By William C. Shelton

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

Rich opportunities for Union Square revitalization continue to emerge. But fully realizing them will require decision makers to resolve inherent, but as yet unarticulated, conflicts among their own visions and among key planning documents.

The Federal government is recommending full funding of the Green Line extension in New Starts, the Federal Transit Administration’s primary grant program for major capital investments in rail, bus, and ferry development. Last week, MBTA officials learned that $100 million of funding is in this coming fiscal year’s federal budget and will probably be approved.

The funds would be available as early as October, expanding work already underway. Construction crews have been widening three bridges, improving drainage, and building walls.

MBTA staff members are enthusiastically committed to the project. They estimate that the link to Union Square may be completed by 2018 or perhaps even earlier.

Developer behemoths like Boston Properties and Forest Cities did not respond to the city’s Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for a Union Square master developer partner.  But nine reputable development teams did. It’s unlikely that any other revitalization project in Eastern Massachusetts outside of Boston’s and Cambridge’s prime development areas could have generated this level of interest from this caliber of applicants.

Three of the teams appeared before the Union Square Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) Wednesday March 5th, another three last Tuesday (March 11), and three more will do so this coming Tuesday (March 18), all at Argenziano School. Turnout has been impressive, as have been the quality of the presentations and the manifest commitment of the development teams.

I personally was delighted to hear from a presenter that city officials have emphasized the primacy of commercial development.

Selecting among highly qualified teams is not the only challenge that the CAC and Somerville Redevelopment Authority members will have to meet in making their recommendations. A more fundamental one is what they want Union Square to be.

The Union Square Zoning Plan (2009), Somervision Comprehensive Plan (2012), Union Square Revitalization Plan (2012) and the Request for Qualifications (2013) each represents a highly competent effort by city staff that directly involved or was based on public participation.

Explicitly or implicitly, they each offer a quantifiable vision for Union Square development. But they are in conflict regarding density and mix of uses by location.

Speaking privately, individual Committee members have preferences for building heights, massing guidelines, and use mixes that are also in conflict.

Here is a simple example. The SomerVision Comprehensive Plan calls for 2.4 million square feet of new development across all 60 acres of Union Square and Boynton Yards. Adding up the block-by-block new development called for in the RFQ, one arrives at a total square footage of just a little less than that 2.4 million, on only 12-to-15 acres in Union Square. Yet Boynton Yards zoning allows for higher densities than does Union Square zoning.

Given the speed of events, the Committee has not yet had an opportunity to articulate these conflicts, locate them in a whole greater than the sum of its parts, and seek consensus. This seems a little like putting the development cart before the developer horse, since development teams will vary in their capacities to implement differing plans and visions. But thinking through criteria for development team selection can create a context and forum for building consensus and refining the revitalization plan

The data and analyses required to support this process already exist, thanks to years of hard work by city staff and interested citizens. What’s now required is a focused discussion among all who are willing to constructively participate.

Each stakeholder will have his or her own preferences, and the loudest voices can jerk the conversation in unproductive directions. Participating “constructively” doesn’t mean abandoning one’s preferences. It requires intense listening, disciplining expectations to the constraints imposed by hard evidence, understanding how each element of the plan affects every other one, and pushing the conversation toward creative solutions to legitimate conflicts.

No stakeholder will get everything on his or her wish list. And some projects cannot be accomplished until other projects have built required capacity or stimulated market demand. But the process will generate better outcomes than piecemeal development projects and ad hoc zoning exceptions have produced in the past.

Once stakeholders agree on objectives, guidelines, and constraints, it is essential that the city put those that can realistically be contractually binding into its Land Disposition Agreement with its chosen developer partner. The most important of these is what developers call, “the program.” That is, how many square feet of each use will be built and tenanted.

This was achieved at Assembly Square by means of a settlement agreement among Federal Realty Investment Trust, IKEA, and the Mystic View Task Force. It specified that the long-term plan would comprise 5 million office and R&D square feet; 1.4 million retail, restaurant, and hotel square feet; 3 million residential square feet; and 1 million “flex” square feet.

The agreement also limited auto trips to 50,000 per day, made the Orange Line station possible with a $15 million contribution from FRIT, and produced a variety of other benefits.  FRIT has fully permitted, at both state and local levels, and is currently proceeding to build out a little more than half of this program, in accordance with an agreed upon Master Plan.

The city now has a similar opportunity to make the development program and other features legally binding when it selects a master developer partner for Union Square. It cannot and should not expect a developer to build something which foreseeable market conditions would make unprofitable. But it can specify how much of each use will be built by the time the revitalization is completed, and it can select a developer that has the demonstrated capacity to do it all. It can and should specify what, but not when.

Although the Citizens Advisory Committee is comprised of a fixed set of appointed individuals, it is open to public participation. Any citizen of good will can make a contribution. The price of admission is participation.