Northland Newton | Needham St. @ Oak St. | Newton

[shmessy]

I love development and the 800 new units of housing coming online, but let's drop their highlighted 'public transpo centric' pr on it.

This is heavily automobile-centric and is nowhere near the Newton Highlands T stop. From the link from the previous post (bolded mine):
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About the Project​

Northland Newton Development (NND) is a 22.7-acre semi-urban, mixed-use redevelopment. This site will provide 800 apartment homes, including 140 affordable units. There will be parking for 1,600 vehicles and 10% will be equipped with electric car charging capabilities. The development will restore the historic Saco Pettee Mill creating 193,200 SF of Class-A office space complemented by over 104,268 SF of boutique main-street style retail and chef-driven restaurant concepts. NND’s open space design plan prioritizes community green space and includes a visionary grouping of seven distinct parks totaling 10 acres of open space. Leveraging the proximity to the MBTA (me: haha), NND will also include a free shuttle service to the Newton Highland’s Green Line transit station.
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I know that location well - I risked my life too often getting lunch at Mighty Subs . It is right off the 128 exit, on the other side of WCVB and what used to be Muzi Ford. Needham Street in that area is already a traffic shitshow. I can't imagine how much worse that is going to be with this development and its 1600 parking spots. The city needed to do some widening/mitigation work on Needham Street (and did so in 2022-2023) but I hope they are ready for this one.

July 2012:

Street View · Google Maps

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October 2023

Street View · Google Maps

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[Equilibria]

I love development and the 800 new units of housing coming online, but let's drop their highlighted 'public transpo centric' pr on it.

This is heavily automobile-centric and is nowhere near the Newton Highlands T stop. From the link from the previous post (bolded mine):
----------------------

About the Project​

Northland Newton Development (NND) is a 22.7-acre semi-urban, mixed-use redevelopment. This site will provide 800 apartment homes, including 140 affordable units. There will be parking for 1,600 vehicles and 10% will be equipped with electric car charging capabilities. The development will restore the historic Saco Pettee Mill creating 193,200 SF of Class-A office space complemented by over 104,268 SF of boutique main-street style retail and chef-driven restaurant concepts. NND’s open space design plan prioritizes community green space and includes a visionary grouping of seven distinct parks totaling 10 acres of open space. Leveraging the proximity to the MBTA (me: haha), NND will also include a free shuttle service to the Newton Highland’s Green Line transit station.
-----------------

I know that location well - I risked my life too often getting lunch at Mighty Subs . It is right off the 128 exit, on the other side of WCVB and what used to be Muzi Ford. Needham Street in that area is already a traffic shitshow. I can't imagine how much worse that is going to be with this development and its 1600 parking spots. The city needed to do some widening/mitigation work on Needham Street (and did so in 2022-2023) but I hope they are ready for this one.

July 2012:

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

www.google.com

October 2023

Street View · Google Maps

Explore a place in a more immersive way in Google Maps.

www.google.com

Needham Street is actually a MassDOT project and was done entirely with this project (in its larger form with offices) in mind.

This has been my soapbox for almost a decade now: Newton should have required Northland to build (or provision and escrow money for) Green Line platforms at Upper Falls as part of mitigation. The branch from Newton Highlands to Upper Falls is about as easy as it gets - graded ROW, pretty straight, nothing to clear. Just need to get past the neighbors chaining themselves to their "Greenway" to do rail+trail and you're golden for under a hundred million if Northland handles the station. I've thought the City of Newton should offer to chip a lot of that in to the MBTA - costs less than an elementary school these days...