Years of planning, discussion and controversy around Copper Mill, a proposed 20+ story, 500-unit mixed-use tower in the heart of Davis Square, have come to naught.
Andrew Flynn, CEO of the developer, sent a letter to the Davis Square Neighborhood Council (DSNC) withdrawing from the project. He blamed the city for what he described as a glaring lack of cooperation. “Despite all of the good faith collaborative engagement – there has been no reciprocity from the City’s leadership over the past three years,” wrote Flynn.
Flynn wrote that Copper Mill hosted “approx. 75 separate stakeholder events” studied “complex engineering matters on behalf of the city,” and produced several design and redesign plans. The city, wrote Flynn, “was never able to direct us toward any actionable next step that resulted in forward progress for the housing development.”
“Our most potent frustration has been, precisely, the lack of any defined linear process from City leadership,” he wrote.
Somerville Mayor Jake Wilson, in a call with Cambridge Day, said “the idea that the city has played some major role in this is pretty laughable.” He pointed to Flynn’s problems getting approval from the state agency Copper Mill was seeking funding from.
Wilson also said the city “knew this was coming.”
“Anytime you have a project eligibility letter come out and get paused immediately at the state level, that’s typically not a good omen,” said Wilson, referencing Flynn’s late 2025 application to the state’s MassHousing program for a Chapter 40B affordable housing permit, which was subsequently denied at the state level.
Flynn alleges that he approached the new administration with a hope to resubmit the application in early 2026 and have the city act as a co-signer but was rebuffed. Wilson, though, said “we were never asked to co-sign anything that I know of.” He said the project was paused by the state “before we could even comment on it.”
Flynn, , who is currently facing legal pressure from a former business associate, also alleged bad faith over the Davis Square Neighborhood Plan, a long-delayed planning effort that has seen a significant revival under Wilson, whose administration recently created a technical advisory committee to help shape the plan. Flynn wrote that the current administration had promised him that the plan would be completed and fully implemented in the “first half of 2026,” but that the timeline had been pushed back to late 2027.
Wilson laughed when told about the claim. “I don’t even know what to say to that, that’s wild,” he responded, adding that he couldn’t “imagine any universe where I would have told anyone that we would deliver a neighborhood plan in the first six months of my administration.”
Planning for the Davis Square Neighborhood Plan
Executive Director of the city’s Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development Tom Galligani said his team had spent the start of 2026 “doing all the background research and getting up to speed,” and that the fall would see several community engagement efforts to bring the community in on the planning.
Wilson said the “stretch goal” to implement the plan was the “first quarter of 2027,” but that the more realistic timeframe was sometime in the first half of next year.
He expects the process to be smooth sailing, owing to the end of the tower project. “It cast a shadow over every single [zoning and planning] decision, every bylaw, so it’ll be nice to have this discussion without that specter looming over everything.”
Real estate firm Myer Dana and Sons, which owns the 231-249 Elm Street and 6-8 & 12 Grove Street parcel which Copper Mill was set to redevelop, did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the future of the parcel or status of the 99-year lease which Flynn had received for the location.
According to Wilson, the firm let him know that leases were extended for the businesses which would have been, at least temporarily, displaced by the redevelopment, including The Burren and Dragon Pizza. He could not, however, confirm any additional details about the new leasing agreements.
Christopher Beland, vice president of the DSNC, wrote in an email to Cambridge Day that Copper Mill had previously made it known that it would need zoning approvals from the city by the end of 2026 to continue the project, “and it was pretty clear the neighborhood plan wasn’t going to be ready in time for that.”
He said Flynn could have taken the building proposal before the city’s Board of Zoning Appeals, but that this would have “made the political conversations more complicated.”
Beland, though concerned that Flynn abandoned the project altogether, thinks the decision will “lower the temperature in neighborhood politics for a bit.” Beland said he wants conversations about the future of Somerville’s neighborhoods to be “more productive” than they have been as of late and hopes the neighborhood plan will allow for updates to the city’s zoning practices which could “give builders more certainty, and hopefully unblock the stalled redevelopment [in Davis Square].”
Wilson said that the city could not comment on the future of the parcel but said that the “Davis Square Neighborhood Plan is going to inform that.”
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