Part 2 of Chris Faraone's Weekly Dig series on Somerville

[ron_newman]

The second installment of Chris Faraone's Weekly Dig series on Somerville politics is now on the street and online:

Ghosts of Assembly Square

The article ends with a teaser for upcoming part 3: "the Dig will show some of the ways Curtatone’s development agenda has manifested throughout Somerville: an ethically challenged zoning board, uncertified building commissioners, and residents learning to fight back."

(for part 1, see both The Somerville Files, Part 1: Nightmare on Beacon Street on the Weekly Dig website, and the resulting discussion here on DSLJ.)

Comments

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this! This installment seems much meatier -- and damning -- that the first one. These two paragraphs struck me in particular:

"Curtatone also got assistance [for his mayoral campaign] from Natasha Perez, a former campaign staffer who worked on his previous mayoral run. Perez, also deputy director of the state Democratic party at the time, was working for a company called Gravestar, which belonged the limited partnership that wanted to develop a strip mall at Assembly. There, Perez was tasked with managing political and media relations for Assembly development efforts.

In the process of campaigning, the aspiring mayor—whose campaign account started off more than $100,000 in debt in 2003—accepted thousands in donations from real estate professionals. Bolstered by these private forces, he outspent his opponent by nearly 400 percent, and sailed to victory. With Curtatone in office, Boston-based attorneys Palmer & Dodge, whose partners pumped nearly $2,000 into his campaign, was [sic] paid at least $450,000 to write new zoning for Assembly."

[ron_newman]

The dispute that I have with that section is that the "strip mall" isn't really a new development -- it is the reopening of the old Assembly Square Mall that had mostly closed after Macy's closed the former Jordan Marsh store.

[tom-champion.livejournal.com]

In its own snarky way, this piece is about as balanced as your average story on Fox News. The intention here is not to provide an accurate analysis of what actually happened but to use information selectively to create a distinctly misleading and one-sided impression of Assembly Square's actual history.

For example, the article fails to mention that current construction at Assembly Square includes hundreds of units of housing: the new Assembly Square won't be a windswept mall but a new riverfront neighborhood built on mixed-use, transit-oriented, smart growth planning principles. The housing component is an important detail, but it doesn't fit into the relentlessly negative narrative, so the authors left it out.

And this passage is especially troubling: "[R]ather than stop development in its tracks, Mystic View, FRIT, and IKEA entered mediation to determine the future of Assembly Row. In the process, all sides secured concessions, resulting in a sort of stalemate. As part of the agreement, residents were promised designated office and R&D facilities, plus ample open green space along the Mystic. FRIT and IKEA also pitched in $15 million for the Orange Line station."

Judging by the public comments (then and since) of all parties to that agreement (which was brokered at Mayor Curtatone's request by former Conservation Law Foundation President Doug Foy), the results were anything but a stalemate. After years of controversy, the agreement allowed a much-needed development project to move forward with the blessing of all sides in the debate. That's not a stalemate -- that's a breakthrough.

Of course one might argue -- and I would readily agree -- that there is usually more than one way to look at any issue. You might, for example, see the arrival of Federal Realty as a chance for the previous owners to flip valuable real estate for a quick profit (and that's inherently vile, isn't it?) or you can see it as the departure of developers who didn't get the whole smart-growth-mixed-use concept and their replacement by a well-financed national company that had experience with just that kind of development.

But once again, an evenhanded approach that considered both possibilities would only confuse the narrative.

Now, as a former City Hall flack, I am easy to dismiss -- and so are my opinions. Certainly in the authors' worldview, I am a stooge of the Man, a paid lackey of the municipal-industrial complex, out to screw the Little People. Thus it has always been and thus it must be now, right? (Although if that's really true, somebody owes me a big under-the-table payoff.)

By all means, read the Dig piece and judge for yourselves. But also consider viewing this 2008 City Cable video documentary on Assembly Square:

(Part One) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE7gdShC8tw)

(Part Two) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJYxnXiG4M4)

Or this 2011 update (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osO3_hm-Et8) on WBGH TV's Great Boston with Emily Rooney.


Maybe you can find some middle ground that partakes of both viewpoints.

[samcoren.livejournal.com]

Both viewpoints? We've gotten the other view (the city's) for years from waterdowned press releases and sound bites, Tom. Let's talk about the elephant in the room. Big campaign donations are in a sense a modern, legal form of bribery. FRIT employees, and other real estate developers (along with DCI the design firm working on Beacon St who was featured in Part 1) have been the mayor's biggest donors for years. They get special treatment from the city in terms of exclusive big money contracts and zoning board approvals. People scoff at the $500 yearly single donation maximum for individuals, but boy it sure looks suspicious that out of town people's college-aged children are donating to our mayor...in non-election years...and when the guy's run unopposed two elections in a row...

All that money adds up. Take a peak at campaign donators for other mayors in MA and see just how many real estate developers donate to our mayor vs. others.

[adam vaccaro (from livejournal.com)]

Tom,

The article by my calculation (and I may be colored by the fact that I wrote it) goes to lengths to show that today's Assembly is looking good. As things stand today, the property looks very likely to accomplish the goal of bolstering Somerville's tax base. But like the Beacon Street article, which -- contrary to the take of some -- wasn't about bike lanes and hotels so much as it was about context, this article seeks to show how we got here and who has benefited. (Again, I note this is a matter of intent and colored by the fact that I wrote it.) I went to Assembly last week. It looks great and I'm excited to see how it develops going forward. I've never seen a Starbucks so nice.

Hope you're doing well post-City Hall -- and glad to see you've been reading and contributing to the discussion thus far.

Best,
Adam

[ron_newman]

I've never seen a Starbucks so nice.

but I'd rather have seen a new branch of Diesel/Bloc 11 or of True Grounds or of Fortissimo (or something entirely new and local). This is beyond the city's direct control, but I don't want to see the new area fill up with chains that lack local character.

[teele-sq.livejournal.com]

amen

[masswich.livejournal.com]

Having been directly involved with much of this (I worked in City Hall from the tail end of Capuano, through Kelly Gay and into Curtatone,) what I see is snarky but fairly accurate. Many correct decisions have been made along the way, but the context has always been disorder and opportunism, with a dash of moral vagueness mixed in. Somerville politics are really not all that clean yet.

Without Mystic View Task Force, as infuriating as they could be to someone working at City Hall, Assembly Square would clearly have gone the Big Box route. On the other hand, Somerville would probably be home to the only Ikea in the region, because it would have been built before the Stoughton store and Ikea would have abandoned Stoughton instead. For the furniture lovers out there, that would be good news,but for Somerville I don't think it would have been a good use of limited land.