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Once again Somerville has surrendered a giant plot of prime real estate to luxury condos, in this case the property behind the Stop & Shop, between Garfield Ave and Cross Street. The city was supposedly obligated to reserve this parcel for commercial use, but after two and a half years of haggling, the planning board finally threw in the towel last Thursday. There will be NO commercial use at the Cross street site, none, zero. The lone dissenting vote was from Joseph Favaloro, and he prefaced it by emphasizing that many citizens of East Somerville still bitterly oppose this project, even after years of marketing and greenwash from the developers.

One might be forgiven for thinking that the SomerVision plan is a sham. The residential zones seethe with infill development, as developers brag about “appetite” and devour every property they can get their hands on. They target the outsized and corner lots first, just as they did in Brooklyn and San Francisco, and the result will be the same: a heartless gated citadel. Our administration has the nerve to pronounce that “a rising tide lifts all boats,” but with economic stratification surpassing Gilded Age levels, this brazen defense of plutocratization is an outrageous insult to our collective intelligence.

Meanwhile, as the unaffordable McMansions metastasize, our green space disappears beneath concrete and asphalt. Despite Somerville’s claims to be a “tree city”, in reality Somerville offers no protection whatsoever for trees on private property. This is particularly egregious since the majority of our remaining trees are located on private property. Our lack of policy stands in stark contrast to the tree-protection ordinances enacted by many of our neighboring towns and cities. Cambridge, Newton, and Lexington all have tree ordinances that protect large privately owned trees against damage or removal by the property owner.

Mature trees are exquisitely valuable for dozens of reasons including energy conservation, runoff management, and climate change mitigation. We must follow in our neighbors’ footsteps quickly, while we still have trees to protect. A zoning amendment has been proposed that would withhold special permits from developers who destroy shade or fruit trees during condo conversions. Residents who care about keeping Somerville green should contact their alderman and aldermen at large, and urge them to vote in favor of this amendment.

Chris Korda
Somerville Development Watch
http://somervilledevelopmentwatch.org/