By Douglas Yu

Rebecca Schrumm and Edwin Smith were among the many business and civic leaders who attended Business Town Meeting X last week.

Over 100 small business owners from all over Somerville met in the Davis Square Theater on the evening of March 10 to share their concerns about the city with Mayor Joseph Curtatone at the annual Business Town Meeting.

Stephen Mackey, President and CEO of the Somerville Chamber of Commerce, said that 10 years ago when Business Town Meetings first started, Somerville’s mayor was invited to come before the local business community to talk about the local economy, the business administrations agenda, and take questions from the community.

The City of Somerville is at its pivotal point of massive development. This most densely populated town in New England is experiencing unprecedented transformation. The Green Line Extension just received its federal funding earlier this year, Union Square’s master developer US2 is still in the process of crowdsourcing urban design ideas, and Assembly Row also welcomed its new developer partnership, Partners Healthcare.

How all these recent developments will benefit local businesses in the long run at Somerville is questionable.

“The business community is concerned about the safety of public transportation, education, the quality of life and housing,” Mackey said. “This meeting also gives business owners an opportunity to get firsthand answers to specific questions.”

At the beginning of the meeting, Curtatone briefly talked about the goals of SomerVision, a comprehensive city plan to ensure that Somerville has sustainable economic growth as well as best availability for affordable housing, transportation and open space.

“These goals represent Somerville’s hopes and dreams,” Curtatone said. “What’s happening at Assembly Square embodies what’s happening in the city. We envision the future, we plan the future, and we build the future.”

During the Q&A, Sara Stackhouse, Executive Producer of the Actor’s Shakespeare Project, raised questions regarding how Somerville’s arts community contributes to the creative economy.

“I know there is a large number of artists per capita in Somerville, and there is a lot of amazing visual arts,” Stackhouse said. “One of the biggest problems in the theater community in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville is that we don’t have enough space.”
In response to Stackhouse’s question, Curtatone mentioned that the city’s new zoning code helped preserve certain spaces, and the characteristic and the DNA of being artistic were always embedded in the community.

“The other creativity has to be part of the collaborative environment. We have breweries, cuisine experts, green techies and rock climbers,” Curtatone said, adding that artists make Somerville funky, and if there is not enough space for public art, Somerville would be sanitized and boring.

Over the past year, Somerville’s real estate has seen a dramatic market increase, especially when Assembly Row introduced its new Orange Line stop, followed by a series of development projects, including a Partners Healthcare facility. Many Cambridge residents who are at risk of being priced out of their gentrified neighborhoods, such as Kendall Square and Fresh Pond, hope to relocate into Somerville, but are finding it hard to locate affordable places to live.

Last year, the city revised a plan within SomerVision to create an additional 9,000 units of housing in the next 20 years instead of the original 6,000.

There would be an economic cost if people who contribute to Somerville were leaving, according to Curtatone.

Courtney O’Keefe, former Ward 5 Alderman and Magoun Square resident, said she would be happy to see some improvement in the inspectional services between Citizenserve (a website that allows people to apply for licenses and permits) and improved professionalism with some of the inspectors.

In addition, O’Keefe brought up the difficulty of opening small businesses in Somerville. “I’m still hearing that it’s difficult to open a small business here in the City of Somerville,” she said. “I’m wondering if it’s safe to say the inspectional services are still a work in progress, and we still have a little ways to go?”

Curtatone said he was seeing dozens of businesses opening up in Somerville, but had heard mostly positive feedback. He also applauded the method that the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development (OSPCD) had adopted to allow more small businesses to move in to the city.

Tom Bent, of the Boston Region Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO), mentioned the MBTA’s failure to provide local residents comprehensive transit services during the recent storms. He said the critics complained that the money being invested in the Green Line Extension should be put into the repair of the trains instead.

“What I believe will carry the day is what has always carried the day,” Curtatone said in response to Bent’s question. “It’s the economic facts: net new jobs, net new tax revenue, billions of dollars in the Massachusetts economy.”

Partly sponsored by Middlesex Federal Savings, the annual Business Town Meeting X also provided Somerville business owners with an opportunity to network at the reception.

“The business community has a wide range of issues, such as public safety, education and the quality of life,” Mackey said. “The meeting helps the dialogues between the mayor and the business community, so the mayor can have a sense of what their concerns are.”