sean99090900
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Some good progress on 13 Warwick st
Somerville Infill and Small Developments
- Thread starter George_Apley
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Some good progress on 13 Warwick st
Summerville2023
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Anyone know when the project at 599 Somerville Avenue will be done? Every time I bike past it, it feels like it has been going on forever…
Looks like the YMCA (located on Highland near School st) will be building a new facility on a new property. I’ll be curious to learn more. Anyone have any inside knowledge?
Somerville YMCA announces search for a new facility
www.thesomervilletimes.com
Looks like we’ve got some massing studies. Seems like the Y has agreements to acquire two properties: one on Highland and one on School. Seems like we’re going to have another “wraparound” situation like the Lab/condo situation on Webster.
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stick n move
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Gilman Square residents see development path: End Homans studies and lock in Mobil station
A model of proposed redevelopment in Gilman Square was shown Sept. 26 to the Somerville City Council. (Photo: Willie Burnley Jr.)
“With Gilman Square’s stubborn lack of development passing the decade mark, residents have asked the Somerville City Council to help keep it from taking another 10 years.
The council was asked for support in removing the city-owned Homans site from more disposition studies – it “has been continuously studied for 10 years,” said Matt Carlino, of the Gilman Square Neighborhood Council – and to help start a formal urban renewal process for the area’s Mobil gas station.
“That is an item that could delay this another 10 years,” Carlino said.
The request of city councilors heard at a Sept. 26 presentation was for them to join with yet another body, the Gilman Square Civic Advisory Committee, in urging the city’s Redevelopment Authority to initiate the urban renewal process. “We know the Mobil owner wants to develop,” Carlino said.
Any vision for the square includes the Mobil station combining with the neighboring empty Homans site to create a parcel of significant developable size, councilor Jesse Clin……..”
https://www.cambridgeday.com/2024/1...end-homans-studies-and-lock-in-mobil-station/
First I'm seeing of a model, and it's wholly unimpressive. There is an enormous school on a hill directly across the tracks. This should easily be 10+ stories against the ROW, stepped down to the street wall. There's nothing to obstruct!
themissinglink
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I really liked these concepts from the Gilman Square Station Area Plan. I'd love to see Gilman become a vibrant square, and it's so disappointing that there hasn't been more action on this.
thepianoperson
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Agreed, especially since it’s one of the very few times that the residents are basically screaming at Somerville to push the development forward - they’re being very YIMBY for once and seeing no results from that yet is a letdown.
themissinglink
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It also really sucks that the previously planned Medford Street headhouse was removed from the GLX when the stations were value engineered. It would've been perfect if the station entrance/exit was right at the intersection of Medford and Pearl, where the civic space is (was?) planned. We got this, instead of getting this:
It kinda feels weird to complain since it took so long to get the GLX over the finish line, and I'm thankful that it got done at all. That being said, Gilman Square could be freaking awesome and it's just... not. Hopefully that changes sooner rather than later.
It kinda feels weird to complain since it took so long to get the GLX over the finish line, and I'm thankful that it got done at all. That being said, Gilman Square could be freaking awesome and it's just... not. Hopefully that changes sooner rather than later.
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stick n move
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They should definitely add some art to that box imo. Either that or add a dummy facade to it.
The head house thats definitely a loss, but it at least seems like it would be pretty easy to add a ped bridge at the eastern head house that goes over the tracks to medford st. Maybe in the future the city could find some funding for something like this. That part of medford street and the head house seem to be at fairly similar elevations, so it could be a very simple bridge.
Something like this maybe?
Justbuildit
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I hear you, I really do, and it is pretty bare bones how the GLX station and platforms turned out. A few years ago I read what I thought was a good article on just this point and how tradeoffs are balanced on infrastructure projects. The author isn't from Boston, but I think makes some really good points on both public responsibility and trying to avoid mission creep:
Fancy stations make quality mass transit harder
Stop wasting money in dumb, obvious ways
www.slowboring.com
On the original Union Square design:
That looks cool! But by making the building so big that you need escalators to access it and elevators for ADA compliance (rather than basic ramps) you generate $2 million in costs. In total they ended up with “two levels of exterior plazas with connecting ramps and outdoor seating and plantings. In addition to these external elements, the station included a head house, bicycle storage, entryway, lobby, concourse, two elevators, two escalators, two bathrooms, employee lounge, fare vending, fare arrays, canopies, and mechanical rooms for all of the different systems.”
This just leads to a huge explosion in costs. Electrical alone costs over $5,000 per square meter so when you make the stations really big they get really expensive.
After the project almost fell apart, a new team came in with a mandate to cut station costs. They cut the total cost by 70 percent, mostly by just making the stations smaller — 91 percent smaller. The Transit Costs Projects people estimate that they saved $50 million just on electrical work.
[...]
By dropping the fancy stations, Boston went from “the Green Line Extension is too expensive to build” to “hey, actually we can build this.”
Maybe the answer is tagging some of the developers to build better connectivity to the Green Line stations, which can provide the true public realm benefit.
JeffDowntown
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At some point we really need to stop the shell game of "tagging the developers" for rebuilding T stations.I hear you, I really do, and it is pretty bare bones how the GLX station and platforms turned out. A few years ago I read what I thought was a good article on just this point and how tradeoffs are balanced on infrastructure projects. The author isn't from Boston, but I think makes some really good points on both public responsibility and trying to avoid mission creep:
Fancy stations make quality mass transit harder
Stop wasting money in dumb, obvious ways
On the original Union Square design:
That looks cool! But by making the building so big that you need escalators to access it and elevators for ADA compliance (rather than basic ramps) you generate $2 million in costs. In total they ended up with “two levels of exterior plazas with connecting ramps and outdoor seating and plantings. In addition to these external elements, the station included a head house, bicycle storage, entryway, lobby, concourse, two elevators, two escalators, two bathrooms, employee lounge, fare vending, fare arrays, canopies, and mechanical rooms for all of the different systems.”
This just leads to a huge explosion in costs. Electrical alone costs over $5,000 per square meter so when you make the stations really big they get really expensive.
After the project almost fell apart, a new team came in with a mandate to cut station costs. They cut the total cost by 70 percent, mostly by just making the stations smaller — 91 percent smaller. The Transit Costs Projects people estimate that they saved $50 million just on electrical work.
[...]
By dropping the fancy stations, Boston went from “the Green Line Extension is too expensive to build” to “hey, actually we can build this.”
Maybe the answer is tagging some of the developers to build better connectivity to the Green Line stations, which can provide the true public realm benefit.
There is no free lunch. The developers are going to bake those costs into whatever is being built on the site, through rents, etc. We end up paying, just in hidden ways (cost of units, retail prices at stores or restaurants who have to overcharge due to rents, etc.). And the projects languish forever. Look at Hynes and Back Bay Station, both waiting for years for desperately needed improvements because developments at the sites have stalled.
If we want better T amenities, we should pay (directly) for better T amenities, and stop pretending someone else is paying via "the developers".
Justbuildit
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My main point wasn’t to soak the developers or force them into building infrastructure. It was that building infrastructure costs a ton in the US, and proposing pretty renderings that provide modest benefit to actual transit experience eventually runs up against a zero sum reality where nothing gets built because construction prices become astronomical.
My last pondering sentence was about building better station connections for private buildings that are going in anyways. I’m a huge believer in state capacity and agencies building what they’re tasked with. I think the best answer is to have relatively low expectations for station amenities per se and just build the damn tracks. Somerville taxpayers are more than able to pay for gleaming stations if they want (which is another point made in the article). The outdoor minimalist stations on the B and C are fine for most use cases.
My last pondering sentence was about building better station connections for private buildings that are going in anyways. I’m a huge believer in state capacity and agencies building what they’re tasked with. I think the best answer is to have relatively low expectations for station amenities per se and just build the damn tracks. Somerville taxpayers are more than able to pay for gleaming stations if they want (which is another point made in the article). The outdoor minimalist stations on the B and C are fine for most use cases.
themissinglink
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While I agree that we shouldn’t be overbuilding stations, we shouldn’t be underbuilding them either. I don’t think that B and C line stations would be acceptable in most cases.
Some of the stations on the GLX are fine as-is, but at the bigger stations like Lechmere and Gilman Square, they should’ve built them as originally designed IMO.
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kdmc
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Eh, the lack of good overhead shelter and accessibility on so many of those is unacceptable. Otherwise, agreed. The GLX stations are fine.
The worst thing about outdoor stations is waiting in the elements. If reducing the capital and maintenance costs of stations means that more money is available to reduce headways, great.
That article gives a reasonable explanation of the exploding costs (and the Transit Costs Project he links to is fantastic resource) but I think he's missing a lot of subtlety in station planning. He's painting a lot of those amenities as completely frivolous, but they're not. They actually boost ridership. It should be more a question of whether that ridership boost is worth the cost. For a really rough example, you might consider an amenity is "worth it" at a cost of $50k per weekday rider.** Then $5m for, say, bike storage would be worth it if you thought that would get you an extra 100 riders per weekday at that station (though obviously you'd try to do it cheaper).I hear you, I really do, and it is pretty bare bones how the GLX station and platforms turned out. A few years ago I read what I thought was a good article on just this point and how tradeoffs are balanced on infrastructure projects. The author isn't from Boston, but I think makes some really good points on both public responsibility and trying to avoid mission creep:
Fancy stations make quality mass transit harder
Stop wasting money in dumb, obvious ways
On the original Union Square design:
That looks cool! But by making the building so big that you need escalators to access it and elevators for ADA compliance (rather than basic ramps) you generate $2 million in costs. In total they ended up with “two levels of exterior plazas with connecting ramps and outdoor seating and plantings. In addition to these external elements, the station included a head house, bicycle storage, entryway, lobby, concourse, two elevators, two escalators, two bathrooms, employee lounge, fare vending, fare arrays, canopies, and mechanical rooms for all of the different systems.”
This just leads to a huge explosion in costs. Electrical alone costs over $5,000 per square meter so when you make the stations really big they get really expensive.
After the project almost fell apart, a new team came in with a mandate to cut station costs. They cut the total cost by 70 percent, mostly by just making the stations smaller — 91 percent smaller. The Transit Costs Projects people estimate that they saved $50 million just on electrical work.
[...]
By dropping the fancy stations, Boston went from “the Green Line Extension is too expensive to build” to “hey, actually we can build this.”
Maybe the answer is tagging some of the developers to build better connectivity to the Green Line stations, which can provide the true public realm benefit.
According to the Transit Costs Project, the initial station design bloat was driven by the MBTA saying "yes" to basically every amenity request, regardless how well it would actually improve ridership. Things like bespoke architecture, employee break rooms, and public restrooms for each station would cost a ton, but add relatively little transit value. Some of those amenities might even have been justified at busier stations like Lechmere, but they were added to every station. And the amenities might have been added much more cheaply in some cost-effective way, but they were not.
Then when the new team came in, I think they were cutting down station design too far in the other direction. They weren't trying to get the stations down to an optimal cost-per-rider. They were trying to get the stations cheap enough so that, politically, anything had a chance of getting built at all. I think that meant that valuable and cost-effective amenities got dropped. Something like that planned Medford St. headhouse at Gilman absolutely could have driven more ridership with its climate-controlled indoor space, and making the station more easily accessible to the square, immediate neighborhood, and possible bus route redesigns. That ridership boost could have been estimated, probably in the hundreds, and maybe a cost effective solution could have been found. Instead, I think they just dropped it, and stations got generally underbuilt.
** Picking one number gets complicated by other factors, like operations and maintenance costs for that specific type of project. Also, a $50k cap is at the extreme low end of what I've seen for US transit projects today. For some comparison, the Second Ave Subway in New York ended up being about $62k per weekday rider. Projections for Blue Line to Lynn would be about $75k in today's dollars. Here's someone saying the right number should be tied to GDP per capita. I'm not sure I buy the logic, but for the US that's $80k, or for Massachusetts it's $105k. There are plenty of smaller projects that come in much cheaper than this, but what the cap should be is debatable.
The more I look at this the more I hate it. The bridge is on the wrong side to interact with the square, there is NO effort to create a "neighborhood center," there is zero depth to the buildings, and the courtyards FACE the ROW which is already deflecting both commuter+GL noise directly at them. What architect thought this was acceptable?
I dont even understand it. Is it superimposed on something really old or are they proposing scrapping the school st. station entrance?