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Ben Holmes submitting comments re: #202853, Union Sq zoning.
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To the Honorable Board:
I am writing this letter as a Somerville Ward 5 resident and the owner of a Somerville-based brewery and community space in the historical Ames Envelope company in Ward 2, AERONAUT. I would like to affirm the strong support of our company for the proposed rezoning of Union square.
A brief story.
AERONAUT cares deeply about the past, present, and future of this great city. It has been our home since long before we opened. Begun as a home-brewery in our backyard at 25 Spencer Avenue, AERONAUT is Somerville-born and raised. Be started here and we owe our existence to this city. My cofounders and I were drawn here by affordable transit and living options near Davis. We have fallen in love with this city for its tremendous diversity and its proud history. Part of what keeps us here is our tremendous excitement for its future.
We have been humbled by the success of our project, the warm welcome of our community, and the gratifying support of you all on the Board of Alderman. It’s an honor to represent this city as in our own way we’ve begun to distribute awesome, Somerville-made beer at greater and greater distances. It was an honor to when this beer gets recognized from afar--just last summer we took home to Somerville a gold medal at the greatest beer festival in the world (the unsubtly titled “Great American Beer festival”). Our greatest honors though have been much closer to home. It was an awesome privilege for example to work with the city creating a gluten free birthday beer for the city of Somerville’s 175th birthday just this week, but one award stands out to me thinking back to our first years here: receiving the Chamber of Commerce’s “Business Neighbor of the Year” award back in 2015.
It is a source of great pride to be recognized for the community engagement that AERONAUT has put our heart into. We take that seriously! And so, you can bet that we took it very seriously when we got to be on the Chamber’s award committee and after considering a number of excellent businesses for our successors to that humbling award, we were part of the successful recommendation that the next recipient of the “Neighborhood Business of the Year” recognition be US2, master developers working with the city in the context of the proposed rezoning. US2 was the Somerville Chamber of Commerce’s “Business Neighbor of the Year” in 2016.
We are proud of that decision. They deserve it! Since they first arrived, US2 has been a terrific partner, a good listener, and an engaged participant in the extraordinary, open, and professionally-implemented civic process which has brought us to the current proposal. Our company has the civic process of Union Square development from the very beginning, since the first meetings in the post office and in all manner of community meetings before and since.
We believe that the proposal which is put forward has been come to through a fair and admirable process. We are not zoning or urban planning professionals, but it is clear to us that the proposed rezoning captures a great many of the crucial features of Union Square which were identified as important by our company, our business, and our residential neighbors, including open spaces, inclusion of diverse transportation options, and affordable housing. Based on my experience it seems like a good many of the community priorities of the very first meetings in connection with this project are supported by the existing zoning proposal. We believe that this proposal will bring good jobs and commercial development. It will enable us to fund crucial improvements, both benefiting the immediate neighborhood (including enhancing our public infrastructure), and allowing us to fund vital commitments like the new high school.
All these things considered, we believe that this proposal comes at a crucial time and it seems to us that this proposal represents a watershed moment for the city of Somerville. We have the opportunity to embark on a next, great chapter of our city’s history moving towards the goals of Somervision. We believe that the proposal has been arrived at through a civic process which was inclusive, extensive and fair, and we believe that the city’s partner US2 is a responsible steward who have earned the opportunity to move this project forward following the public processes thus far.
This rezoning proposal is that next next step, and we believe that the time to act is now. We recommend its adoption without delay.
From AERONAUT and me personally, Thank you all for your attention to this open process, your caring attention to detail (and that of the Mayor’s office!) which shows through in this proposal, and your balanced judgement and responsible leadership which moves us forward.
Sincerely,
Ben Holmes, CEO
Aeronaut Brewing Company