By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

Somerville is increasingly home to innovative companies with intriguing missions and technologies. It’s also a place that such companies are outgrowing.

Somerville Chamber of Commerce President Stephen Mackey understands the attraction. He points to Somerville’s great urban lifestyle, nightlife, and walkability, in a location that is minutes to transportation centers and the enterprise-creation engines of MIT and Harvard.

The combination draws a remarkable population of innovators. Consider Templeman Automation (TA). In a world in which unclean drinking water kills 8,500 children per day, exposing water to prolonged sunlight in clear plastic bottles can disinfect it. TA’s solar-powered device determines the safety of water so treated, at a cost of less than a penny per use.

This represents the low-technology end of TA (templemanautomation.com) offerings that include software development, machine vision, robotics, sensor systems, optical systems, and simulation and visualization technologies.

Chris Templeman founded the company in his Somerville basement and now does business in the former Ames Envelope plant. He cites two reasons for remaining in Somerville. He loves living here. And the city’s workforce is dense with the kind of talent TA requires. Indeed, Somerville is second only to Cambridge in per capita residents with advanced degrees.

The Echo Nest’s founder Tristan Jehan says that it’s easier to attract talent from outside Somerville if you’re located in Davis Square. MTV, the BBC, Warner Music, and about 7,000 independent developers are building music applications using Echo Nest’s platform (the.echonest.com). The company’s software actively reads about and listens to music everywhere on the web.

Tristan and cofounder Brian Whitman lived in Porter Square when they completed their PhDs and started the company. “We both liked the village feel of Davis Square, the old remodeled brick factory building we’re in, with its wood beams and large windows, the bike path, the local cafés and restaurants…And we could both walk to work.”

Similar to TA, Second Wind (secondwind.com) began in the extra bedroom of Walter Sass’s Spring-Street home. Sass and cofounder Kenneth Cohn anticipated the advent of wind energy and saw an opportunity to make a difference while making a living.

That was over 20 years ago. Today, Second Wind creates software and devices that transform wind data into information that enables wind-energy producers to maximize their effectiveness and efficiency. The company has appeared in Inc. Magazine’s list of fastest-growing privately held companies for each of the last three years.

Second Wind’s General Manager Susan Giordano says that her high-tech employees love Davis Square, and the Red Line makes their getting to work easy. But the company couldn’t find the production space that it needed in Somerville. Its manufacturing operations are now in Newton.

This is becoming a pattern. When I reached XL Hybrids President Tod Hynes, he was packing up his Union Square office.

Tod calculates that when he came from Cleveland in 2005 he racked up 500 miles searching Greater Boston for the best place to live. He picked Somerville.

The company (xlhybrids.com) that he began in his basement and then moved to Webster Street converts auto fleets to hybrids, using a kit consisting of lithium ion batteries, an electric motor, and an anti-idling system.

Growth brought the need for new space. Tod would have preferred to find the configuration that he needed in Somerville. He didn’t. Ultimately, one of his investors offered to discount the rent on space in Boston.

Another Somerville-born enterprise is Sproxil (sproxil.com). About one-third of all drugs sold in developing countries are counterfeit. They often do little good and can cause grave harm.

Sproxil’s solution is grass-roots crowd sourcing—mobilizing mass collaboration using mobile phones to fight drug counterfeiting. Distributors of legitimate drugs attach scratch cards to their products. Customers reveal the codes and text them to a center that immediately verifies their authenticity. While protecting consumers at no cost to them, the technology supports law enforcement agencies and legitimate businesses as well.

Alden Zecha and partner Ashifi Gogo began the award-winning company in Alden’s Brickbottom home. They wanted to keep the growing enterprise in Somerville. While many Villens praise the city’s cultural diversity, it’s more meaningful to a company whose staff represents four different ethnic groups from five different nations.

Sproxil needed yearly dollars-per-square-foot rents in the high teens. And the firm’s employees wanted to come to work by public transit.

Available workspace within walking distance of the Porter or Davis Square Red Line stations consisted of uncomfortable offices converted from multi-family homes and leasing in the upper $30s, or retail-like spaces in the $40s. Sproxil found what it needed in Inman Square. Employees take a short bus ride from Central Square station.

Somerville needs new businesses. The city has a structural fiscal deficit because we have so little commercial property, and residential property is taxed at two-thirds the rate of commercial property but produces twice the municipal costs. We have one quarter the jobs per resident as Boston and Cambridge do.

There is plenty of demand for the kind of workspace that Echo Nest, Second Wind, and Wistia enjoy. And not so long ago, there was plenty of supply—close to a million square feet of vacant Davis Square industrial space. That space is now residential.

One by one, the Planning Board recommended and the Zoning Board of Appeals approved the changes in zoning that condo developers requested. Planning staff asserted that these changes represented the properties’ “highest and best use.”

Highest and best for whom?

It’s not as if city officials were unaware of the impact these decisions would have. For at least sixteen years, Stephen Mackey, myself, and others have been advocating that commercial space remain commercial.

Meanwhile, all those with an interest in Somerville’s economic and fiscal health must continue to do what we can to attract growing businesses and replace them when they leave. As Stephen Mackey says, “We’re not going to go straight to being an old-growth forest. We can serve very well as a nursery.”