Secretary Robert Durand
Executive Office of Environmental Affairs
Attention: MEPA Office
Analyst LeAndrea Dames, EOEA No. 12672
251 Causeway Street, Suite 900
Boston, MA 02114
July 2, 2002
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the DEIR for the proposed IKEA at Assembly
Square. I was most impressed with the thoughtfulness and detail of your February 1, 2002
Certificate for this project, and had looked forward to seeing more of the major issues raised
by you dealt with more directly and responsively by the DEIR. I would ask you to persevere in
obtaining satisfactory resolution of these issues by the EIR stage. There is much overlap among
these issues, but I will endeavor to organize my remarks by category, in the reverse of the order
that they were raised in your Certificate.
TRANSPORTATION
I was glad to note your stressing of the context of the proposed IKEA project among other
proposed projects in the immediate region. I am perpetually reminded, as I was recently by a
proposal to put 30 condominium units on a 25,000 square foot parcel in a dense Somerville
residential neighborhood, that existing infrastructure and the potential for expanding that
infrastructure are important constraints on the redevelopment of urban land. Somerville is
seriously constrained by road capacity limitations. Any realistic transportation plan for any
Assembly Square development must factor in traffic from the other developments proposed for
the area as well as those generated by any one site; IKEA's DEIR falls short in this regard.
As you correctly note, "[a] final roadway design that proposes to add traffic capacity at the expense of pedestrians through such measures as adding travel lanes, removing on street parking, and enlarging corner radii, will not be an acceptable outcome." This caveat is as applicable to the roadways giving access to the site as those on the site. Somerville can never enjoy a
prosperity that is offered it primarily through vehicular traffic; it is too small, too tightly built
to be successfully retrofitted for sprawl, even if such an undertaking could be squared with
Executive Order 385.
Although lacking in roadway capacity, Assembly Square has the great potential benefit of transit
rights of way, infrastructure, and planned projects, such as the Urban Ring. The design of the
IKEA site, as you correctly observe, must integrate the site with all available and developable
modes of transportation to the site. The DEIR is not quite there yet.
Also, IKEA's parking ratios, at 3 spaces per 1,000 square feet, seem too high for this transit-rich district. Spaulding and Slye's North Point development, perhaps three quarters of a mile
a way and also transit-oriented, provides one space per 1,000 square feet. This ratio seems more
suited to the Assembly Square, which could be as well oriented to mass transit and to pedestrian
and bicycle access, as North Point has been planned to be. Because it, like North Point, is
riverfront development, there are other compelling reasons for reducing parking ratios and
surface parking.
The Mystic River park land on the north should be handled to provide for the planting of trees,
such as those growing in the park just across the Mystic River in Medford. I recognize that the
earth above the roof of the underground parking garage is shallow, but there are ways to provide
for tree wells. This area needs to be a real park, not just the site of shafts for the underground
garage.
Reduction or elimination of the planned surface parking would also ease the runoff burden on the Mystic River. It would also make the design of the site more attractive, and more in keeping with Steve Cecil's Panning Study of Assembly Square, completed in 2000. Cecil's recommendation was that even in Phase I of the Assembly Square Redevelopment, there should be buildings fronting the "main street" between the IKEA and mall sites, surrounding most of
the surface lots with buildings, to minimize their impact on the site. IKEA still fronts "main
street" with a surface lot, at the back of which is the store entrance. Their talented design team
can do better; I ask you to require a better design than this.
Thank you again for your attentive and wide-ranging Certificate. I ask that you will hold IKEA
to the same level of attention in their planning. I thank you for your safeguarding of the interests
of the City of Somerville, for the opportunity to comment on this project again.
Very truly yours,
Denise Provost
Alderman-at-Large