donut house progress

[lcmayer.livejournal.com]

Highland road and morrison ave - Looks like they've got the framing done for the first floor of whatever the former donut shop is being reincarnated as. Does anyone know about the company who is developing the property - are they a good company or is this going to be another "davis square condos" situation?

Comments

[ron_newman]

All I know is that it's supposed to be two side-by-side single-family townhouses.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

The original structure was condemned after the floor collapsed, right? Do they know what caused the collapse?

[lcmayer.livejournal.com]

correct...but I'm not sure what caused the collapse. there's no signs out front of the construction site to tell you anything about the builders, just a sign for the temporary fence company.

[lcmayer.livejournal.com]

interesting - how did you find this out?

[ron_newman]

At a Davis Square Task Force meeting, I think.

[lcmayer.livejournal.com]

would it be a pain for you to help me find the minutes to the meeting somewhere? this is down the street from me and my neighbors, and we all use the bike path, tot lot and the dog meet up regularly.

[fefie.livejournal.com]

I'd be interested in the location of Davis Sq Task Force meeting minutes too.

[ron_newman]

There have been no formal minutes, to my knowledge.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I found out the same information by chatting with the construction workers.

sad

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

No more "mmmm, donuts".

Re: sad

[srakkt.livejournal.com]

Verna's, my friend. Try their glazed old-fashioned.

Re: sad

[lcmayer.livejournal.com]

i know, they were really good. and only 25 cents!!

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

I'm aware nitpicking so don't jump on me. But my spidey sense really tingles hearing it called "highland road" and not "highland ave".. similar to hearing the T called "the metro" or something of that nature. Bostonian OCD kicking in I suppose.

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

And just to clarify, nothing personal!

[lcmayer.livejournal.com]

no offense taken :) my neighborhood is your neighborhood...

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Specifically Highland Road runs from the bike path to Broadway.

Morrison & Highland Ave never intersect.

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[lcmayer.livejournal.com]

Highland road is a quite lovely street - its where all the big wigs used to live when Somerville was "young" - the judges, mayors, people with money. That's why the houses are so nice and the street is so wide. It was THE place to live at one time...and still is, imho...

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[somertricky.livejournal.com]

Isn't the dirty secret that all that room out front leaves the houses with absolutely miniscule backyards?

It's All Relative Dept.

[somertricky.livejournal.com]

Nevermind, sort of. Highland Avenue lots are 80 feet deep, same as Josephine and Rogers. To the east, Pearson, Pritchard, Boston: 70 and 75 feet deep.

However, west of Willow (Lowden, Bay State, Liberty) the lots are 95 or 100 feet deep. There's where the original thought came from...

Re: It's All Relative Dept.

[ron_newman]

I think you mean Highland Road, too ...

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Ah, that makes sense! I live on one of the neighboring streets and had wondered why that one was different.

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[elements.livejournal.com]

Actually, the reason it is that way - with the additional green space between the sidewalk and the street, making it more desirable - is that originally, when the bike path was a railway, the train stop was where the donut shop used to be, and Highland between the bike path and Kidder was planned to be a park. (The whole College/Morrison/Broadway/Cedar neighborhood was planned.) Then they ended up deciding to build houses there after all, and so had more room. At least that is the story I was told, wish I could recall who told it!

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[josephineave.livejournal.com]

That's Hancock on the other side.

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

Neither Morrison nor Highland Rd intersect with Highland ave.

On the other side of the bike path, the road that would be highland road if it continued across the path and through lexington playground is Hancock St.

I'm just wondering if 1 Highland Rd. is still there.

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[ron_newman]

what's at 1 Highland Road?

It's a joke -

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

It was what we used to call the abandoned camper trailer that belonged to the people who own 3-7 Highland Rd.

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

Google Maps must have a total blast dealing with that situation.

your spidey sense is off

[pierceheart.livejournal.com]

no worse than they have with Putnam St vs Putnam Rd.

If you put rd in, you get rd, not ave.

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[fefie.livejournal.com]

As do out-of-towners .... (speaking as a Highland Ave resident here)

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[narya.livejournal.com]

Google Maps doesn't have a problem with it but the pizza delivery people often do.

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[prog.livejournal.com]

I used to live on another Somerville "avenue" with a correspondingly named "road", though in my case the doppleganger isn't anywhere nearby.

I work as a consultant who gets paid through the mail, and every so often a new client would say "Hey, I mailed you your payment but it came back 'No such address!'" My first question is, "Did you address it to Linden Road instead of Linden Avenue?" So far, that's always been the cause.

Just the price of working in a city so dense that it needs several layers of street-namespacing...

Re: No, it's Highland Road

[aki.livejournal.com]

Or of living in New England where we have no creativity in naming streets and towns.

[bobobb.livejournal.com]

There is both highland road and highland ave, just like there is a Pearson Road and Pearson Ave. 5 blocks from each other.

[narya.livejournal.com]

And Cedar St and Cedar Ave and Cedar St Place.

And Linden Ave and Linden St.

[aki.livejournal.com]

Boston Ave and Boston St.

[hissilliness.livejournal.com]

Hall Ave and Hall St.

[ron_newman]

Worse than all of the above is the existence of two Oxford Streets in Somerville. One of them is parallel to Highland Ave. near City Hall. The other one is mostly in Cambridge, but ends with two or three houses in Somerville near Porter Square.

Similarly, Cambridge has an Elm Street near Inman Square, but it also has a bunch of houses that front on our Elm Street.

[djdreilinger.livejournal.com]

If you have the address, you can look up the owner in the Registry of Deeds (http://www.sec.state.ma.us/rod/rodmidsth/midsthidx.htm). If it's a corporate entity, you can look up the people behind the name in the state's corp database (http://corp.sec.state.ma.us/corp/corpsearch/CorpSearchInput.asp).