By Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone

(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.)

During the past month, a lot of our focus in Somerville has been placed on the delay of the Green Line project. Yet we do have some good news on the mass transit front: the MBTA is set to approve the contract for the construction of the new Orange Line station in Assembly Square at its October 5 board meeting.

That keeps Somerville on track to get a new station in Assembly Square in 2013. In fact, this will be the first new T station added to the rail system since 1987. The local implications are massive. The T station is a critical element of the new development slated to take place in Assembly Square. Federal Realty Investment Trust is permitted to build up to 2,100 new housing units, 1.75 million square of office space and 600,000 square feet of retail space. A new hotel and movie theater complex will part of the package along with new parkland along the Mystic River.

Ultimately it should mean $17 million a year in new taxes to the City to help pay for better schools, safer streets and more public works projects.

Yet the impact of this station extends well beyond the borders of Somerville. We have a nation desperate for some positive economic momentum, but it seems gridlocked over how to achieve it. You do not get anywhere by sitting on your hands. You build your way to a better future. The City, State and Federal governments put our collective heads together and figured out how to provide the infrastructure necessary to transform what had become a post-industrial urban wasteland.

We are not going to pull new businesses out of a hat like it was a magic trick. Businesses need good infrastructure – mass transit, roads, sewers, street lights – and a coherent idea of what future development will take place around them. Hopefully, as Assembly Square comes together, other communities in this region and around the country will look to Somerville as an example of what works. While much of the rest of the nation is wracked with indecision, we are building. While others look at crumbling infrastructure and empty old industrial areas with a mixture of confusion and helplessness, we see opportunity.

This nation is going to build its way to a better place. It requires hard work, vision and commitment. Somerville has all three of those things going for it and that is why we are moving forward with our new Orange Line station. Yet we need to see a lot more construction like this taking place in our community and every community across the nation.

It is time to stop wringing our hands with worry. America needs to break out the heavy equipment and get to work.