Union Square Somerville Infill and Small Developments

It's a coffee shop with pastries and wifi. That's usually a pretty good indicator that the gentry were already hanging around the block. Now there's just OTHER coffee shops with pastries and wifi, some cheaper and some more expensive.

Other side of the coin, a cupcake shop and a southern-style hipster restaurant just closed in Davis. Were they not "stuff white people like" enough? Hmmm.
 
kjdonovan said:
It's a coffee shop with pastries and wifi. That's usually a pretty good indicator that the gentry were already hanging around the block. Now there's just OTHER coffee shops with pastries and wifi, some cheaper and some more expensive.

Other side of the coin, a cupcake shop and a southern-style hipster restaurant just closed in Davis. Were they not "stuff white people like" enough? Hmmm.
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What southern place in Davis closed? M3?
 
Live around the corner and honestly never went to Sherman. More of a Bloc 11 guy. Guess I'm one of them damned yuppies!
 
fattony said:
I call BS on the owner blaming gentrification, he is going out of business voluntarily. If he doesn't want to serve what customers want to eat, that doesn't make it the customers' fault.
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aaaaaa said:
For what it's worth, a friend of mine worked at Sherman and said that the owner was just an atrocious business person. Maybe gentrification played a role, but I'd put my money on poor management as the primary cause for Sherman's closure.

That being said, I'll miss it (especially since Pavement no longer sells the vegan tequila sunrise, or the chia).
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Based on Sherman's latest post on fb regarding the closing, I think you guys are right;

copypasta'd at this url in case the fb shuts down;
http://davis-square.livejournal.com/3448168.html#comments

Hey guys! It's a cafe posting like a person! Yes, we've had operational problems in the last year or two. Well, kind of forever. We're closing not because of poor sales, but because of the necessity of raising a bunch of capital to rebuild the cafe. Probably about $60,000 to $80,000 to do it right, plus we'd have to close for a month or two at least, thus losing about the same amount of money in sales. Getting the capital isn't actually the problem, it's more that, if we spend effectively $100k+, does it make sense to open a coffeeshop again, or are there better things that could be done with that amount of money?

We opened on a real shoestring back when Union had nothing much going on, food-wise or retail-wise, and we had a tiny, hard-to-work in kitchen and a one-customer-at-a-time point of sale.

So it's not really about gentrification, except insofar as people with more money are uptight about hippie-style service. Ahem.
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It's too bad because the cafe was a real asset to the area and what replaces it will probably not be as good, given the area trends. But I guess you can't force somebody to stay in business when they don't want to.

kjdonovan said:
It's a coffee shop with pastries and wifi. That's usually a pretty good indicator that the gentry were already hanging around the block. Now there's just OTHER coffee shops with pastries and wifi, some cheaper and some more expensive.

Other side of the coin, a cupcake shop and a southern-style hipster restaurant just closed in Davis. Were they not "stuff white people like" enough? Hmmm.
Click to expand...

I dunno, I get the sense there was an asshole landlord involved in this one. Some aspect of this story isn't being told. In the end, as with the Sherman situation it just hurts the area. M3 and the cupcake shop were good local businesses. Now they are vacant.
 
Kickass Cupcakes seems to have been a case of poor business planning, not necessarily shitty landlord behavior.
 
BussesAin'tTrains said:
Kickass Cupcakes seems to have been a case of poor business planning, not necessarily shitty landlord behavior.
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I think M3 was doomed to some extent as well. The space was small and while the food was good, the service was poor in my 2 or 3 visits. Maybe they couldn't pull the kind of money out of that small space that they needed to run a full service restaurant on Davis Square rent. Maybe a cafe or counter service joint, with lower operating costs and minimal service needs, might do better in that space.
 
Developer US2 is hosting "100 days of engagement" http://patch.com/massachusetts/somerville/us2-kicks-100-days-engagement-0#.VBITCrywJGw

Frankly, this is lost on me beyond its PR value. I've been to oodles of planning meetings about Union Square since 2004. The only thing that's happened is a few new bike lanes (thank god for the new one going up Prospect!).

I understand the new developer needs to build relationships from scratch, but it's asinine for them to be asking the same hackneyed questions of random passersby ("What do you want to see in the new Union Square? More green space? Affordable housing?")

It diminishes the contributions of those who've been answering these same questions for years if suddenly the next three months are, finally, when it REALLY matters to get your opinion in. Somerville already has a city-wide vision and a very robust Union Square redevelopment plan, drawn from thousands of voices from many years of outreach.

I know it's largely PR lip service, but irksome nevertheless. Better to educate folks on the finished plan and get feedback on that. (http://www.somervillema.gov/sites/default/files/UnionSquareRevitalizationPlanFINAL_0.pdf)

The time for blank canvases is over.
 
fattony said:
I call BS on the owner blaming gentrification, he is going out of business voluntarily. If he doesn't want to serve what customers want to eat, that doesn't make it the customers' fault.
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aaaaaa said:
For what it's worth, a friend of mine worked at Sherman and said that the owner was just an atrocious business person. Maybe gentrification played a role, but I'd put my money on poor management as the primary cause for Sherman's closure
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Also saw in the comments that the place closed at 3pm every day. Sort of tough to succeed with that model.
 
mdd said:
The M3 spot is a primo location, something else will move in there in time. I believe the old Kickass Cupcakes storefront already has a tenant:

http://boston.eater.com/archives/2014/08/28/tenoch-could-be-expanding-to-davis-square.php
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I wouldn't call it a primo location. Highland Avenue near Davis is pretty lifeless with the exception of Five Horses and it doesn't get nearly the pedestrian traffic that you see on Elm, Holland, and College Ave. Many people heading in that direction will just walk along the community path anyway.

It's out of sight, out of mind for quite a few people in the area, I think.
 
Balerion said:
I wouldn't call it a primo location. Highland Avenue near Davis is pretty lifeless with the exception of Five Horses and it doesn't get nearly the pedestrian traffic that you see on Elm, Holland, and College Ave. Many people heading in that direction will just walk along the community path anyway.

It's out of sight, out of mind for quite a few people in the area, I think.
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Lifeless is not the word to use for Highland in Davis. It's not the restaurant and bar drag that Elm and Holland are, but it's businesses are quietly successful and utilized. Although whoever painted the facade of that building with the Lasic practice Barney Purple needs to get some laser eye correction themselves...
 
Millbrook Cold Storage conversion

15328240165_18b4ca6c62_b.jpg


Also completely off-topic but I like the cast of characters I caught. Look at the body language between the customer and two employees... looks like there's a good backstory here.
 
I hope it turns out as good as the Maple Leaf Lofts.
 
The City of Somerville has been informed that the U.S. Postal Service has completed the sale of the former Union Square Post Office at 237 Washington St. to Union Square Partners LLC, a Cambridge-based investor group associated with arts and entertainment promoter Don Law. Representatives of the buyer have informed the City that there is no formal proposal for the re-use of the building at this time and that they will be looking into the feasibility of a number of different uses, including the possibility of locating an arts venue with a possible additional café or restaurant use in the space. - See more at: http://www.somervillema.gov/news/union-sq-post-office-sold-arts-promoter#sthash.Af3dLTk7.dpuf
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.
 
Ugh. Other than a library that building's useless for anything but a Post Office. I hate stuff like this. An arts center, really? Why did the USPS move in the first place?
 
davem said:
Ugh. Other than a library that building's useless for anything but a Post Office. I hate stuff like this. An arts center, really? Why did the USPS move in the first place?
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Budget cuts. We're heading towards an era where the only post office in town is going to be the biggest one in the town center, and the others hold more value in real estate than they do serving a non-optional public function. And municipalities with multiple area codes won't be guaranteed a PO location for each area code any longer. The likes of Somerville aren't immune to it either when it's all about political horse-trading and cashing out max-value real estate, so the location cuts won't follow a demand curve. Going to really suck if you've got a PO Box or home business run through a PO Box and have to go outside your area code every single day to pick up your mail. Congress cares not one whit about those real-world inconveniences.


The only thing that's going to reverse that trend is if Congress passes that much- lobbied-for legislation to open up real basic banking services inside every PO for the personal checking/savings services. It's such a natural fit that'll pay for itself it's crazy it hasn't been done yet, and the Executive Branch's stance has long been "well, duh!". The "too big to fail" banks are also in full support of it because it would allow them to shed their low-margin savings account business that they don't want but are required to offer.

Unfortunately the credit union lobby is up in arms about it, and punches well above its weight at Congressional lobbying so it doesn't stand a chance in hell of getting to a floor vote. It's a lot more the CU's than local savings banks because there's so few local banks left standing that haven't been swallowed by chains, and the employee credit unions happen to serve workers at the corporations that are the biggest/loudest campaign donors of all.


Union won't be the last PO closure in a busy location where short-sighted real estate sale creates long-term inconvenience for people reliant on a walking-distance PO. If anything it's the leading edge of a closure wave in major squares akin to Union with rising real estate values.
 
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