A redevelopment of the stretch between The Burren pub and Dragon Pizza on Elm Street in Somerville’s Davis Square will likely include 500 apartments or more, developer Copper Mill says. At a community meeting held Nov. 20 at the square’s Somerville Community Baptist Church, Copper Mill founder Andrew Flynn presented conceptual diagrams of what the housing development could look like.
The development, which replaced plans for lab space, is still in an early phase, with no construction expected for at least a year. In the meantime, the developer has been hosting a series of community feedback meetings in which residents have provided their thoughts on topics ranging from parking to apartment and lobby sizes.
Too small a project is financially infeasible, Flynn said, and this building “would probably have to be around 500 units for us to start construction.”
This estimate was met with side conversations and people speculating on how tall the building would have to be, with one resident estimating 33 stories.
“I promise, at our next meeting, we will not be coming back with a 33-story building,” Flynn responded.
The new conceptual designs presented in the most recent meeting show a “podium” of retail stores on top of which sits a thinner, tall residential portion. Philip Casey of CBT Architects spoke of the vision of a flexible and set-back building.
“The idea of the podium, the idea of a plaza that could be happening at the lobby, the idea of the retail cafes spilling out, outdoor dining, bike parking, landscape areas. All these are opportunities that we now have when we think about carving that street edge,” Casey said.
Good design helps a building from feeling out of scale, Flynn said. “Our hope would be that if we reallocated some of that mass a little deeper in that, if you’re standing on the sidewalk in the heart of Davis Square, you can’t even really see everything that’s above it, and the actual experience at the ground level is much softer and more interesting,” he said.
Jack Connolly, a lifelong resident and former city councilor of Somerville, spoke in favor of density.
“I’m not scared of 500 units. It happened in Union Square. The green line is an attraction, the red line’s right here,” Connolly said. “There are things that I think will benefit not just me and my family, but people who want to come here.”
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Let’s say maybe 5% of these units have families with small children. Woops! We ran it out of elementary schools….
The school age population is quickly declining. The cost to taxpayers will go way up without more kids. Look at municipalities all around greater Boston facing the same problem. A city that stops growing starts dying.
Great news! I say make it 33 stories and have even more units—more people means a more lively neighborhood, with more restaurants and services!
Steps from the red line station should be *at least* 500 units. I hope some of them are 2- or 3-bedrooms and can accommodate families.
Every time I see single story buildings, almost always commercial ones, near transit hubs it makes me a little crazy. The T went in to Davis 40 years ago. Why did it take this long to build up?
I live in Davis Square – and of course see that it’s been on the down and out side for awhile now (with notable exceptions – there’s a lot of good here too.) But this photo makes the “new” construction look exactly like Assembly Square – a vision that gives me the chills. Let’s keep it looking real please!
The abstract school age population might be declining but much to the chagrin of real world Somerville the schools are very much full and getting fuller. More growth will be fantastic but not if the city continues to rely on wishful thinking and fairly dust when planning school construction. If they’re really going to do this they need to start planning yesterday.
Has anyone considered the parking nightmare this would create?
The occupants will most certainly be well-off enough to own something close to one car per unit (some none, some two cars) – Red line or not for weekend use. Five hundred cars requiring street parking will be crippling.
The losers:
1. Somerville residents driving to the square or the red line.
2. Current Davis Square residents already struggling to park near their homes.
3. and yes, most likely, retail businesses in the square due to the hassle of finding parking.
This idea is completely destructive to the neighborhood scale and balance of Davis. Nice for the developer, but if permitted, it will be irreversible.
People wanting to live in apartments immediately on top of transit and in the middle of a square walkable to all basic needs are a lot less likely to own cars. We actually have a housing crisis. Stop trying to manufacture an imagined parking crisis to oppose new housing.
Housing in squares adds customers who don’t need to drive, more riders for the T, and more life in general. You are simply a NIMBY.
slaw- why do you have to be so toxic and disrespectful? people are allowed their opinions.
A dialogue is needed to find common ground- yet you insist on fanning the “crisis-panic” declaration which is aimed at making it easier to deregulate and push zoning aside. Parking is a real issue to many people. It doesn’t necessarily lead to opposing new housing but is an issue thrown into the mix for
(re-) consideration. You, as a hammer, seem to see every comment as a NIMBY nail. Please stop strong-arming and bashing. It intimidates people from sharing.
@DanE, realistically, how many people are driving to the red line in Davis? The amount of people that would make sense for is vanishingly small, when Alewife is not far at all, and has many more parking spots available than in Davis.
I also don’t think you can say that businesses will be hurt by this. Pretty much all of the data that we have about Davis specifically (and retail in cities, more broadly) is that the vast majority of people are not driving to shop there. 500 new homes in the square is also going to bring over a thousand new potential customers to the area that only need to walk a couple of minutes to reach the businesses.
I do hope that the street level is given adequate attention though. We need narrow, frequent storefronts. 20-30 ft wide is ideal, in my opinion. Too large and the place loses scale and is unpleasant to walk near. I also hope there’s right of first return for the businesses that will be displaced. Davis is worse off without Sligo, it would suck to see The Burren go too
Not sure if any other businesses have right of first return but I know the Burren does. But they are also opening a new place in Porter, in the old Christopher’s Place . . . and I think that’s partly “in case” something goes wrong in Davis. Losing that wonderful place would be a tragedy – just like losing Johnny Ds was – or maybe even worse.
Claiming adding new housing to a square will harm local businesses because of parking is absolutely a nimby argument. A spade is a spade.
A business thinks adding a bunch of paying customers above them is a worst case scenario?!?
I love NIMBYs, they’re so fun:
“We NEED more FAMILY housing, not studios and one beds!”
So, I oppose this project!
“Let’s say maybe 5% of these units have families with small children. Woops! We ran it out of elementary schools….”
Project is the wrong mix, I oppose!
As if cities haven’t figured out services before.
My goodness. It does not stop.
I hope it gets built. Housing prices are insane. Read “The Housing Theory of Everything” for how high housing prices ruin everything (https://worksinprogress.co/issue/the-housing-theory-of-everything/) . Read also https://www.jefftk.com/p/tear-down-the-burren