This Opinion Piece by Denise Provost was published in the Somerville Journal in 2001:
Part of the problem is the city's lack of a thoughtful, credible plan for redevelopment of Assembly Square. What about the work of the Cecil Group, hired in 1999, to assist the city in evaluating its options for Assembly Square? Admittedly a "planning study," its stated goal was to "give broad guidance to key public policy decisions and initiatives and to establish a general framework for future development."
The operative words here are "broad" and "general." While the Cecil Report makes some good observations, it simply doesn't go very far. To put it in perspective: the October, 2000 Cecil Report consists of 34 pages, including maps and photographs. It has 25 pages of text. By contrast, the MMA Consulting Group Study of the Somerville Police Department, criticized by many as inadequate and superficial, is 129 pages long. The Police Study gave 82 specific recommendations; the Cecil Report recommended further "specific technical studies," including "a thorough traffic evaluation of Assembly Square and its environs."
Meanwhile, we forge ahead on Assembly Square. It reminds me of the "Dilbert" cartoon where the boss announces: "Our executives have started their annual strategic planning sessions. This involves sitting in a room with inadequate data until an illusion of knowledge is attained." I am increasingly frustrated by the push to make decisions for Assembly Square, with long term repercussions, without either branch of local government having articulated a plan for reaching even the development goals of the Cecil Report.
We Aldermen continue to deliberate on interim zoning for Assembly Square; a final vote must be taken by March 19. Although this zoning is labelled "interim" the Board has already extended its duration to May, 2003. It is widely conceded that much, if not most, of Assembly Square will be redeveloped during this 'temporary' zoning. Since zoning laws are the regulatory blueprint for what is built, we can expect that the build-out at Assembly Square will be only as good as our zoning ordinance requires it to be.
What is the best immediate development scenario that Somerville can reasonably expect? The Cecil Report, though modest in its expectations, anticipated at least a million square feet of office/R&D use in the short term, a better deal for the city than the retail proposals now before it. Yet important changes of circumstance have since occurred, which have already inflated commercial land values in Somerville, and will continue to do so.
One is the extensive fiber optic cable network authorized by the Board of Aldermen in January, 2000, and now largely installed beneath the city's streets. Connected with it - literally - will be the trans-Atlantic fiber line connecting the U.S. with Europe, through East Somerville. This fiber-optic cable network is a rare treasure of infrastructure. It has already fueled the development of telecommunications as a significant and growing portion of the local economy, as chronicled by the September 24, 2000 Boston Globe article titled "Somerville, MA: The New Power Address."
To gauge how much value this network adds to our land, consider these examples: In November, 2000, Cathartes Investments sold one of its properties on Innerbelt Road for $24 million, triple what it paid the previous year. Later that month, it sold 70 Innerbelt Road for $33.25 million. These transactions did not - could not - figure into the land value calculations of the Cecil Group, because they hadn't yet happened.
Another unanticipated boost is the February 13 vote by the Cambridge City Council rezoning that city to severely restrict commercial development. Cambridge Chamber of Commerce President Tom Lucey refers to the new Cambridge zoning as the "Somerville Redevelopment Act." It's clear that the new limits in Cambridge will have the same effect on the Somerville commercial real estate market that the end of Rent Control exerted on our residential real estate market. The latter event, which caught Somerville unprepared, is still causing displacement and hardship for our residents. The upsurge in demand that we can now expect for commercial land in Somerville could, by contrast, work to the city's benefit - if we plan how to use it to our advantage.
Meanwhile, the dominant "plans" for Assembly Square are private plans, focussed mainly on development of "big box" retail stores. As a land use, "big box" retail offers high traffic volumes, low tax revenues, inferior job opportunities, land wasted by extensive surface parking lots, difficult pedestrian access, and incompatibility with most other kinds of uses. Yet some are urging us to grab this great "opportunity" before the predicted "economic downturn."
Tom Lucey told the Somerville Chamber of Commerce last week that office space in Cambridge is renting for $75 a square foot, and that Cambridge has essentially closed itself to further business development. Lucey also said that University Park, a 27 acre mixed use development near Central Square, provides Cambridge with $15 million a year in tax revenues. Somerville Assessor Dick Brescia reported to the Aldermen last November that if the new Home Depot is built at the 26 acre Assembly Square Mall site, it will bring $516,906.00 in new tax revenues; if the proposed "mixed use" buildings along the river are subsequently built, this figure will grow to $1.6 million. Why should Somerville settle for a deal like this?
Like the Cecil Group, the Mystic View Task Force, and the Mayor, I believe that the creation of an MBTA Orange Line stop is vital to successful redevelopment at Assembly Square. I remain concerned that so much acreage in big box retail will produce low ridership estimates, giving the MBTA an excellent excuse not to locate a station there. Once again, the city would lose. Big box retail has little use for mass transit, and no use for our fiber optic cable network. It precludes the location of higher-value businesses that would make use of it. It would be heartbreaking if the value of the Somerville fiber optic network was captured only by adjacent communities developing land for high tech use, such as the Telecom City site.
The present low expectations for Assembly Square threaten to blight Somerville's prospects for a long time to come. We should not be shy about saying what Somerville wants and needs, and what it doesn't. As MIT Professor Dennis Frenchman noted in an address to the Northeast Mayors' Institute on City Design last spring, "I have noticed that the cities that are good at telling developers what they can't do are typically the places where they most want to be." Only adoption of rigorous zoning standards for Assembly Square will preserve its development value for Somerville's people during the coming real estate boom.
copyright 2001 Denise Provost