Different takes on Green Line's new tracks
Hope, caution precede Somerville, Medford project
By Scott Helman, Globe Staff | April 13, 2009
MEDFORD - Anna and Mary Anne Adduci embody the group of longtime Medford residents who call themselves "old-timers."
The mother and daughter have lived in their gray wood-shingle house on North Street since 1958, resettling here, like many Italian families, after decades in neighborhoods of Boston or Cambridge.
Down the block on Mystic Valley Parkway, Medford's newcomers - many of them fleeing expensive housing markets in Cambridge and Somerville - flood into the new Whole Foods, loading groceries and babies into Subarus and Honda Civics adorned with Obama stickers.
The two camps coexist peacefully in this close-in suburb of 56,000, but ask them about the planned extension of the MBTA's Green Line into their neighborhood and a big rift emerges.
"It's sort of divided among the newcomers and the old-timers who don't want to see it changed," said Gwen Blackburn, a retired school district administrator long active in the community.
A few miles south, Union Square in Somerville is confronting its own questions about identity, looking ahead to a Green Line station and all it will bring.
If history is any guide, the Green Line's arrival over the next decade will transform the dense neighborhoods of Somerville and Medford that it reaches. Housing promises to become more desirable - and thus more expensive. New shops, cafes, and restaurants will open.
The very nature of places will shift, from Medford Hillside, where the MBTA plans to put the end of the line, to Union Square, a gritty, often pedestrian-unfriendly area many believe is ripe for renewal.
Current plans for the Green Line extension call for the trolley to run northwest along Boston Avenue, with the final stop at Mystic Valley Parkway, just before the Mystic River. The debate over whether that would be a welcome addition to the neighborhood goes to the heart of what kind of community Medford is and should be.
Over the course of 45 years, Blackburn has witnessed an evolution, with younger transplants changing the city's fabric.
"A lot of them, since they came here, want to change it," she said. "We welcome them and everything, but we're not anxious to see it change . . . we love it like it is."
That means Blackburn and many of her fellow longtime residents love it without the Green Line - without the gentrification they fear will bring swank cafes, restaurants, and bars; without the added traffic and congestion they expect; without the remaking of Medford into something akin to Cambridge and Somerville.
"I'm almost 63 years old - I can walk - and these 20-somethings are complaining that the bus isn't at their doorstep," Mary Anne Adduci said. "What are we gaining for all this money, all this disruption? We're not gaining anything."
For others, there's also an intangible fear that being more connected to Boston will bring crime and undesirable visitors.
"I don't mind change as long as it's not bad change," said Sandra Diettrich, a 43-year-old lifelong Medford resident who works part time at Target. "You just wonder who's going to be coming in here if it's only going to cost them a token or a Charlie pass, or whatever it is nowadays."
But it is that very prospect of connection to Boston that excites others in Medford, despite the fact that the city already has a commuter rail stop and multiple bus links to Boston.
"It will be that much more connected to civilization," said Elizabeth Bolton, a real estate agent who moved here in 2005.
"I know I would be more apt to do things downtown," said Paula Lopes, a 28-year-old teacher at a Catholic school. "Now, it's like I have to think about driving and parking, and that's a pain for me."
Bolton said the Green Line extension into Medford, though still tentative and years away, is already being used as a selling point in the real estate market, especially as younger buyers with an "urban mentality" consider moving there. The median price for a single-family home is $310,000 in Medford, compared with $325,000 in Somerville and $895,000 in Cambridge.
Years ago, Bolton lived in Porter Square when the Red Line was being extended to that neighborhood.
"Without a T stop, it was Siberia, and it's so amazing to think about nowadays, when the Red Line's right there," she said. "I envision the same thing happening to Medford."
Meanwhile, in Union Square, Sandra Fails's vintage store had no customers, so she opened a can of black paint on a recent morning and began lathering it onto a white end table. The bristles of her paintbrush made the only sound.
"It can get really quiet around here, and you don't have the flow of people," said Fails, 51, who opened Hope & Glory in Union Square last fall. "I would love to see the Green Line through here."
So would many in Union Square and other pockets of Somerville, which is looking to the Green Line to revitalize some of its tired squares. The Green Line project is popular here, though revitalization might mean that lower-income renters and business owners will be priced out of Union Square, and that concerns some who live in the area.
Though new restaurants and cafes have already taken root in Union Square in recent years, the hope among many is that the T transforms it into the next Davis Square, a bustling hub of activity that was gritty and rundown before the Red Line expanded there 25 years ago.
"You just see people, and you see activities happening, and just new things, and - life," Fails said.
Somerville Alderman Tom Taylor, who grew up in the area, said Union Square once bustled.
"Years ago it used to be very close-knit, with a lot of families - large families - and Union Square was kind of like the focal point," he said. "As the development of the malls came about, Union Square started to experience a downturn.
"We're trying to undo that. We're trying to make Union Square what it was like back in the '50s and '60s. The Green Line will help that process tremendously."
But some are wary. Hilary Beal, a 66-year-old retiree, said she is on the fence about the Green Line.
"Some of the little stuff would disappear, rents would go up," she said, gesturing to the square's stretch of ethnic markets and restaurants. "Maybe some of it would survive, but I don't know. I just sort of like it the way it is. It's kind of funky."
If Davis Square is indeed a predictor, the fears of gentrification are well-founded.
"The day the subway opened, all the realtors started getting calls and all the prices went up by 15 to 25 percent - in a week," said Lee Auspitz, a writer and longtime Somerville activist who helped plan the Red Line extension and is now involved in the Green Line project.
He added: "There isn't a whole lot of old Somerville that's left after all the renewals."
In some ways, one could argue that "old Somerville" is one traversed by street cars, which rumbled through city neighborhoods in the early- to mid-20th century, before automobiles became the preferred means of transportation.
"Somerville has always been a community of constant flux, or constant change," Taylor said.
Scott Helman can be reached at
shelman@globe.com.
