, fine, I may have been too quick to judge/feeling particularly anti-car last night. I only take public transit so I wouldn't know the difficult of parking here. To me, it feels like an unnecessary amount of parking, and I'd be truly curious to see how often these garages are at capacity and/or what their average capacity is.
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It's not really ever difficult to find a place to park at Assembly. Sure, the lower levels of the garages get filled up during peak periods, but all you have to do is go up. If the garages in the shopping blocks truly are full, you can go over to the MASSIVE Partners garage and surely find a space there.
 
datadyne007 said:
It's not really ever difficult to find a place to park at Assembly. Sure, the lower levels of the garages get filled up during peak periods, but all you have to do is go up. If the garages in the shopping blocks truly are full, you can go over to the MASSIVE Partners garage and surely find a space there.
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Any weekend afternoon you'll find both garages on Artisan Way full. They open and close as people come and go. I'm sure that there's always space available if you hop over to Partners.

My take - the OL stop does an excellent job of serving those that live on or near the OL, RL, and inner GL. But there are definitely a ton of people coming to Assembly from more suburban locations as well, and it's not like it makes any kind of sense to drive from Reading to Oak Grove, park, and take the T 3 stops.

Parking needs to be priced soon, that will bleed off the demand from people that live near the T and choose to drive due to free parking.
 
chmeeee said:
Any weekend afternoon you'll find both garages on Artisan Way full. They open and close as people come and go. I'm sure that there's always space available if you hop over to Partners.

My take - the OL stop does an excellent job of serving those that live on or near the OL, RL, and inner GL. But there are definitely a ton of people coming to Assembly from more suburban locations as well, and it's not like it makes any kind of sense to drive from Reading to Oak Grove, park, and take the T 3 stops.

Parking needs to be priced soon, that will bleed off the demand from people that live near the T and choose to drive due to free parking.
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It's remarkably hard to get to Assembly from the rest of Somerville (and Cambridge). I live in the Davis / Porter area, and only go to Assembly by Uber/Lyft or in a friend's car. It makes no sense for me to take the Red into Downtown Crossing and come back out on the Orange. As far as busses, the 90 works but its weekend headways are hour+, and the 92 basically just follows the Orange Line downtown. That's it.

From a transit perspective, Assembly is closer to much of JP than it is to much of Somerville.
 
JumboBuc said:
From a transit perspective, Assembly is closer to much of JP than it is to much of Somerville.
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For me, this is very telling about our transit network structure. Improvements to our bus network could help stitch together communities so that people don't have to orient their whole lives around downtown Boston. On the other hand, it shows what a great benefit proper rapid transit is and how grateful we should be for what we have.
 
I love the Assembly Square development but seriously the Restaurant Food Chains in the area are AWFUL. Its like they have their 3rd string cooking up garbage.
 
TheRifleman said:
I love the Assembly Square development but seriously the Restaurant Food Chains in the area are AWFUL. Its like they have their 3rd string cooking up garbage.
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Outback is fantastic. Order accuracy is on-point and the steaks are cooked to perfection. I've had better steaks at that Outback than I've had at some steak houses and waaaaay cheaper.
 
datadyne007 said:
Outback is fantastic. Order accuracy is on-point and the steaks are cooked to perfection. I've had better steaks at that Outback than I've had at some steak houses and waaaaay cheaper.
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I've had a really bad food experience at Outback when it was located in the Medford area near the old Stop N Shop. My burger basically came out sweating and tasted worse than it looked.
I can't even give the franchise another chance.

I had a similar experience at Legal on the Mystic (Awful)
Tony's C's (Food is garbage)
Earls Kitchen was not good--
Papagayo---was not good-

The only thing editable for me is Ernesto's Pizza. (Pretty good)
 
datadyne007 said:
Outback is fantastic. Order accuracy is on-point and the steaks are cooked to perfection. I've had better steaks at that Outback than I've had at some steak houses and waaaaay cheaper.
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The Burlington one went downhill to the point of going out of business. I heard certain other ones also went downhill. (Lowell for instance) I thought it was the chain itself. You are saying it is more location-specific? There was a long stretch where it had my favorite ribs, but the last few times I found the racks to be overly small and/or overly fatty.
 
I have not found too much to gripe about Assembly row developments but they might need some old school mom & pop restaurants with authentic homemade food.
 
TheRifleman said:
I have not found too much to gripe about Assembly row developments but they might need some old school mom & pop restaurants with authentic homemade food.
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Alot of the places you mentioned are not very good, but I do like River Bar, Southern Kin, Totto Ramen, Fuji, Ernesto's and Burger Dive. So there are definitely some winners in the area when it comes to grub.
 
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