Assembly Square Infill and Small Developments | Somerville

[TomOfBoston]

All those parking garages despite having an on site T station!

 

[datadyne007]

I agree. At the same time, Community College station is already there. North Point (or whatever you want to call "that") could of done the same as the developers at Assembly or NB and kicked in. I understand that they want the GLX and are "sort of" committed to helping that out, but gosh.

Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread.

This seems to have a really simple answer. The developer at Assembly was better prepared & ready to go, while the developer at Northpoint just wasn't & folded. If you have the will & the means to accomplish it, you'll get it done. The Northpoint vision was always weak (arbitrary buildings/towers with no real draw) and never as ambitious as Assembly's. If you don't have a clear vision, people aren't going to invest in it.

 

[Tango]

There was also a long delay because of the tidelands issue. Part of the Northpoint property is where the Miller's River used to be before it was filled in. That required special permitting and the process dragged on. I don't recall any such issues with the Assembly Row development.

 

[Cortes]

This seems to have a really simple answer. The developer at Assembly was better prepared & ready to go, while the developer at Northpoint just wasn't & folded. If you have the will & the means to accomplish it, you'll get it done. The Northpoint vision was always weak (arbitrary buildings/towers with no real draw) and never as ambitious as Assembly's. If you don't have a clear vision, people aren't going to invest in it.

How do I do this? ^+1. North Point has been a nightmare of shifting interests.

Now if they could only take the "you have to have a child" thing off the restrictions at Legoland... Gosh darn-it I am a child at heart and I like to build things...let me in.

 

[chmeeee]

Now if they could only take the "you have to have a child" thing off the restrictions at Legoland... Gosh darn-it I am a child at heart and I like to build things...let me in.

https://www.legolanddiscoverycenter...ent/13897/adult-night-ugly-sweater-party.aspx

 

[DigitalSciGuy]

All those parking garages despite having an on site T station!

This has been my complaint since day 1. It enables and encourages the area to be drive-to walkable urbanism. Yes, people from across the region will want to get here and 'conventional wisdom' about parking likely led Somerville to not push back further on disincentivising people to park at other existing Orange Line stops and taking the T over. That is, they probably felt that without parking (or by offering less than the mountains of parking they have now), the businesses wouldn't be successful and the apartments wouldn't be leasable.

Even LA is building developments with lower parking ratios near their new stations.

The Cambridge Redevelopment Authority and Boston Planning and Development Authority are exploring ways to build transit benefits into zoning the same way we do with affordable housing mandates. Ideally, that would also include an impact fee if a developer chooses to build parking within a certain radius of qualifying transit (defined by frequency, capacity, span, etc) that could then go toward local street/transit network improvements.

 

[JumboBuc]

The T will never be a viable primary transit option for anyone anywhere [...]

Uh, the T is the viable primary transit option for many tens (hundreds?) of thousands of people, myself included.

There is so much parking at Assembly because Assembly is so much bigger than the Orange Line. If the Orange Line didn't serve Assembly, we'd have a fraction of the development we see there now. But if the Orange Line and the two (?) buses that serve the neighborhood were the only way to get there, we'd also have a fraction of the development we see there now.

This has nothing to do with the T's reliability, it's simple geography. Assembly is not downtown. If you want to get Assembly from the south, you take the T. But if you want to get there the north, east, or even the west, driving makes much more sense. This goes for visitors traveling to Assembly and for residents of Assembly traveling in the opposite direction.

 

[davem]

I live in the AVA, over half of the cars in my garage sit there collecting dust, until holidays or the summer. Stone haven't moved in months.

More than any other neighborhood I can think of, Assembly is an island. No overnight parking in the lots and meters during the day means that if you want to have a car, the garage is the only option. From other residents I have talked to, the orange line is used for those going into town, while those who commute by car are exmuting out to 128 or other parts of the burbs thst are transit inaccessible anyway.

(Edited for clarity)

 

[617]

You're right, I should have said reliable primary transit option. As I said, I am also one of many thousands who rely on the T every day.

But look, either residents ought to have cars at places like Assembly or they ought not (to be clear, I am talking about residents of Assembly, not necessarily visitors to it). DigitalSciGuy's point seems to me to be that there's way too much parking there for residents at a location with (theoretically) convenient public transit access to downtown and a growing number of local employment nodes. Is Assembly a complete, ready made neighborhood that completely supports the carless resident? No, though a grocery store would go a long way to helping make it one.

My own sense is that if places like Assembly are to be built and public infrastructure created or extended to support it (trains, buses, roads, sidewalks, etc.) then it is a matter of public policy as to how to encourage or direct people use those public accommodations. Allowing residents to have cars in order to get wherever they want to go is as much a public policy decision as is prohibiting residents from having cars (or simply not building all that parking). Prioritizing the growth of a neighborhood like Assembly over other concerns is equally a public policy decision. They are all legitimate options insofar as they are all possible, but they are all choices that we as a polity or our representatives in government must make. In my opinion, in the case of Assembly, we made the wrong public policy choice. We may disagree on that, but if we do it is because of a fundamental policy disagreement, not because one of us hasn't thought things through. (As a side note, I notice that many disagreements here at Archboston arise out of fundamental policy disagreements and I believe the quality of debate here would be improved if we all recognized those disagreements as such.)

My point about the T relates in that the shortcomings of our public transit system make it impossible for us, the polity, to make good public policy choices around transportation and development. Because the T is so ineffective, it hamstrings our ability to make policy decisions that prioritize public transit over automobile use, which in my opinion limits the possibilities in terms of the region's growth and development and results in a lot of other negative externalities. One of the ways to level the policy playing field is to make policy choices for the kind of transportation systems we want rather than the ones we have (to skate to where the puck is going to be as Bobby Orr would say)-- so, to not build residential parking at Assembly at all or to build it at a higher unit to parking space ratio of say 5:1. Another option is to work to improve mass transit until such a time as consumers choose it over using a private automobile. In reality, it probably has to be a little of both. But the idea that huge swaths of residential parking are good and necessary because people want it or because it helps private developers fill their buildings and charge higher rents is not just silly, it creates a series of perverse public policy choices that serve developers and land owners, not the people.

Again, I recognize that my language here is somewhat provocative and that there are many layers of complexity to the kinds of public policy decisions I am describing here. I do not presume to have all the answers or all the wisdom on these issues. But I do think our debates about the present and future of our city would be enriched here at Archboston and beyond if we start to look beyond the usual neoliberal to libertarian gamut of policy solutions that have dominated urban policy in this country for the last 30 plus years and enlarged our debate to include the kinds of progressive to socialist solutions that have been successful elsewhere and at times here in the US such as the New Deal.

Ok, getting down off my soapbox now.

I think you were right in your first comment...the T sucks and needs major help in order to be a primary mode of transportation. Maybe by the time we get new orange and red line cars plus GLX we'all be closer to where we need to be but until then who knows. I'm curious to know if your experience with public transit in ny was much more positive.

 

[DigitalSciGuy]

I don't get that the T is 'ineffective' as much as its perception as coloured by cognitive bias (confirmation bias and negativity bias).

As JumboBuc said, the T is a viable solution for many people and as you Norumbega have noted, we should be planning for a system that we want/need, not planning for what we have. Interesting the things that people do/don't pick up on and call out for discussion on here — I've stated in my last post and elsewhere that there are policies that we can employ to ensure that we're guiding development to not simply be less car-dependent near transit, but to augment transit.

Davem's experience I think tells very succinctly the story that we're seeing across the region's new developments near transit: parking gets built; people move in with cars; cars don't move. There's a whopping two Zipcars in Davem's building. That's not nearly enough. With good transit and walkable neighbourhoods, car sharing has been shown to eliminate the need for car ownership of up to 7 households per car.

And to his second point, that's part of our issue with regional planning. It's not an inherent truth that we should be building massive expensive parking garages for. We need more tools in the funding toolbox to allow capital invested in developments to translate into regional transit improvements. Federal REIT's contribution to the Orange Line infill station was great. It would be greater if a portion of the new tax revenue from that could then be put toward bolstering its connectivity to the rest of the region by other means than by car.

617: at the risk of diverting completely into the MBTA General Discussion thread... I can speak to the experience in NYC. I'm also originally from there and visit frequently. It's refreshing to step off Amtrak or BoltBus and speed away on an express subway train or fast electric commuter rail. Returning home to Boston is often a depressing step back in time, but that gives me reason and purpose to continue my transit advocacy. NYC has been replacing their fleet since the late 1990s and now boasts the most modern rail (transit AND commuter) fleet in the country. This was in the midst of MTA public confidence scandals - arguably their public confidence is not much better today, but state leaders forge forward with authorising capital investments because they know it's the engine of the region's economy. There's nothing inherently broken about the structure of the MBTA that prevents us from getting there, but we need to be honest about how much our decades of inaction has cost us and how much overcoming that will cost us.

Contrary to this forum's insistence, I don't live in a fantasy world where I believe everyone walks, bikes, and takes transit, but I know that we can get there if we build that to be a more attractive option than trying to accommodate this idea that we have to allow people to drive because we'll have week-long Chinese holiday migration-levels of traffic if we don't. I've just broken past the cynicism that most people have about the T because I look at the data and I don't believe there's an inherent problem with the T that prevents it from being better. It's all about the people and the rhetoric we're willing to accept on face value. Thankfully/terrifyngly, the majority of the older people who have contributed to the insular culture of the T are retiring in droves — it's happening across multiple industries and transit agencies as the Baby Boomers reach retirement age. The agency is changing quickly and I see it regularly when I get introduced to a new face at the T that looks as young as mine.

I'm willing to accept some of the arguments that people have posed here. I'm not willing to accept that this is somehow inevitable or acceptable considering the volume of housing, type of development, and regional travel changes we need. It's a great development; I stand by my opinion that it could've been better or just as viable without as much parking.

 

[617]

Interesting perspective thank you - I'm always in awe when I ride the NYC subway. I agree that the T could be great but unfortunately it sucks right now...while well never have express trains I do think we could have the 2nd best transit network in the country with the right investments. But right now...t sucks.

As for this development I think it's been enormously successful. To think condos and apts are selling out like they are at this location is very impressive. When you think about placemaking this development has it down. I'm very excited to see the future phases and I think the amount of parking is appropriate. The garages routinely fill up and the lots are slowly being redeveloped and downsized. I'd also argue that the amount of parking available has successfully attracted people from a wide radius - nh...Worcester and beyond. But like I said as the lots succumb to development the parking will keep going down to perhaps a more urban level.

 

[chrisbrat]

as someone who lives very close to assembly, my observation is that it's great that it's added vibrancy to the area and no doubt pumped $$$ into the local economy, BUT it's essentially a disney-world version of urban life. lots of ugly, prefab, nondescript buildings that dont integrate particularly successfully with the area(s) around them and certainly don't represent any high (or even low/mid) levels of architectural or design achievement. it's like someone took a satellite portion of the northshore mall and plopped it in somerville. i'd love to be proven wrong, but i suspect that once whatever "wow, this is new!" sheen wears off -- say 10 or more years from now -- this area will be a ghost-town, particularly if the economy tanks to any degree, whatsoever.

 

[Texasian]

i'd love to be proven wrong, but i suspect that once whatever "wow, this is new!" sheen wears off -- say 10 or more years from now -- this area will be a ghost-town, particularly if the economy tanks to any degree, whatsoever.

I doubt most folks really care about what the buildings look like.

Also, given the location (on 93 and the orange line in Somerville) I doubt we really have to worry about it becoming a ghost town more than any other shopping complex on a major highway.

 

[Jouhou]

as someone who lives very close to assembly, my observation is that it's great that it's added vibrancy to the area and no doubt pumped $$$ into the local economy, BUT it's essentially a disney-world version of urban life. lots of ugly, prefab, nondescript buildings that dont integrate particularly successfully with the area(s) around them and certainly don't represent any high (or even low/mid) levels of architectural or design achievement. it's like someone took a satellite portion of the northshore mall and plopped it in somerville. i'd love to be proven wrong, but i suspect that once whatever "wow, this is new!" sheen wears off -- say 10 or more years from now -- this area will be a ghost-town, particularly if the economy tanks to any degree, whatsoever.

I think all of the residential future proofs this for several decades.

 

[stick n move]

as someone who lives very close to assembly, my observation is that it's great that it's added vibrancy to the area and no doubt pumped $$$ into the local economy, BUT it's essentially a disney-world version of urban life. lots of ugly, prefab, nondescript buildings that dont integrate particularly successfully with the area(s) around them and certainly don't represent any high (or even low/mid) levels of architectural or design achievement. it's like someone took a satellite portion of the northshore mall and plopped it in somerville. i'd love to be proven wrong, but i suspect that once whatever "wow, this is new!" sheen wears off -- say 10 or more years from now -- this area will be a ghost-town, particularly if the economy tanks to any degree, whatsoever.

I dont think it will ever become a ghost town but I agree that it looks like a Disney land model of an urban core. It looks like sets for a movie and its blatantly obvious when your there that it was all planned and recently built. That being said its successful, its a nice place to be, and I don't know anybody that isn't on this forum that has ever said its a failure. We just notice the flaws more because were looking but the majority of people like it just fine.

 

[tysmith95]

^Agreed. I like it better than Northpoint. It's way better than Stations Landing. It's way better than alewife. In my opinion it's the best TOD in the Boston area.

When 5 Middlesex Avenue is built it will hopefully provide some contrasting styles and make the area look less centrally planned.

 

[chrisbrat]

I doubt most folks really care about what the buildings look like.

Also, given the location (on 93 and the orange line in Somerville) I doubt we really have to worry about it becoming a ghost town more than any other shopping complex on a major highway.

welp -- the "original" assembly square mall was absolutely hopping for most of the '80s and then became very much the proverbial "ghost town," to the point that it was vacated, gutted, and repurposed, so...

hope you're right, but don't be so sure.

 

[tysmith95]

^It's not just a shopping mall. It's an apartment community, office space, while also having retail. That gives it more staying power then if it was just a mall. Also having an orange line stop helps.

 

[chrisbrat]

i hope you're right. it's my hood, so i'd very much like it to do well, and im not being negative just for the fun of it. i just don't love the end-results so far and have my doubts. as i already wrote, i'd be very happy to ultimately be proven very, very wrong.

 

[goldenretrievers]

Which of the parcels have not yet broken ground?