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davis_squareThe new Mayor will be hosting a meeting tonight (Monday, Feb 23rd) at 6:00 at the high school, to discuss development plans for Assembly Square.
If you're as pissed off by the "Assembly Square Task Force" as I am (they've blocked every proposal for development of the site for years, and IKEA has finally given up and is building down in the south shore now), this would be a good chance to make your voice heard. Don't let a small band of shrill zealots drown out the voice of the majority.
Monday, February 23rd, 6:00 PM
Assembly Square Community forum
Somerville High School
(on Highland Avenue, between City Hall and the Library)
(If you support Mystic View's plans for a 30,000-person office complex, you're welcome to show up as well. Just be prepared to explain why that proposal isn't far worse than the other ones that MVTF has already torpedoed.)
If you're as pissed off by the "Assembly Square Task Force" as I am (they've blocked every proposal for development of the site for years, and IKEA has finally given up and is building down in the south shore now), this would be a good chance to make your voice heard. Don't let a small band of shrill zealots drown out the voice of the majority.
Monday, February 23rd, 6:00 PM
Assembly Square Community forum
Somerville High School
(on Highland Avenue, between City Hall and the Library)
(If you support Mystic View's plans for a 30,000-person office complex, you're welcome to show up as well. Just be prepared to explain why that proposal isn't far worse than the other ones that MVTF has already torpedoed.)
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no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 06:13 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 06:34 am (UTC)Also, as a non-driver who sometimes heads to the Assembly Square area, the pedestrian/bike path would be very appreciated, rather than heading all the way down Broadway and looping back.
IKEA says they're still interested in building North of Boston in addition to their South Shore location.
-Dan
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 09:58 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 11:03 am (UTC)-Dan
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 06:41 am (UTC)Mystic View's final objection (before the IKEA project was scuttled) was that the traffic to the site would be objectionable. But they don't see any problem with their own proposed 30,000-person office complex. (Which would generate between 25,000 and 20,000 vehicle-round-trips daily, even with an Orange Line stop, and require a parking lot even larger than IKEA's.)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 06:45 am (UTC)whoa, slow down there...
Date: 2004-02-23 07:28 am (UTC).joe.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 07:30 am (UTC)Ok, so the state still benefits from one being built on the South Shore.
And Somerville is still left holding the bag with a run-down piece of prime commercial land. While it would be fine and wonderful for the city to develop it, the brutal fact is Somerville doesn't have the resources to do so and cannot partner up with neighboring cities because they are already tied up with the TriTech project.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 07:20 am (UTC)Assembly Square is already suffering from the choices made in previous attempts at redevelopment. K-Mart actually has a 99-year lease to its location there! Despite its proximity to Boston, to the Orange Line, and to the river, the site has never really recovered from its industrial past, and currently plays host to a handful of low-rent businesses.
National chain stores, especially low-employee-count big box stores, often bring in less money to the community than is originally promised. A recent court case in Louisiana pointed out that many national retailers (like the Gap and Toys R Us) are even minimizing the amount of local taxes that they have to pay by paying much of their earnings as "licensing fees' to a "separate" company (registered in tax-free Delaware) that owns their trademarks.
I'm actually happy that Home Depot dropped out of the Assembly Square plans yesterday (http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2004/02/21/home_depot_scraps_assembly_square_plan/), considering there's already one nearby and one right across the river in Everett.
As far as I can tell, the current developers *have* been trying to get around the laws on traffic impacts, and have tried to push through (over this year's Christmas/New Years holidays) special zoning exemptions that would make them less accountable to the community.
It is true that *any* new development at that site will put more stress on the already-clogged nearby roads; however, I believe that a more pedestrian-friendly development would make better use of the Orange Line; and that something with higher density (especially with office and living spaces) than a big box mall would provide the city with more income to help deal with the traffic impacts.
I do think that most people involved do have valid points in their favor, and I encourage civilized and informed debate on the topic, both here in LJ-land and particularly at the community meetings. This development is important for the future in Somerville, and we all have a responsibility as citizens to look out for our interests as citizens (which may or may not coincide with what will make money for developers).
.joe. (posting from a friend's account)
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 07:32 am (UTC)let the dude speak for himself...by his silence, he probably owns an SUV. What I'm for? I told you: mixed-use development that puts real money in the city's coffers, not big-box stores that have enough room in this world already. Hell, you probabl;y just wanna drive your car too. Maybe we should ban cars from Somerville, then people like you who don't care about our world would hate it here. By the way, do you think our obsession with partking lots has anything to do with the war? Your defense of this car/big box store culture puts you right there with Bushie and his chums.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 07:48 am (UTC).joe.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 07:53 am (UTC)And just to puncture your stereotypical view, I do drive a car- a rather large one at that- but also have worked for nonprofits fundraising for the environment and worked for the Democratic party in various elections and believe Bush should be impeached.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 07:55 am (UTC)I was cautiously in favor of the big-box plan: it sounded like it would add a lot of property tax revenue to the city; Somerville, which after all has the highest urban density in MA, sounded like the most appropriate place for such a store; and practically anything would be better than what's there now (have you been there? it's a wasteland). In addition, the mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly ideas for the site seemed nonsensical; the area is quite unfriendly to pedestrians due to the local highways (though the T stop would have mercifully helped that). They also sounded like an extremely effective way to gentrify one of the remaining affordable (-ish) near-Boston areas, driving out a racially diverse, working class population.
Now, lest my likely ensuing silence on this thread convince you I'm an SUV owner -- my husband and I own zero cars between us. I biked thirteen-mile-a-day round trips to my last job, and I count both the environmental and the political savings as major benefits of this mode of transportation. In hideous weather, I carpooled with a coworker; when we need to buy more groceries than we can carry on bikes, we carshare through Zipcar.
I think this world has to have some kind of balance between development, to house, employ, and entertain us humans, and nature. I think that a popular anchor store, near existing major roads, in a dense urban area, generating property tax revenue, is a sensible kind of development. I think a concrete plan with existing investors (well, it had existing investors, anyway) is superior to a utopian plan with no means of funding. I think that the present crime-infested wasteland on the site is inferior to nearly any plan.
On a side note, anyone interested in these issues ought to read Jane Jacobs' _The Death and Life of Great American Cities_. I think Jacobs may be the originator of the mixed-use development idea. She argues compellingly, and with enviable writing skill, about what makes cities work and not work.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 09:08 am (UTC)The main worry I had about some of the schemes that were proposed when I lived in the area was the fear of gentrification. Heck, even the fact that I lived in the area (East Somerville) was probably an early sign of that happening, though most of my friends still thought my neighborhood was "sketchy'. It had many of the specific, local, quirky touches that one might hope for in a racially, ethnically diverse working class neighborhood.
And while it may not be directly relevant to me anymore, I'm glad to see Ikea and Home Depot not going in there. The Orange Line really gets short shrift from the MBTA. I think a nice mixed use complex and a new stop might also help to lessen that a bit.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 09:30 am (UTC)-Dan
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 09:48 am (UTC)Gentrification is probably inevitable, though. The short distance from East Somerville to the new stuff where the above ground I-93 goes underground will probably do a lot of that on its own.
new T Stop
Date: 2004-02-23 09:43 am (UTC)Any building plan that is profitable only *after* a T-stop magically appears is essentially Non-Viable. I sat through enough city hall meetings to figure this out.
Something that makes the city money without a T-stop has to happen *first*.
Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 08:23 am (UTC)What do you mean by "mixed-use development that puts real money in the city's coffers"?
-Dan
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 08:50 am (UTC)No, I don't own an SUV. No, I don't support Bush. Actually, I spend much of my time doing volunteer work for organizations like "Food for Free" and "Big Brother/Big Sister." Sorry to burst your bubble, but people who oppose Mystic View's plans are not greedy SUV-driving Republicans.
Mystic View has proposed an office complex employing 30,000 people on the Assembly Square site. They state that their model is an expanded version of Kendall Square. However, in Kendall Square, an area well-served by bus lines and a T stop (two, if you count Lechmere), we still see that two-thirds of the commuters arrive in single-person automobiles. Following Mystic View's model, this means that the Assembly Square site would need to support 20,000 automotive round-trips per day, concentrated at weekday morning and evening rush hours, when congestion is already at the worst.
IKEA would never draw twenty thousand shoppers per day, and their traffic would be spread throughout the day, and across the week. Yet, Mystic View's current complaint is that IKEA would generate too much traffic....When their own proposal would be much, much, worse.
no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 07:57 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 08:18 am (UTC)Re:
Date: 2004-02-23 08:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-02-23 12:41 pm (UTC)May the self-righteous eat themselves.
angry citizen scares live journal users
Date: 2004-02-23 07:59 am (UTC)Re: angry citizen scares live journal users
Date: 2004-02-23 08:45 am (UTC)coming up with catchy soundbites is not the same as coming up with a viable solution.
Oh, this is funny!
Date: 2004-02-23 08:57 am (UTC)anthonydreamer is a troll
Date: 2004-02-23 11:27 am (UTC)