The third-term mayor of Somerville was the guest at the Aug. 8 Somerville News contributors meeting. Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone discussed the city’s future, its policies for parking tickets and who convinced IKEA to give priority to East Somerville residents when hiring for its new store in Assembly Square.

SN: What’s happening with the SCAT building in Union Square?

The building itself as a structure will stay; it has some history in it. SCAT we feel will be relocated, but somewhere as part of our development of the square, because we’re building an arts overlay in the square that the media arts are a big part of. So no matter what, SCAT is going to have a home in Union Square, and if it’s a new home, it’ll be more technologically advanced.

SN: With the economic climate the way it is, is there a possibility that development at Assembly Square could be stalled?

Yes. There is a danger in every development, that the schedule will be changed. So it has an effect on everything, because the major impact is what it does to infrastructure costs, if you look at NorthPoint, they lost their other potential development partner Goldman-Sachs, because the infrastructure costs just surpassed the land value so much it didn’t make sense. Any major economic development project over the last few years that hasn’t gone into the ground has lost economic value, even Assembly, but we’re still teed up to go.

I speak to the Federal Realty people, the IKEA people, they’re looking at the economic downturn and they wanna catch it on the upturn, so don’t be surprised if you see a store supposed to open up in September, open up in January. They wait three or four months so they can catch the market on the upturn. The bottom line, it’s happening.

SN: We hear IKEA’s opening up a station in the central library for Somerville people who want jobs.

We [the city] did that. You should call the Somerville Community Corporation and ask them if they were at the table when it was negotiated. They [SCC] came to me and we were already discussing it with IKEA and I said ‘It’s a good idea. We’re already doing it, we’re getting it done.’ Unfortunately sometimes these well-minded and intentioned social service agencies, they’re not the city government here, developers are not going to sit with them. They’re not going to negotiate these deals. You might want to ask ‘hey when were you at the table when the deal was made?’ Because I looked around the room and they weren’t there. We negotiated it, not the Somerville Community Corporation.

SN: Are meter maids and parking tickets used as a source of revenue for the city?

In any city they’re a major source of revenue. Traffic and parking around the city, that’s a major focus for residents all the time. Parking spots are a luxury here, as a revenue source, sure, they bring in several million dollars for the city. That money’s not being held, that money’s going back against the tax levy, or it’s for other technologies or services our resident’s get.

SN: What is coming up in Somerville as far as new events and activities?

The next thing that is going to happen is you’re going to see more of the civic events, next September we’re going to have a fireworks display, it will be an annual event in Assembly Square, the Riverfest. People used to say ‘why should we do these things, we might have problems.’ I mean, what are we animals over here? We can’t have a small town feel to this city? So we’re going to do more, we’re going to keep beefing up what we’re doing with the parades and the arts events, more civic events, we’re going to really push them hard.

SN: With the city becoming a more desirable place to live, some longtime residents are finding it harder to stay here as housing prices rise. What can the city do, if anything, to maintain affordability?

You need diversified housing that’s available. We’re excited to get some new developments to create some new rental stocks as well. We don’t want to make Somerville poorer, we want to keep what we have here.

Gentrification is not an issue now, that’s an issue that doesn’t make sense. These people who are coming in and moving into Somerville, want to make our city better. I think we should welcome them.