Smart Growth in Somerville
Part 2:  The next giant step

A Commentary by William C. Shelton

(The views and opinions expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of The Somerville News, its publishers or its staff)

   This Thursday evening the Somerville Planning Board will conduct a public hearing on the largest single private development ever proposed in Massachusetts.  This Planned Unit Development (PUD) would absorb two-thirds of Assembly Square‚Äôs developable land.  It is the first tangible outcome of the settlement between Ikea, Federal Realty Investment Trust, and the Mystic View Task Force.

   The settlement built a strong foundation for redevelopment, establishing standards on which Somerville‚Äôs staff, boards, and citizenry can further improve.  The city was not party to, nor bound by the settlement agreement, so the Planning Board now faces an awesome challenge and an exceptional opportunity. 

   The PUD‚Äôs scale and complexity have produced four volumes of dense analysis. plus plans.  The Board must absorb this information and then make recommendations that will shape the city and its fiscal health for generations.  But Board members only received this information last week. 

   Their actions can provide greater benefit or greater harm to the city than the terms negotiated in the Assembly Square settlement agreement.  To have a neutral or better impact, the Board will have to understand, and may want to incorporate, those terms into the PUD.

   Perhaps the greatest concern is that of fiscal impact.  The 1.2 million square feet of retail space, 2.6 million of residential, and 1.75 million of office and research and development space that would exist in Assembly Square after the PUD‚Äôs build-out would all produce tax revenue.  But the residential projects would produce more new costs to the city than revenues, creating a net loss.  The retail would, at best, break even.

  Indeed, this is how we got into our current fiscal mess.  We became the third-most-broke city or town in Massachusetts by converting commercial space to residential use, which produces twice the city costs, but only two-thirds the tax revenue as commercial space.  Our budget remains constrained, while homeowners pay higher taxes every year.

  Contrast this with next-door Cambridge, whose land-use patterns were not so different from ours thirty years ago.  Although its population is now only 30% greater than ours, its city budget is 130% greater.  Cambridge achieved this through commercial development, while creating two jobs for every resident, as opposed to Somerville‚Äôs two residents for every job. 

  Cambridge‚Äôs potential for commercial development is close to being used up.  It‚Äôs Somerville‚Äôs turn now.

  That‚Äôs why the settlement agreement allows the developers to convert allocations of residential and retail space to office and R&D, but does not permit the reverse.  It would be a tragedy for the Planning Board to not include this same condition in its PUD approval‚Äîall the more so because the residential real estate market is rapidly declining, while the office market is surging.

   To support successful development, minimize city costs, and reduce public health impacts, the developers and Mystic View negotiated a maximum 50,000-vehicle-trip per-day target for Assembly Square, with a 55,000-trip cap.  They empowered a Transportation Management Authority to ensure compliance.  Federal Realty agreed to build pedestrian connections to Sullivan Square, East Somerville, Ten Hills, and Draw 7 Park, and to locate housing development where vehicle exhaust would be least harmful.  The Planning Board can condition its approval on each of these elements.

   It could, however, make things much worse.  If the Planning Board‚Äôs actions prevent the implementation of substantive terms of the settlement agreement, then the parties to the agreement would no longer be bound by it.  The developers would no longer be obligated to implement their commitments, and the activists would no longer be restrained from pursuing the litigation that we all would like to put behind us.

   On the other hand, the Planning Board could approve a PUD with more benefits to the city than those provided in the settlement agreement.  The PUD contains much less open space than comparable mixed-use developments in Boston and Cambridge, despite those developments‚Äô greater building density. Mystic View settled for much less high-quality open space than the activists had previously called for.  But the settlement agreement commits the developers to use ‚Äúbest efforts‚Äù to increase the PUD‚Äôs usable open space by 2.5 acres beyond that detailed in the PUD.  The Planning Board could make this a requirement. 

   It could specify a second head house for the Orange Line station, as is the case in Davis Square.  It could require the lower parking ratios that developers must meet in Boston and Cambridge.  It could incorporate recommendations of the city‚Äôs own Design Review Committee.

   Through exceptional hard work, honesty, and mutual trust, Federal Realty, Ikea, and Mystic View created new possibilities for effective planning, fiscal health, mutual cooperation, and a revived waterfront.  All those who care about Somerville‚Äôs future should come out Thursday evening to bear witness to the city government‚Äôs ability to go them one better.