Assembly Square, the Back Story
Part 8: Loss of Trust

A commentary by William C. Shelton

It‚Äôs hard to know whether Dorothy Kelly Gay‚Äôs administration and Mystic View could have found a compromise on Assembly Square Redevelopment.  It would have required sufficient mutual trust for all parties to take two risks:  exploring innovative but unfamiliar solutions, and estranging some portion of their constituencies.  Today, both parties say that they took both risks.  But before they did so to the extent needed to craft a real solution, mutual missteps and a lack of communication undermined the trust necessary to support further risk taking.

Dorothy Kelly Gay had come into office just before property tax assessments caught up with huge increases in Somerville‚Äôs housing prices.  When homeowners received $200-300 hikes in their tax bills, many blamed the new administration.  The mayor and her staff felt an urgency to expand the commercial tax base, providing some measure of homeowner tax relief.

Developers loudly protested that delays in their plans were imposing carrying cost burdens.  The mayor determined to move as quickly as possible to implement whatever recommendations planner Steve Cecil produced.

City staff had never before been involved with a land transformation.  This is a city-led process that imposes a single, unified development plan on 50 acres or more, to fundamentally transform the property and how the market perceives it, and often, create market demand that has not yet existed.  Landowners are constrained, through zoning, to build only what the plan specifies, but the plan greatly increases their property value.  The process is fundamentally different from trying to negotiate the best deal for the city, in the current real estate market, on a series of individual projects. 

By contrast, Mystic View members had played a variety of roles in land transformations, including urban planner, developer‚Äôs consultant, architect, and financial analyst.  They felt supported in their view when, in every planning meeting, public participants overwhelmingly opposed big boxes.

Cecil was under enormous pressure from developers to bless big boxes.  He attempted to produce a compromise plan that depended on market forces replacing big boxes and vast parking lots with offices in twenty years.  It was an economic impossibility. Mystic Viewers felt betrayed, and they imagined that the city had pushed Cecil in this direction.  City officials had not, but they quickly embraced Cecil‚Äôs plan as a solution to their political challenges.

Mystic View continued working with the city in good faith.  In one effort, they met with individual aldermen, pointing out that the city spends $100,000 each year per taxable acre.  Land transformations like Kendall Square generate $1 million per acre in taxes, while big boxes seldom break $50,000.  Neighboring cities have spent billions to support land transformations, but Somerville  could spend very little and still make Assembly Square the best of its class.

On June 22, 2000, the Board of Aldermen unanimously voted the following:  ‚ÄúRESOLVED: That this Board of Aldermen supports the vision for the redevelopment of Assembly Square articulated by the Mystic View Task Force, and will support the Administration in imposing conditions and design standards on developers which will transform that vision into reality."

Throughout that summer, city planners and Mystic View conducted a series of confidential meetings to draft new zoning for Assembly Square. They were working against a submission deadline of the August 24th Board of Aldermen meeting.  Developer ASLP intended to apply for permits to turn the mall into a giant Home Depot, and the city and Mystic View wanted the project to be covered by the new zoning.

In the view of city officials, many conflicts remained in the draft zoning.  It is, in fact, unclear whether the parties would have ever resolved them.  Late on August 22nd, city staff called Mystic View leaders and informed them that they would not be submitting zoning on the 24th. 

Mystic Viewers were unaware that the city‚Äôs lawyers had informed city staff that the August 24 deadline was not binding.  They scrambled to complete a zoning proposal and find an alderman who would submit it on the 24th.  Denise Provost agreed to do so.

When Mystic View leaders informed their city counterparts that they would be submitting zoning, the city’s planners were disappointed, but said they understood Mystic View’s intentions.

However, for reasons that may have been as simple as miscommunication, the mayor‚Äôs spokesman told the press that Mystic View‚Äôs submission had come as a surprise.  The organization‚Äôs leaders concluded that they had been set up, and they revealed that they had been working with the city.

This breech of confidentiality, together with Mystic View‚Äôs unilateral submission of zoning, was a breaking point for the administration.  They would never again communicate with Mystic View except through public channels. 

Mystic View did not know this at the time.  Their breaking point would come three months later.