Union Square Somerville Infill and Small Developments

Every single aspect of your post is inarguably accurate. Guessing you're local -- consider running for city council at large or ward city council (seriously). You already have my vote.
 
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121 Prospect is coming together nicely.
 
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108 Prospect has pile driving and drilled piles. That’s surprising for such a small project. Perhaps it’s for excavation collapse prevention.
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84 Prospect is now “The Mia” and it has the cheapest non-Hardie Plank cladding I have seen a long time.

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Bonus: the flat iron building finally has a retail tenant.
 

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I guess it'll depend on which rendering gets built. The black brick shows them and the red brick does not. I have my guess on which on gets built, but will wait and see as construction progresses. Going from black to red (or vice-versa) is a pretty drastic design change that I would be surprised wasn't run through the city approvals.
 
84 Prospect continues to confound with its cladding choices. We now have pre-rusted pseudo-corrugated panels. Maybe they want to honor the body shops that used to pepper the area?

The architect's renders definitely did not look like that, lol. But given they are calling it "Prospect Ironworks" maybe it's an attempted nod to the "creative ironworks" business that used to be in that spot, especially since the property owners ran that business and also lived in the house next door.

From a bit of digging - it looks like this was a split parcel between UR/Urban Residence (where apartment buildings up to 4 stories allowed by right) and MR5/Mid-Rise 5 story zoning (Site Plan Approval required, including Urban Design Commission review). The property owner originally requested to upzone the UR portion to MR5, but the Planning Board voted against this (something about neighborhood concerns that the developer might add a commercial use). After that, the property owner successfully requested the MR5 portion to be downzoned to UR instead, and went with a by-right 4-story building. So no chance for the UDC to review, otherwise they might've said something about the choice of rusty cladding.
 
Pretty sure the wooden guardrail is temporary, during construction. Will be interesting to see how it all shapes up once this is done.
 

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