That auto parts location keeps getting turn into fitness gyms which go bust. I think I remember about 2-3 fitness clubs going in there. There was one with a blue and orange sign, another one that kept sending flyers in my mail box, and lastly I think was evolve.. I always felt like that part of Garden street needed wider sidewalks. You go down there and walk around a telephone pole and it feels like you're going to get side-swiped by a big rig.
The Factory used to be 3M, no?
Personally I'm waiting to see if something could be done on the plot of land across that junction at New Street. Where there's just the power substation. I always thought they could put some nice high density office building there, the ugly power substation could be shifted below ground in a basement utility installation. Put something on the vacate land to the rear of that where the old wooden coal loft used to be and go from there. It could be real pretty with the pond there for some establishment.
Well...it's done. 2nd half of the building arrived in the Mall parking lot yesterday. I watched them up hoist the last piece of the 3rd floor at about 2:00 today. Now they're bolting the 3rd floor together and about to put on 3 small roof sections. They should be out of there at quitting time 5:00 sharp with a finished building on that corner.
That factory was 3M a couple owners ago. They were renting it to fly-by-night outfits the last couple years, now it's vacant and the auto reseller around the corner parks some of their used cars for sale in the driveway.
The power substation's still active, and in fact got expanded about a year ago with a bunch of new equipment. That whole neighborhood is overhead lines so I doubt they'd consider anything underground. The fenced-in lot it abuts is a construction company that does state road jobs. Very busy place. About 7:00am when they hit the road for the day it's heavy equipment left and right stopping by that yard to load up. They must be working on something big because they plopped in a couple porta- office trailers about a month ago.
Evolve Fitness is next to the park...seems to be doing pretty decent business in the early A.M. The couple restaurants that opened on New St. were instant failures, though. Business at Bonny's seems to be booming, though, with the neighborhood turning more residential.
I walk New St. every morning en route from a jog around Fresh Pond to Danehy Park. It is an awful walk. Nobody obeys the yield sign onto the rotary when traffic is light, there is of course no sidewalk on one side, and the short slab of asphalt "sidewalk" has parked cars all over it. When the movie theater isn't open New + Mall parking lot is the expressway around the rotaries. Ever since the cul de sac at the Mall entrance was turned into a construction zone for the new condos (and has stayed a gravel pile since) Cambridge PD stopped ticketing the speeders on New. It's terrifying especially in the morning when those speeders doing 45+ are all tow trucks, UPS trucks, and construction equipment. I can't believe they have let the access to the backside of Danehy stay this dangerous this long. So many young children have to make the treacherous walk down New to get there...or worse, play chicken on the Mall expressway to get from Rindge Ave. and Alewife to Danehy.
What I hope is that when the final paperwork gets processed on the ongoing Watertown Branch RR abandonment proceedings that the city expedites trailing over the Parkway-Danehy segment behind New St. as a paved, lit path. At least so all the schoolchildren don't become roadkill trying to get to soccer practice. There are the plans to do the Fresh Pond-Watertown trail leg, but I haven't heard anything about the stretch curling behind New St. On safety reasons alone that ought to be a priority.
Speaking of Fresh Pond-ish area doings, the gas station on the corner of Concord Ave. and Wheeler St. at the rotary was razed. Whatever's going there and on the adjacent parking lot that's also been ripped up looks like it'll be big (more condos to make Wheeler wall-to-wall residential?).
