City representatives outlined the next set of plans for the 90 Washington Street complex for the public at last week’s informational public meeting.

By Fernando Cervantes Jr.

90 Washington Street was home to the popular Cobble Hill Plaza shopping center from 1982 – 2016, hosting shops and small businesses vital to local residents. Closed for planned developments by the former owner, the site has been sitting vacant for more than six years.

Starting with a site selection in 2018, the City of Somerville chose 90 Washington Street as the site for a new Public Safety Building, combining a fire station with Police, Fire and 911 headquarters. The site is a four-acre area near the Green Line extension project slated to open in November.

Planning has been underway for the last four years culminating with public outreach by the City of Somerville for the last couple of months. In a meeting last Thursday held at the East Somerville Community School members of the community were invited to review the next steps of the development.

City of Somerville staffers outlined the plans for the redevelopment of the 90 Washington Street site. Melissa Woods, director of Capital Projects mentioned community members’ interests in the project.

“People want civic uses, new open space, commercial development bringing the services that Cobble Hill Plaza once brought to the neighborhood back, and housing in the neighborhood,” Woods said. “There was a lot of interest for affordable housing in particular at 90 Washington Street.”

These interests were expressed through so-called listening sessions hosted by the planners where community members were invited to share ideas. According to Woods, people were invited to share their own designs using Legos as building models.

“We’ve engaged over 125 people, we’ve held six listening sessions, some big, some small. We’ve had them virtual, indoors, outdoors, so really trying to cast the widest net to talk to people about what they’d like to see at 90 Washington Street,” Woods said.

Following the presentation by city officials, the floor was opened to questions from the community, where concerns of noise levels from the planned fire station were raised.

Addressing these concerns, Tom Galligani Director of Economic Development mentioned limitations to the site selection process.

“The challenge that we have here in Somerville is the densest community in the state, is that there are no ideal sites for a significant public safety building. There are no sites that will have zero impact on people.” Galligani said, “This was the best, this was the largest.”