A Return To Transit
By Paul McMorrow
Banker & Tradesman Staff Writer
05/04/09
Somerville came of age as a streetcar suburb. Cheap, widely available mass transit ignited a construction boom. Then the streetcars faded, and highways severed the city?s neighborhoods. Now, city planners want to use the coming subway expansions to knit the town back together again. Assembly Square ? one of the few large-scale projects in the state still moving forward ? is just the beginning.
Monica Lamboy
Title: Executive Director, Somerville Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development
Experience: 2 Years in Somerville
Age: 41
Education: Princeton, BSE in civil engineering. UC Berkeley, masters in city and regional planning
You?ve called this a ?transformational moment? for Somerville. Why is that?
Somerville was originally built around transit. There were as many as 17 different stations. It?s a very dense street pattern, there are narrow streets, lots of houses, and the people who lived here would walk to transit to get to work. Then the transit was taken away and the automobile became quite dominant, and it?s not been a totally easy fit. So reintroducing transit to Somerville through the Green Line extension, and the Orange Line at Assembly Square, and the Urban Ring, is helping us get back to enjoying the riches that were here before. At the same time we see it as enhancing the quality of life for residents; we also see it as a launching point to stimulate the local economy. There have been a number of areas of the city, largely in the eastern sector, that are, by all accounts, under-utilized ? it?s low-scale development, very auto- or truck-dominated, that, when we imagine a train station coming in, we can see an opportunity to change that for the better.
Is Davis Square the model for the type of transformation you?re trying to effect?
Davis is a terrific model in a lot of ways, and also a learning opportunity at the same time. The Red Line station and the active neighborhood have made Davis Square a great place to be. It?s clearly a regional destination. That?s the upside of transit. On the other hand, we have seen prices rise, and some businesses are having a hard time finding space to expand. They may start and innovate here, but if they can?t grow to the size they need to, they?re going to have to look elsewhere. So that?s the cautionary note. How do you still allow enough growth and expansion so that people can stay in the same neighborhood they started in?
So how do you take those lessons and apply them, in a planning framework, to the projects underway now?
In the Union Square rezoning, we tried to create the kinds of wonderful dynamic mixes we saw in Davis Square. We put in pedestrian-oriented uses required in certain areas. We looked at the storefront widths, and we?re encouraging a continuation of that pattern. On the other hand, we are allowing greater heights and greater floor-area ratio than you see elsewhere in Somerville to date. The heights range from 55 [feet] to 70, 100, and 135. And the floor area scales up at the same time. With the housing component, we?re requiring an increased percentage of affordable housing in the transit-oriented development districts.
The city has this interesting mix of development opportunities ? so much of it is built out and very dense, and then you?ve got these huge swaths of land that are available to be shaped. They?re two very different scales of development thinking, and planning.
I personally enjoy the differences. It?s a great professional challenge to work with some really fine-grain neighborhoods and think about how to meet those communities? needs, and at the same time, have other larger areas where we can be a bit more visionary and more dramatic in our approach to change there. It?s a great mix.
Conceptually, how do you go about integrating large-scale new development into the city fabric?
It?s about coming up with a shared idea of what the city wants to be at the end and how we implement that in a sensitive way. What do we really cherish about our existing, built environment? And what are those things we?d be willing to change, or want to change, and how do those two, the older community and the newer community, come back and interface with each other? You don?t want to create two totally isolated communities. The zoning, by looking at the patterns of heights and spacing, we?re not mimicking the historic structure, but respecting the historic pattern, and bringing that forward, but allowing it to be a little different and a little expanded.
Where is Assembly Square right now?
They are still really active. Right now, they are working with the commonwealth and us on an application for I-Cubed [the Mass. Infrastructure Investment Incentive Program] financing. We?re also trying to see if there?s an opportunity for stimulus money. And once the application processes have gone all the way through, construction of Assembly Square Drive is going to be starting. We?re looking at sometime in this construction year, whether it?s in the summer or early fall. Everybody is looking forward to getting that under way. And when Assembly Square Drive starts, that will allow the IKEA foundation to come in. There?s a series of offsite mitigation they need to do with this phase, as well. And we do expect the other special permits to start relatively soon.
Is it difficult for you to be planning around the Green Line extension, when the whole thing is depending on the relocation of Lechmere Station to a stalled, feuding project in another city?
I know the state is committed to the Green Line, and the governor is committed to the Green Line. EOT [The Executive Office of Transportation] is actively working on it. Other than that, we try to help as we can. It?s not a simple task before them. Everybody wants Lechmere Station to go forward.
Lamboy?s Five Favorite Somerville Destinations:
1.) Somerville Community Path which brings pedestrians, cyclists and runners into Davis Square and will eventually be extended along the Green Line, thereby linking the Minuteman Trail to Boston.
2.) Union Square Plaza which is the home of the Fluff Festival and the weekly Farmers Market Saturday?s from June to October. Nearby is the Prospect Hill
3.) Mystic River Waterfront which is beautiful today and will only be enhanced by the increased parkland and paths to be built at Assembly Square.
4.) Broadway in East Somerville with its interesting mix of local businesses and ethnic restaurants.
5.) Winterhill, and Magoun, Ball and Teele Squares with their unique neighborhood charm and diversity of local businesses.
