Watertown Mall Redevelopment | 550 Arsenal Street | Watertown

abdinoor

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Meetings are planned for Thursday, Jan. 27 and Tuesday, March 1 and will be held virtually.
The presentation posted with the project highlights the following items:

  • Target store to remain
  • Retaining existing community retail, including key retailers
  • With Floor Area Ratio (FAR) and Regional Mixed Use District (RMUD) building height limits
  • Three new office/life science buildings (+/- 500,000 s.f. total)
  • Two parking garages (+/- 540 new spaces)
  • Two amenity buildings (exact program under development)
  • No new curb cuts/entries on Arsenal Street.
See the presentation by clicking here.

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Brad Plaid

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Underwhelming, too much open space. Can be easily reconfigured (with a variance if need be) to fit another building. This is Watertown's evolving Biotechnology Golden Mile, so maximize it. The rest of the town can do the sleepy suburb thing.
 

RandomWalk

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The green space pulling away from the street is sad for the stumpy buildings in this plan. Height is necessary in this area, but density is.

Keeping the Target as-is reminds me of the epic fit the town had when Walmart wanted to build along Arsenal.
 

W-4

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So much for building a “megacampus”...
 

pushy_penguin

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Revised Watertown Mall Special Permit package:
LINK

There's a wealth of information in the linked PDF but I pulled out the renderings below.
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theSil

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Watertown gets its own mini Cambridge Crossing ❤

Seems positive that the second parking garage has been moved north of the bike lane and is no longer fronting Arsenal St. Still seems like a big missed opportunity that this development doesn't include housing.
 

RandomWalk

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I assume the remaining retail portion of the mall has some covenant that preserves the surface parking.
 

Desire Path

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If you're building big garages, why include the surface parking at all? This should have a continuous streetwall on Arsenal or send it back to the drawing board.
The existing Target, and its surface parking, is not a part of the redevelopment.
 

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