Up to 200 new homes with a park, library branch and other community benefits for Union Square made for a sweet pitch, especially when they would replace a proposed lab building at a time labs are sitting empty. But several residents responded with anger and skepticism at a Planning Board and City Council Land Use Committee, calling for Somerville officials not to allow a zoning change.
Officials were there only to listen Thursday, as public comment is taken until May 15 on a Hamilton Co. proposal to change the zoning at 1 Union Square to residential from commercial. That so-called “D6 parcel” now encompasses six storefronts on Somerville Avenue to Prospect Street: the Urban Axes ax-throwing facility, Angel Nails salon, a Dunkin’ Donuts and the Buk Kyung Korean restaurant, Mandarin Chinese restaurant and Ebi Sushi (which is relocating within the square). It’s part of a 20-acre, $2 billion project controlled by master developer USQ.
Hamilton bought the land 10 years ago and has been working on building labs there for five. “We would have liked to have done that project,” said Jameson Brown, the developer’s co-chief executive and chief operating officer. “The market changed.”
By recent estimates, there’s between 14 million and 16 million square feet of lab space available in Greater Boston, which makes the labs project look like a loser to Hamiltons. Instead, the company, operating within the master plan under the name Union 2 Associates, hopes to build between 150 to 200 homes in a pair of six-story buildings – the same height in feet as the commercial proposal – including 30 to 40 affordable units and more than half having two or three bedrooms. Public benefits would include such things as a library branch, a park behind the buildings that is the size of Winthrop Park in Cambridge’s Harvard Square, two-way bike lanes on Prospect Street and relocation help for the businesses displaced by construction.
“A lab building on the site is no longer economically viable … it’s a different time today than when this zoning was initially passed. Millions of square feet of commercial development have been built in Union Square, and much more is planned,” said Tim Talun, of Hamilton’s architecture firm, Elkus Manfredi. “At the same time, as we all know, Greater Boston has a housing shortage.”
That the majority of construction since 2010 has been commercial is “a good thing” for the city and its tax base, Talun said, suggesting that the D6 parcel didn’t need to add to the more than 5 million square feet of additional commercial development planned for Union Square, Boynton yards and elsewhere. He pointed away from the USQ master plan and to the SomerVision comprehensive city plan, which designates the site as needing enhancement, as well as to language in a Union Square Neighborhood Plan implemented in 2016. “This proposed amendment is in keeping with that,” Talun said, and with “newer goals that the City Council set – as well as what the state has set – for the production of housing around transit.”
Public comment
The idea found some support from a couple of residents at the meeting. Christopher Beland deemed the proposal “spectacular” and said it was time to consider ending the “commercial core” zoning. “It’s very difficult to predict demand for residential versus commercial development. The city tried to do it in 2019 and even a few years after that it was already out of date – and the zoning may last for 30 or 50 years,” Beland said. “It’s good to let the market figure out what to target.”
Many more residents spoke against Hamilton’s proposed change, citing the need for a commercial tax base of more than the current 19 percent to take the burden of a city budget off it residents. “We have a grossly unbalanced tax base because past city legislators and planners didn’t have the discipline and courage and foresight to wait through economic cycles,” Bill Shelton said.
Others referred to a change in use as an “abrogation” of years of careful planning for a commercial core and the potential for a thriving restaurant and entertainment district. “Just because hammers aren’t swinging doesn’t mean that we should change everything to accommodate people who want to not do affordable housing,” Michelle Hansen said. “We’re going to take one of the major commercial areas in the city of Somerville, in the middle of Union Square, and we’re going to say, hey, you know what, we don’t need that tax money. And you know what? By the way, we’re just going to let a bunch of rich people live there. That’s baloney.” Another speaker specified that Somerville has an affordable housing crisis rather than a general one, making Hamilton’s market-rate bid less helpful than the company suggested.
Looming legal fight
Still, the company could do this, said Hamilton’s Brown. Its development rights within the USQ master plan had been confirmed in a memo from Somerville Inspectional Services.
USQ disagrees with the interpretation of the zoning code in that memo, said Brian Hochleutner of DLA Piper, the firm providing counsel to the master developer. “Hamilton’s proposal would violate binding legal agreements,” he said, setting the stage for protracted court proceedings.
“There’s been years of process and approvals,” Hochleutner said of the master plan for Union Square. “Hamilton’s proposal is inconsistent with all of them.”
Ignoring the master plan approach also jeopardizes long-promised public benefits that includes a 27,000-square-foot neighborhood park, “only possible because there’s a master plan approach,” Hochleutner said.
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