Agenda Text
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Urging that Union Square's D2 and D3 blocks adjacent to the planned T station be developed primarily as commercial office and lab space.
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Official Text
WHEREAS, The MBTA is building a Green Line spur with a Union Square station next to the D2 block of land surrounded by Prospect Street, Somerville Avenue, Allen Street, and the Fitchburg commuter rail right-of-way; and
WHEREAS, This Board approved, and the City of Somerville adopted in October 2012, a Union Square Revitalization Plan, which remains in force and the goals of which include creating jobs and increasing the City’s commercial tax base; and
WHEREAS, The City of Somerville must rely on precarious state aid to meet 24% of its annual budget because the City’s property tax base is predominantly residential with insufficient commercial property; and
WHEREAS, Somerville’s residents suffer from the worst jobs-to-workers imbalance in the Commonwealth; and
WHEREAS, The SomerVision plan therefore set a goal of only 350 new housing units in Union Square and 500 in Boynton Yards, which goals were affirmed in the Union Square Revitalization Plan and specified to all interested developers in the Request for Qualifications for Selection of a Master Developer Partner; and
WHEREAS, The size and configuration of many parcels in Union Square are such that they may not be able to accommodate viable office and lab-space development, making it likely that they will be developed for residential uses and thereby will, collectively, greatly exceed the 350-unit housing goal; and
WHEREAS, Exhaustive evidence accumulated by urban planning and design scholars establishes that commuters are willing to walk up to a half-mile to reach a transit node while office and lab tenants prefer and will pay more to locate their facilities as close as possible to a subway station; NOW THEREFORE BE IT
RESOLVED, That the D2 and D3 development blocks adjacent to the Union Square T station be developed primarily as commercial office and lab space; that little or no residential housing be built on the key D2 block that is closest to the heart of Union Square; and that in the D3 block bounded by Prospect Street, Webster Avenue, Columbia Street, Windsor Place, and the Fitchburg commuter rail right-of-way, the square footage of commercial development be at least two-thirds of the entire parcel.