WBUR article on Union Square development

[mzrowan.livejournal.com]

An interesting WBUR piece on possible future development in Union Square. TL;DR: In anticipation of the Green Line's arrival, the city has reserved the right to take large swaths of Union Square by eminent domain in order to sell them to a single developer, rather than letting them be developed piecemeal by the current owners or whoever they choose to sell to.

Comments

[ron_newman]

This happened on a much smaller scale in Davis Square in the mid-1980s, resulting in the current Harvard Vanguard medical building replacing an auto-repair garage and an adjoining storefront or two.

[canongrrl.livejournal.com]

except this is a lot more space and its designed, to quote the mayor, to allow for a single developer to develop the area. I call BS to this and I'm sad I voted for him the last time he ran. What Union doesn't need is to become another legacy place. It doesn't help that I know the person who is being impacted by the mayor's cronyism.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Legacy place makes me twitch so much.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

Legacy place?

[canongrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm going for a little hyperbole - but something like this:

http://www.legacyplace.com/

it is fairly soulless. Though they do have a killer WF

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

Snurk! Of course, anything labeled "legacy" is a soulless new development.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

It cuts both ways. A large development is worth a lot more than the sum of a lot of small developments. The city is hungry for the taxes that can be extracted from businesses. It's hard to assemble a large parcel of land if you don't have some sort of leverage over the current owners, because whichever owner holds out the longest has the most leverage to extract into his own pocket the value that will be created. Of course, a big, new development will be much less quaint, and probably somewhat less useful for the sort of people who live there now. But it will be much more useful for the sort of people (yuppies) who can be attracted to the area by that sort of development.

[hikermtnbiker.livejournal.com]

This does not have to be the case. The problem is that the developers around here have no imagination and seem to do everything on the cheap or ordinary, as evidenced by the monstrosity by the Rosebud, the proposed development next to the Dilboy, even the CVS/BSC building. Station Landing is a bit better. I've not looked at the Maxpac site to see if that is more creative.

I was absolutely blown away by Orenco Station in Oregon. I felt like I was in the Back Bay. All the construction seemed top notch (externally anyway) with nice little architectural details that no one around here seems to use. Some info here. http://www.terrain.org/unsprawl/10/

I've also seen lots of really nice modern developments in Seattle and Vancouver. But for some reason around here, for the most part, we get the same bland old thing every time, small developer or big.

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

Glad to know I am not the only one who thinks that the "greek" building next to the Rosebud is an utter monstrosity and a good example of the worst of the architectural style of "urban development on the cheap."

I don't know anything about Somerville's zoning or building regs but it is pretty clear they don't do much in the way of design review. Doesn't bode well for Union (or Assembly) Square.

[geekpixie.livejournal.com]

Not only is the space next to the Dilboy a bit much, you should see what they want to rent out the first floor! (hence it being empty still...)

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure if the Mayor Joe had noticed lately, but any parcel of land larger than a rat's tiny little ass has developers dropping multi millions of bucks just for the rights to look at it funny.

You don't need to harness five parcels together to get a better deal for a developer. You need a horde of angry citizens with pitchforks to keep developers in line when there's only *one* parcel. And you don't need to ED private property to attract developers. Shame Shame Shame on him.

This Mayor sometimes really gets my gall.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

Enjoyed hearing the comment from Jack Connolly. How do I reconcile that with all the folks who claim that Somerville was a utopia back then?

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

*snerk* i was around Davis some in the late '80s -- it was a sleepy place, mostly old-school Somerville as I recall. if that's your definition of utopia, sure, but i think I prefer the square as it stands today, astronomical property values notwithstanding.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

Jack is quoted: “Davis Square in the mid-’70s was pretty much boarded up, tired,” he said. “It was a place where two or three of us wouldn’t walk after dark because we knew better.” That sounds very serious. Maybe it got better by the late 80s?

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

The Red Line extension started being built in 1983 and made all the difference. It used to be called Slummerville for good reason, and had one of the lowest per-capita incomes in the state. Davis Square was bad and Union Square was worse.

[somerfriend.livejournal.com]

So what is the historical period that long time residents refer to when they talk about how great Somerville was back in the day, when everyone knew each other and it was one big happy family?

[svilletheatre.livejournal.com]

Somerville was a very close-knit community in the 70's and 80's, even as it's commercial areas were more worn out. The two are not necessarily connected. People had different needs back then - they were excited about the shopping plazas and malls etc. that we're being built on the edges of town (Meadow Glen and Assembly malls, more suburban things on Rt. 16) that urban developers poo-poo today. They were less interested in the frayed fabric of the commercial centers of the mid-20th century like Davis and Union. This type of situation was certainly not exclusive to Somerville or Boston. The true glory days when it was firing on all cylinders (industrial, commercial, residential) for a lot of people still living were the 50's and 60's. However, Davis Sq. was still a center of activity, just nothing like it had been or would become. The things consumers wanted out of it then were different and certainly a lower demand; Jack is correct that there were indeed empty stores and some boarded up spaces. There were lots of really small bar-rooms (a reason so many old timers assume that ALL bars are 'buckets of blood) that I'm sure a lot of people would not have felt comfy going too, but which still had a regular working class clientele. But even in its low rent worn out phase, that version of Davis Square is still seen as better than now by some people simply because it was the one they grew up with.

[achinhibitor.livejournal.com]

As LBJ said, "The past remembers better than it lived." And he came from a pretty poor background.

But economic stagnation often leads to the "everyone knew each other" situation because nobody moves into town for a few decades. Everyone you'd meet on the street went to the same high school you did.

[ron_newman]

By the late 80s, Davis Square wasn't "boarded up", nor was it dangerous, but it was tired. The Somerville Theatre and Johnny D's were going strong, but there wasn't much reason to walk east of Day Street, especially at night.

In my view, Elm Street really started to turn around when the Burren opened.

[serious-noir.livejournal.com]

Herrell's and Bertucci's were here in the early 80's. Redbones in '87.

[ron_newman]

True (but it was Steve's ice cream, not Herrell's.) The blocks of Elm between the Somerville Theatre and Bertucci's were pretty bleak, though.

[canongrrl.livejournal.com]

I miss Steve's. Best ice cream ever (in my memory at least)

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

It should be noted that it is extremely unlikely the city will take all the land. Eminent domain comes with a pretty complicated set of legal obligations, and one of the big ones is signposting, at length, that you maybe possibly kinda sorta might be taking the land under eminent domain. The more land you try to claim, the more court cases you generally have to fight and legal obligations you have to fulfill, and the city wants the Green Line stops a lot more than it wants a "unified development package" or sit through the Terrifying Hamburgers Squad whining at a zoning meeting.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

the what squad?

[thetathx1138.livejournal.com]

Look up some of the threads on the Social Security building in Davis, you'll see what I mean.