Union Square Somerville Infill and Small Developments

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Dr. Rosen Rosen said:
Build a wall? Booo. Moving it to another location seems unlikely. But I didn’t see mention of burying it??

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Burying it is monumentally expensive - it worked in Kendall because of how much money was to be made on the larger development made possible by the goodwill from burying the substation. I don't think Union Square is quite lucrative enough for that.

You don't have to bury it, though. If they were to decide to rip up the streets (again, after 10 years of continuous roadwork) and move the substation, I think it might be possible to put it on the first floor of a parking garage in a redevelopment of the Target site. F-Line and others had talked about that possibility in Alewife - enclosing the substation fully and putting something above it.

Honestly, this is much better than what it is now, and they seem willing to work with the future projects on all sides.
 
Dr. Rosen Rosen said:
Build a wall? Booo. Moving it to another location seems unlikely. But I didn’t see mention of burying it??

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“Before presenting new design proposals, and in Q&A afterward, Eversource staff explained why the substation couldn’t be moved underground or elsewhere.

Maintaining a continuous electric supply is a regulatory obligation, making any relocation “a conundrum.” Eversource would have to build a new substation before the current one could go out of service, “a process which takes a decade or more,” Boericke said. “In that time, the need for increased electrical capacity will become more urgent … and the proposed third transformer at this site will still be necessary.”

Eversource is constrained by needing to be “where the load is,” and this station serves the green line T stop across the street, bursting Union Square development as well as additional development to the south and electrification needed for clean-energy initiatives, said Maija Benjamins, director of strategic project development for Eversource. It’s also hard to find new real estate to move to, specially as “the expense and time that it takes to relocate those stations is a lot to put on the shoulders of ratepayers.”

There’s also the issue that moving would require “miles of additional in-street construction,” Boericke said, “unnecessarily adding to construction fatigue” – while an Eversource engineer said it would be essentially impossible to squeeze in a fourth transformer into Union Square, making this the end of the major work in the area.”
 
Dr. Rosen Rosen said:
More Union Sq at night.

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Would this new condo be considered in Union Sq? (109 Prospect).

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I have it on some authority that 109 Prospect is a s_show. They made the turning radius into the lower-level garage too tight and no one can park there. Also, from reviewing the Zillow listings the asking price for really tiny units was kind of absurd.
 
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