Assembly Square Infill and Small Developments | Somerville

Had some friends over for lunch the other day. Now the neighborhood I live in is known as THE ASS to everyone I know...

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^ The Ass? Right up there with The Tenderloin, I'd say.
 
Think of the marketing opportunities, though! "It's All in The Ass!" "New restaurants coming to you, from The Ass!" "The Ass is Where It's At!"

Now what they need is a supermarket. I can't wait to shop at The Ass Whole Foods!
 
Just dropping in to say that this ^^^ was a fantastic post.

That is all.
 
datadyne007 said:
Timely article just popped up...
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This passage confuses me for a couple reasons;

There's not one Somerville public school located on the Assembly side of the underpass. When taking into account that 15 percent of the 26,903 of people living within a one-mile radius of Assembly Row are earning less than $15,000 per year and likely can't afford to send their children to private school or drive them personally, it becomes clearer that the underpass is used just as much if not more for sustaining a family's quality of life than for touring Assembly.

Teresa Vazquez-Dodero, Executive Director of ESMS, told me about one family in which a young child was forced to miss several school days this winter on top of mandatory snow days because the Kensington Underpass wasn't properly cleared and maintained. In bootstrapped households where an education is paramount, this simply is unacceptable.
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It sounds to me like the public school is on the side of 93 where most poor people near Assembly live. The exception would be in Ten Hills, but you wouldn't go anywhere near the Kensington Underpass in such a case (not that their solutions are much better). I could be wrong but I'm doubting there are many poor people in Assembly itself. As for the second paragraph, wouldn't it be the responsibility of the city to bus kids whose parents can't afford to drive them? Certainly they shouldn't be forced to walk across Route 38, snow or not.

Also shocked that some of these underpasses have names.
 
If they were trying to be sincere, they would compare income and schools in the same area, not income in East Somerville/Ten Hills/Assembly to the lack of schools in only Assembly. That is either foolish or intentionally insincere.
 
pixelsand8 said:
This passage confuses me for a couple reasons;



It sounds to me like the public school is on the side of 93 where most poor people near Assembly live. The exception would be in Ten Hills, but you wouldn't go anywhere near the Kensington Underpass in such a case (not that their solutions are much better). I could be wrong but I'm doubting there are many poor people in Assembly itself. As for the second paragraph, wouldn't it be the responsibility of the city to bus kids whose parents can't afford to drive them? Certainly they shouldn't be forced to walk across Route 38, snow or not.

Also shocked that some of these underpasses have names.
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The only way you can be poor and live in Assembly is if you have an affordable unit. Otherwise, the rents are out of control.
 
datadyne007 said:
The only way you can be poor and live in Assembly is if you have an affordable unit. Otherwise, the rents are out of control.
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I doubt you can afford one of the "affordable" units in Assembly if you are only making 15k a year. The "lower" limit on those units are usually something like 35k. The only way to be living in Somerville on that income is if you are in state or federal public housing. The highest concentration of that in the area is just across from Ten Hills, along Mystic Ave.
 
pixelsand8 said:
I doubt you can afford one of the "affordable" units in Assembly if you are only making 15k a year. The "lower" limit on those units are usually something like 35k. The only way to be living in Somerville on that income is if you are in state or federal public housing. The highest concentration of that in the area is just across from Ten Hills, along Mystic Ave.
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Maybe Housing Choice Vouchers?
 
I think we can all agree Somerville needs better pedestrian access anywhere that legacy highways cut through town. Fix them all.

Beyond that it is a hopeless muddle to try to find tune the equity and access arguments. The desire to walk seems a top-earners desire (even though they/we have lots of modal choices) but a bottom-earners need (though they may aspire to buy a car).

The traditional car-centric middle may even have disdain for both, but they're not the problem @ Assembly and not much anywhere in Somerville either.
 
Arlington said:
I think we can all agree Somerville needs better pedestrian access anywhere that legacy highways cut through town. Fix them all.

Beyond that it is a hopeless muddle to try to find tune the equity and access arguments. The desire to walk seems a top-earners desire (even though they/we have lots of modal choices) but a bottom-earners need (though they may aspire to buy a car).

The traditional car-centric middle may even have disdain for both, but they're not the problem @ Assembly and not much anywhere in Somerville either.
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Assembly would be a LOT more accessible if they could hash things out with the T to snake the river walk behind Charlestown Garage and associated properties to reach Alford St. Garage already has a 15 ft. grass easement between the bus parking lot pavement and the seawall. All they need is a tall security fence around the yard, decorative fence atop the seawall, and *at most* move the curb + guardrail back 1-2 ft. for breathing room. Then the ratty MOW yard closest to where the path cul-de-sacs out just needs a little landscaping and cleanup to do the same.

1800 ft. walk...and a nice walk despite what's on the other side of the security fence if they just top the seawall with something tasteful and light the path. There's already a Harborwalk segment on the other side of Alford going around the Scraffts building and Delta Dental HQ. And only 2 additional blocks to square before that segment can be hooked in contiguous with the segment that goes along Little Mystic Channel to the Navy Yard.

I mean, clearly the Assembly path was provisioned for just such this connection behind the garage given the spot where the trail ends, with dreams of just such a contiguous Harborwalk link when that small Charlestown gap gets filled. But have any of the parties that be actually talked about doing this sooner rather than later? It's not like this is a big-money proposition. Assembly would be so much more accessible to Charlestown and East Somerville-feeding-into-Sullivan if there was a *nice* walk available. When I lived there a few blocks off Broadway I would've gladly gone the extra distance on a *nice* walk to get to Home Depot instead of having to duck under the scary 93 underpass to breach the great wall of East Somerville.
 
New to archBoston

Not sure if this was already posted but I was at Assembly Square/Row today and noticed block 6 was fenced off and the parking lot closed. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures - next time.
 
Walking from the T yesterday. You know those renderings we all make fun of loaded with scalies walking everywhere?

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I'm sure others have waxed poetical on this already, but for all the negativity about the artificiality of Assembly, it carries on a great tradition from the NYC Commissioners Plan of 1811, which laid out that city's grid system.

The surveyors wandered the wilderness of northern Manhattan, driving pilings into the ground to mark intersections that would only come into existence decades later (or sometimes not at all as those around Central Park show).

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A scene from 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue in 1861 shows the work in progress. People had fun strolling the incomplete city just like they do today around Assembly. I think the jaded suburban side of us is what invites the criticism of Assembly. We expect our cities to already be finished. For a board like this we should be doing the opposite—celebrating a city in the making. Even if we still want to poopoo the finishes.

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I sure hope they pretty up (decorative panels, etc) that garage and not leave it as it's looking now. Nothing says ugly parking garage like an ugly parking garage!
 
kjdonovan said:
I'm sure others have waxed poetical on this already, but for all the negativity about the artificiality of Assembly, it carries on a great tradition from the NYC Commissioners Plan of 1811, which laid out that city's grid system.

The surveyors wandered the wilderness of northern Manhattan, driving pilings into the ground to mark intersections that would only come into existence decades later (or sometimes not at all as those around Central Park show).

A scene from 42nd Street and 2nd Avenue in 1861 shows the work in progress. People had fun strolling the incomplete city just like they do today around Assembly. I think the jaded suburban side of us is what invites the criticism of Assembly. We expect our cities to already be finished. For a board like this we should be doing the opposite—celebrating a city in the making. Even if we still want to poopoo the finishes.
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I love everything about this post. Thanks so much for it.
 
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