Max Pak Development

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cden4

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This is the redevelopment of an industrial site in Somerville, in an existing residential neighborhood of primarily two-family houses, adjacent to the future Community Path Extension and planned Lowell St stop of the Green Line Extension, scheduled to open in 2012.

Here are the plans:
http://blogs.townonline.com/somerville/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/maxpak.pdf

Here is an article from the Somerville Journal:
http://www.wickedlocal.com/somerville/homepage/x1870702533

Neighbors wary of Max Pak site
By S.H. Bagley
Mon Mar 10, 2008, 04:16 PM EDT

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Somerville - Community members and city officials like the proposed plan for the Max Pak site.

However, they?re voicing concerns about increased traffic and young professionals bringing change to the neighborhood.

Warwick Street resident Sandra Resnick, who lives across the street from the development, said the neighborhood had been through a long process, and she?s glad to see the plan start to move forward. The developer will hold a neighborhood meeting Wednesday to further discuss the project. ?I?m looking forward to the neighborhood meeting,? she said.

The plans leave Resnick concerned about two things the development is going to bring to Warwick, Clyde and Lowell Streets: cars, and change.

Resnick also said new neighbors could change the area, and not necessarily for the better. ?This development will forever change how we live in the Patch,? she said. ?We like that it?s not as dense.?

Resnick has lived on Warwick Street since 1982, not her whole life. She acknowledged the city?s population is changing. ?I?m the bridge between old and new,? she said. ?The unit I live in is the oldest condo in the neighborhood.?

?I don?t like that this whole neighborhood is turning over,? Resnick said. ?The development needs to fit in with the neighborhood around here.?

Ward 5 Alderman Sean O?Donovan said the condos are likely to be bought by single people or couples without children, and this could be a problem for neighbors.

?It?s going to attract non-family buyers,? O?Donovan said. ?Not having families in the neighborhood is a concern for families with children.?

O?Donovan was involved in the site?s planning until having to recuse himself after buying property on Warwick Street. He spoke at the meeting as an abutter. He said the site was well laid-out, and ?it has a beautiful courtyard.?

The plans have not changed much since KSS Realty made initial proposals four years ago. The developers are including 234 parking spaces in their proposal. Resnick said if more cars than KSS includes spaces for move in, fire trucks might not be able to get down Warwick Street. ?It?s a very dense street. We?re concerned about the traffic.?

KSS Realty wants to put 199 new apartments on the five-acre plot of land where the closed Max Pak factory building is right now. The developer will build a new road into and out of the property and provide access to the community path and Green Line Extension when it?s finished. The proposal has the apartments split into nine separate buildings, with a small park in between. One of the three largest of the buildings, a 40-unit apartment complex, abuts Warwick Street.

O?Donovan said one of his biggest concerns as a neighbor is whether increased traffic would prevent fire trucks from accessing the site. If the developers intended there to be parking on both sides of Warwick Street once developers put in a new curbstone, O?Donovan said fire trucks might not be able to make the tight curve of the road.

?With the advent of the Green Line,? O?Donovan said, ?that might take away some of the traffic problems.?

The project?s current design has one building, with 54 apartments, put in on Warwick Street. The remaining units would be phased in over the next several years. By the time the entire project is finished, O?Donovan said, ?in three or four years, when all the units are built, the Green Line will only be a couple of years away.?

Alderman at Large Bill White said Thursday?s meeting was the first time he saw the new plans. ?We?ve just received [the proposal],? he said. He said it was too early for him to give his opinion yet.

Former candidate for Ward 5 Alderman Joe Lynch said the developer was abiding by the project?s original covenant. He said the proposal was in keeping with ?the spirit of the neighborhood guidelines? and ?the spirit of the covenant.?

?It was clear to me, we?ll be able to work with the developer going forward,? Lynch said.

Smith of KSS Realty said he would meet with community members to present the plan to them at the VNA Assisted Living facility on Lowell Street next week. The community members present at the meeting approved of his proposal, he said. ?There were some comments from the neighbors, all favorable,? Smith said.

If next week?s community meeting goes well for KSS, the city could start giving KSS the permits it needs to demolish the old factory on the property and break ground as early as this summer.

Mayor Joe Curtatone declined comment through spokesman Lesley Delaney Hawkins.
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There will be a community meeting for all interested parties to view and comment on the KSS/MaxPak Master Plan for their proposed 199-unit condo development.

Wednesday, March 12, 6:30 pm, at the VNA Community Living Center, 259 Lowell Street, 3rd floor

On March 6, KSS presented their plan to the City of Somerville Planning Board. The Planning Board will continue to accept written comments until 12 noon on Tuesday, March 18. It is anticipated that the Planning Board will render its decision at their next scheduled meeting in late March.

The KSS Master Plan and application is available for inspection at City Hall, 3rd floor. It is also online at http://blogs.townonline.com/somerville/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/maxpak.pdf . (I do not see it anywhere on the city website.)

This is the final stage of a very long community planning and negotiation process.
 
?This development will forever change how we live in the Patch,? she said. ?We like that it?s not as dense.?
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The Patch? Does she think she lives in some Beatrix Potter story? Answer: no, it's Somerville, the densest city of its size outside New Jersey.
 
"The Patch" is a local name for the small sub-neighborhood of Clyde, Warwick, and Murdock streets. It is somewhat isolated from the rest of the city, as you can see by the map, and consists mostly of one- and two-family houses. The streets are very narrow.

The developer will lessen the impact on this neighborhood by dividing the parking into two sections -- one-third accessible only from Warwick Street, two-thirds accessible only from Lowell Street. Pedestrians and bicyclists will be able to cross the entire development, but cars cannot.
 
It's funny because people use the phrase against Somerville. Oh we wouldn't want to be like Somerville... that's the densest community in New England! Except it's certainly less dense than much of Boston. It's just that Boston contains a fairly large amount of low density neighborhoods that overcompensate for the downtown density!
 
Boston also contains several large parks, cemeteries, and golf courses, none of which Somerville has.
 
Do parks, cemeteries, and golf courses count when calculating density?
 
Don't forget Logan Airport either. Living in East Boston, I'm often thinking how much more spacious our neighborhood is by virtue of the fact that the harbor was filled in and an international airport was built there. It definitely keeps the residential density down (although Massport frowns on my family whenever we attempt to picnic at the end of runway 27).

Well, you know what they say: if only the airport hadn't been built and Noddle Island had never been annexed by Boston, Eastie would be the most densely populated city outside of New Jersey. By the way, how do the Somerville people go on long trips without an airport of their own?
 
Yes, since density is population divided by total land area. But let's steer this conversation back to MaxPak, please.

I generally like the development. My only regret is that it doesn't feature some sort of commercial use fronting on the bike path.
 
I like the looks of this project. Building C looks very Jazz-Age Moderne. In terms of scale and massing, these also remind me a bit of some of the apartment buildings you'd walk by in Oak Park, though these won't be made of Chicago common brick.

Aside from the lack of retail, what are your thoughts on the overall design, Ron?
 
The design looks great to me too. I think the concern of cut-through traffic may be a bit overblown, and it may have actually been ok to connect both ends of the project to cars, but there are enough other streets nearby that do connect that this shouldn't be an issue.

I like the scale of the buildings and how they look out into both the existing neighborhoods and the center park. At least from the plans, the park feels very public, despite being inside the development.

Being situated between the Community Path extension and the Green Line station at Lowell St, I can definitely see Ron's point about retail. I think a coffee shop could do quite well, either near the Community Path or near Lowell St where the Green Line station would be. A small convenience store may be a good addition as well.
 
Somebody please make this technically accurate but entirely misleading phrase disappear!
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You have to admit it's occasionally appealing for propaganda purposes...
 
http://somervillenews.typepad.com/the_somerville_news/2008/03/after-years-of.html

March 13, 2008
After years of meetings, Max Pak neighbors happy

By George P. HassettMaxpak_1

Developer Stephen Smith estimates he has organized at least 20 community meetings over the last five years to learn what neighbors think of his plan to develop the old Max Pak paper factory site to luxury condo buildings. As a result of the meetings traffic plans have been redesigned and the number of units slated to be built have been cut in half.

?We welcomed the input,? Smith said. ?And it is a stronger development because of the neighbors.?

Sandra Resnick, who lives across the street from the development, said her child has grown up at the meetings.

?There has been a lot of pushing from the neighborhood and [Smith] has been responsive. We've been able to bang our heads together and come up with something that works all around.?

Maxpak_2And judging from the support the project has from the neighborhood, the meetings have been fruitful. At a Planning Board meeting last week abutters of the property expressed concern over the traffic and rapid change the project may bring to the neighborhood, but none spoke against it.

?I'm exuberantly in favor of this,? said Tim Brochu who moved to Hinckley Street one year ago and soon heard about the development. ?The problems people once had with the project seem to be dwindling down over time.?

Since 1982 when Resnick first moved to the area, she said three developers have tried to build on the site. Unlike KSS, those developers were unwilling to compromise or listen to neighbors, she said.

?They'd say, 'This is what we're going to do' and we would say, 'No you're not' and they would say, 'Yes we are.' There was no negotiation or discussion and that is why nothing got built,? she said.

Smith and KSS Realty bought the five-acre plot of land five years ago for $5 million. He said they have spent $1 million cleaning up contaminated soil at the site. At the Planning Board meeting on Thursday, Smith said about one-third of the 199 units would be two bedroom condos and two-thirds would be one bedroom. He said the units would be marketed to young professionals for around $400,000.

KSS will build a new road into and out of the property and provide access to the community path and Green Line stop on Lowell Street when it is completed.

Ward 5 Alderman Sean O'Donovan was involved in negotiating the covenant between KSS and the Maxpak_3 neighborhood. He recused himself from those discussions after he bought a home at 30 Warwick Street which abuts the development. At Thursday's Planning Board meeting he spoke in favor of the project but voiced some reservations.

?I have some concerns with the parking situation. With the number of units planned, the parking situation may be tight,? he said.

Resnick said the development will forever change the neighborhood known as ?the Patch? made up of Clyde, Murdock, Warwick and Cedar streets. Once a close knit area of Italian-American families, the identity of ?the Patch? could now be swallowed up by rapid gentrification.

?Our quiet little neighborhood is about to move in another direction,? Resnick said.
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I went to the meeting. Everyone there liked the development and the developer. I'm looking forward to seeing this built. The planning process has been laborious for the city, the neighbors, and the developer alike, but I think the result will be worth it.
 
The project looks great to me. Nice scale, interesting architecture, fits in well with the existing neighborhood. It's really a terrific location, especially with the Community Path and Green Line Extension coming in a few years. It will be more eyes on the street, for sure, which will be a huge plus for safety in that area, especially in light of the recent break-ins on Alpine St along the future Community Path corridor.
 
Is the Kennedy family money behind KSS Realty? I seem to remember hearing this.

Congrats to the whole team, I get a warm fuzzy when I hear the developers and the community are happy - it's such a rare occurrence.
 
Yes, K is for Kennedy. To give you some idea how this happiness was achieved - KSS originally proposed over 300 condo units for this site.
 
Good for them - that's how you do it. If you want to build 200 units, propose 300. If you want to build a 8-story building, you propose a 12-story building.
 
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