These are just some of the municipal meetings and civic events for the coming week. More are on the City of Somerville website.
Update on 90 Washington plans
Somerville Redevelopment Authority, 5:30 to 7 p.m. Wednesday. The authority’s 2025 annual report is reviewed for release and members talk about a Demonstration Project Plan for 90 Washington St., where the city hopes to put commercial uses such as retail and restaurants, public green space and places for community organizations as well as dense, transit-oriented housing that is affordable to a range of incomes. The city seized the land in 2019 for a new public safety building, paying $8.7 million for 4 acres, but in October 2024 was told by an appeals court that the owners of the former Cobble Hill Shopping Center land were owed nearly $30 million more. One of the goals of the new project is to recoup those costs. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
More Winter Hill doughnut time
Planning Board, 6 p.m. Thursday. The Dunkin’ Donuts at 222 Broadway, Winter Hill, across from Foss Park, brings a request for later hours, one of several city business asking recently to stay open longer. Board members will also decide when to hear the continued case of the Somerbridge Hotel at 1 McGrath Highway (so called because it straddles the Cambridge-Somerville line) as developers seek major changes to a plan approved in May 2023 (and in Cambridge in July 2023) to put up a six-story hotel with a restaurant, bar and fitness center. Arts & Innovation District urban design is due for discussion too. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Affordable homes overlay zoning
Land Use Committee, 6 p.m. Thursday. A request for ordainment arrives for zoning that lets affordable housing go bigger with fewer use restrictions, a conversation stemming from the arrival of Mass timber as a material for construction. (Mass timber is made by layering and bonding wood to form strong structural components that can replace steel or concrete and make development easier, faster and cheaper.) To encourage the creation of affordable homes, all-affordable projects could go by right up to eight stories, skip upper-story stepbacks and not have to set aside space specifically for arts and creative uses. This overlay zoning would also require only one unit of commercial space rather than the entire ground floor. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Progress toward a new school
School Building Committee, 4:30 to 6 p.m. April 6. Advancement of plans for a 925-student school that combines the Winter Hill Community Innovation School, which served 400 kids, and the Benjamin G. Brown School, a K-5 institution with 225 kids. The Winter Hill, at 115 Sycamore St., closed unexpectedly June 2, 2023, over safety concerns: It was discovered that a chunk of concrete had fallen from stairwell ceiling. The School Committee voted March 16 to combine the schools (which will reunite the Winter Hill’s prekindergarten-to-eighth-grade community after it was split between the Edgerly Education Center and Capuano Early Childhood Center). The Winter Hill and Brown are the city’s oldest schools, but the city got approval only for a new Winter Hill and an invitation to consider a project combining the two. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
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