Union Square Somerville Infill and Small Developments

It’s a former early 20th century service station, which is being preserved as the entry vestibule.
 
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Another shot of the Bow St Passive House condos, from today:

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Somerville Ave condos - 3rd level out of 6. Definitely going to be a scale changer for the immediate area.

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This corner (Lake and Hawkins) has really opened up. They took down some pretty big trees, in addition to the auto shop. Also, are the two deep pits in the bottom pic for the massive storm water overflow tanks? I thought I read about that as a project agreement…

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Sticking the public room one floor up, with a prominent staircase up to it, is a gigantic middle finger to accessible public use of that space.
 
Huh. It is not great. Only saving grace I suppose is how relatively tucked away it is within the city's geography. Despite proximity to a new T stop and on a major road, this is not a parcel most residents spend a lot of time looking at.
 
Blackbird said:
Will there not be an easily accessible elevator?

Also I like the design.
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There will be an elevator. However, the statement made by putting public space there, instead of in a barrier-free location, is unmistakable.
 
kjdonovan said:
Huh. It is not great. Only saving grace I suppose is how relatively tucked away it is within the city's geography. Despite proximity to a new T stop and on a major road, this is not a parcel most residents spend a lot of time looking at.
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It's tucked away now but that whole area is about to become very busy. I think that view is facing New Washington st. (as in, looking toward the inner belt, not Washington st.
I think the plan is to put a cut through street from New washington to washington to the west of the building, I've no idea why they want to do that. Also they plan to take down a load of the cobble hill trees which is a shame.
I also imagine that a lot of people who work out of this building will drive there and not use the new T station next door. It's not where I'd have put this.
I also saw that U-Haul have put in an application for 6 story self storage unit the other side of the station.
Seems like TOD has gone out the window when it comes to East Somerville station.
 
I mean, we're building X-over-1's as fast as we can down the other side of Washington St, just everything south of Washington is complicated by some special interest or another (Cobble Hill has 0 interest in building a street wall, and the rest of the area is either this new city building or railroad stuff.)

The road thing though - they're not talking about a new road, they're talking about moving New Washington into more or less alignment with the end of Franklin St.

Note below that the PSB won't front onto Washington street at all - it will be tucked back on New Washington, with two new parcels in front of it on Washington itself.

The PSB itself sucks but overall I'm still somewhat optimistic depending on what we get in parcels A and C. Those could be really tasty chunks of streetwall/TOD.

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erom said:
I mean, we're building X-over-1's as fast as we can down the other side of Washington St, just everything south of Washington is complicated by some special interest or another (Cobble Hill has 0 interest in building a street wall, and the rest of the area is either this new city building or railroad stuff.)

The road thing though - they're not talking about a new road, they're talking about moving New Washington into more or less alignment with the end of Franklin St.

Note below that the PSB won't front onto Washington street at all - it will be tucked back on New Washington, with two new parcels in front of it on Washington itself.

The PSB itself sucks but overall I'm still somewhat optimistic depending on what we get in parcels A and C. Those could be really tasty chunks of streetwall/TOD.

View attachment 18916
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ah right, thanks for the info!
 
I'm also happy to be getting a crosswalk at Franklin (badly needed) and a chunk of Cobble Hill's useless no-trespassing-signed green space opened up to public use.

Edit: And a sidewalk down New Washington! I'll actually be able to walk the kids to see the dogs without dodging trucks from the light industrial down the street.
 
erom said:
I'm also happy to be getting a crosswalk at Franklin (badly needed) and a chunk of Cobble Hill's useless no-trespassing-signed green space opened up to public use.

Edit: And a sidewalk down New Washington! I'll actually be able to walk the kids to see the dogs without dodging trucks from the light industrial down the street.
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ha, went to a public info session about this outside East Som. library about a month ago and the first thing I asked her is if they'd put in a new side walk. seemed mad that there was all that space and no sidewalk to the dog park!
 
erom said:
I'm also happy to be getting a crosswalk at Franklin (badly needed) and a chunk of Cobble Hill's useless no-trespassing-signed green space opened up to public use.

Edit: And a sidewalk down New Washington! I'll actually be able to walk the kids to see the dogs without dodging trucks from the light industrial down the street.
Click to expand...

Ruairi said:
ha, went to a public info session about this outside East Som. library about a month ago and the first thing I asked her is if they'd put in a new side walk. seemed mad that there was all that space and no sidewalk to the dog park!
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Just popping in to note that I tried to split off a thread on this earlier. Not as successful as my attempt yesterday, it seems :).

Public Safety Building/Cobble Hill Redevelopment | 90 Washington Street | Somerville

Breaking this out from the Union Square Infill thread, partly because there are actually three development parcels here. To the points on the previous thread - I'm not sure it would have been possible to site the community room on the first floor - the only spaces on the first floor at present...
archboston.com
 
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