Union Square D2.1 | 10 Prospect Street | Somerville

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Fair warning! Here’s some AI in action, below.

My original picture:
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I then created the updated pictures below using single sentence prompts to ‘inspire/direct’ the AI modifications. Like “add pool tables and people with strollers.” Crazy weird results and quite amusing, but also quite powerful - all for free on some app I just downloaded. All instantly generated too.

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WhyyyyTF are there billiards tables outside in Massachusetts? They'd last like 4 hours tops lol. AI pretty wild though 😆
 
Dr. Rosen Rosen said:
Fair warning! Here’s some AI in action, below.

My original picture:
View attachment 38989

I then created the updated pictures below using single sentence prompts to ‘inspire/direct’ the AI modifications. Like “add pool tables and people with strollers.” Crazy weird results and quite amusing, but also quite powerful - all for free on some app I just downloaded. All instantly generated too.

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Click to expand...

What app is able to do this?
 
It’s huge

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Somerville’s Union Square is in the early phases of what promises to be a drastic transformation, between the new MBTA Green Line expansion and an encroachment of life sciences businesses into the neighborhood.

The opening this month of Prospect Union Square is a benchmark for the neighborhood’s growth. The tower, at 25 stories, is Somerville’s tallest. It’s the largest development to open since the Green Line expanded into Somerville last year, and it’s the first phase of the USQ development that’ll include several other towers in later phases surrounding the new Union Square T stop.

Residents began moving in last weekend, and more than 100 of the project’s 191 available market-rate units had been leased.

“Interest has been really strong,” said Abby Goodrich, the assistant general manager at Prospect Union Square.

The development has drawn people looking to move from Cambridge and Somerville as well as some from Boston who can now more easily get into the city on the T, she said. “Direct access to the Green Line is a huge thing.”

The apartments have drawn a number of people who still need to commute to work, such as in the medical, biotech and educational fields, Goodrich said. But some are working remotely, she said, making the tower's work space popular.

“You’ll see people throughout the day working here,” she said.

With a phased opening, the tower will eventually include 314 units. Another 136 are slated to open starting next month in an adjacent shorter building on Prospect Street. Some retail space is also planned.

Amenities at the building include a fitness center with row machines and spin bikes, an indoor dog run and pet wash station, and a secured package room. There’s also a business lounge with private work rooms, a community dining space, billiards and game tables, a lounge with fireplace, and bike storage. Later this month, an outdoor deck with a pool, loungers and fire pits will open.

Studios listed for availability start at just over $3,000 and two-bedroom units top $4,300.

Later phases of the USQ development call for laboratory space, restaurants and shops. In all, the 20-acre development will total 3.8 million square feet, including more than 1,000 residential units.
 
450 units of new housing on top of a train station is phenomenal. I'm definitely a Boston partisan, but the quality of food and drink in Bow Market and elsewhere walkable from the Union Sq station is arguably best in the region. It's great that so many more people get to experience it now. I hope it also resolves some of the fears that Somerville has around development. Great example of TOD and intense land-use in a previously sleepy little corner of Somerville.
 
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July 21, 2023By Grant Welker

When the 20-story Montaje apartment building opened at Somerville's Assembly Row in 2015, it came with the distinction of being the tallest building in the city.
It wouldn't last.
Six years later, Montaje was surpassed by a neighbor a block away: A luxury apartment building called Miscela, which was four stories and 32 feet taller. But Miscela's reign didn't last, either.
Two miles away, in Union Square, a residential tower that's 25 stories and 299 square feet high is nearing completion as part of a major mixed-use development surrounding a new MBTA Green Line station.
It turns out that tower likely won't be the tallest for long, either. Up next is 74M, a life sciences office tower between Assembly Row and I-93. The tower will technically fall short of the Union Square tower by four feet - but beat it by 30 feet when 74M's mechanical screen, which shields mechanical equipment from view, is factored in.
For generations, Somerville was known for the three-decker homes that line its compact streets. But these days, Somerville is building towers - and it doesn't look like the trend will stop soon.
In Union Square, the Union Square development will include a second building of more than 20 stories, a 373-unit tower slated for a later phase. Assembly Innovation Park, which includes a 12-story building now under construction next to the 74M tower, will be followed by two other buildings in later phases. They're planned to be roughly the same height.
Two neighboring cities, Cambridge and Everett, haven't been known for towers, either, but that's also changing.
Cambridge has already added its new tallest tower, a 454-bed graduate dorm for MIT students on Main St.
Site work has begun on what will be the city's next tallest tower - notably residential in use, not life sciences. The 37-story residential tower at 121 Broadway will total 476 feet, easily the city's tallest.
That tower could be eclipsed soon after. A redevelopment plan by MIT for the federally owned Volpe Center between Broadway and Binney Street calls for a tower of up to 500 feet.
In all, Cambridge has at least 10 towers built in the last decade or now in at least early phases of construction that are at least 250 feet in height. Before then, the city had only 10 such buildings in total.
Across the Mystic River, Everett is also going taller. It already has the 350-foot Encore Boston Harbor, which opened in 2019, and may have two more towers, both residential and both permitted for construction. One, called The Sophia, is proposed for 249 feet on Second Street and another, SKY Everett, would stand 236 feet on Spring Street.
One other Boston suburb has also hit a new high: Quincy's Chestnut Place, a 15-story residential tower, became the city's tallest when it opened in 2020.
 
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