A Davis Square redevelopment project that has been in the works for five years has switched plans – again. Developer Copper Mill held a community meeting Wednesday at the Somerville Public Library explaining the likelihood of apartment construction on a stretch of Elm Street at Grove Street where lab and office space was most recently planned.
The decision is a return to the original intention of building a “residential, open-market building” when the properties, which includes the stretch of the north side of Elm Street from The Burren bar to Dragon Pizza, were leased to developer Scape in 2019.
Scape announced in 2022 plans for a four-story lab and office space instead of housing. Sligo Pub and Caramel French Patisserie, local businesses on the affected stretch, closed.
Andrew Flynn, the then-CEO of Scape North America, said at the time, “We consider ourselves in the first inning of this journey with eight or nine more innings to go.”
Indeed, the project stalled for two more years. In September 2023, Scape exited the project, and Copper Mill, a development company that Flynn started, took over the ground lease. Now, with vacancies in Boston’s overabundant lab spaces after a Covid-era boom, Copper Mill sees building housing once again as the best path forward.
The process is still early, with no set timeline for construction, although Flynn said active construction “certainly won’t be within the next 12 months, but we all hope it’s also not five years from now.” Construction would have an 18- to 24-month timeline, putting a possible opening in 2028.
The project isn’t starting over entirely, though, as much of the work Scape did toward designing ground-floor retail was liked by residents and developers and can be adapted for the upcoming project, Flynn said.
A rezoning affecting Davis Square means that whereas Scape could have built housing by right, Copper Mill will instead need to apply for a special permit. The rezoning reflected the will of the people at the time, said Tom Galligani, executive director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development. But times have changed, partially because more people are working from home. That changes the business patterns around them.
“When we were engaging with folks for three or four or five years ago, there was a clear, consistent desire to only allow commercial development in the core,” Galligani said. “They felt that would increase the daytime population to support the existing businesses that are wholly dependent on nighttime and weekend business. As we went to reengage with folks over the last year, we heard a different message. Not surprisingly, people have recognized that the world has changed.”
“A collaborative process”
The decision to build housing is driven by the poor lab space market and great need for housing in Somerville, Flynn explained at a second community meeting for the site. It was attended by an audience of a couple of dozen people heavy with Copper Mill employees and city staff.
Other options considered were building a space for an electric vehicle battery company and waiting until lab spaces were more in-demand. Neither seemed viable, Flynn said.
“The two main principles we took away” from the last community meeting, Flynn said, “were that housing is a priority and the location in Davis Square to build meaningful housing is something that seems to make sense.”
It is unknown how many stories a project might rise and how many apartments would be built. To be financially feasible, it would likely need to be more than 50 units, Flynn said. City zoning calls for 20 percent of new residential construction to be affordable.
Flynn emphasized that his desire for the development “to be genuinely a collaborative process.”
“Developers have earned a not-so-great reputation over the years through their actions,” Flynn said. “They design a building, shove it down a neighborhood’s throat. We’re mindful of that dynamic. We are truly committed to being different.”
Community input
Community members brought questions around parking, preserving the character of Davis Square’s storefronts and more to an early stage of a project with no decisions made.
Copper Mill is prepared to build with no parking but is open to finding a balance, Flynn said. “We all want to live in a world where there’s no parking, but we’re just not there yet,” he said. “So no parking would be too extreme. I think our view is we would probably try to find the right sweet spot.” Building underground parking is expensive and complicated by local water tables, but Flynn said one level of public underground parking looked feasible – up to 100 spaces.
One attendee brought concerns over “preserving the eclectic fabric of the square.” In response, Flynn said that small size of the retail store spaces will likely steer franchises like CVS away. Galligani noted that the square also has zoning in place against “formula” businesses – what most people know as chain stores such as the McDonald’s and Family Dollar stores that were once on Elm. (“We paid McDonald’s to leave,” property owner Alan Dana told the meeting.)
“We do not want to turn this into Seaport,” Flynn said.
Nothing in the pipeline
Another attendee brought up the desire to see more units for families, saying, “It sounds awesome to have not just studios, one-bedrooms or two-bedrooms, but space so that families can stay and take advantage of our great public schools.”
Galligani pointed out that even building studios and one-bedrooms can free space in naturally occurring family housing elsewhere.
“There’s such an undersupply of housing that producing any housing is going to help a little bit,” Galligani said. “And we have to keep looking at every opportunity we can to build new housing.”
“I feel the urgency to get this next crop of projects past the drawing board, because I know we don’t have anything in the pipeline in the next couple years,” Galligani added later. “That’s where I’m coming from. That’s where the city’s coming from.”
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