The developer Copper Mill promised to present multiple new design options for the hundreds of apartments and retail it hopes to develop at Elm and Grove streets in Somerville’s Davis Square. Renderings of a 26-story, 502-unit apartment building drew scoffs even from project supporters at a Tuesday community meeting, and the head of Copper Mill agreed it missed the mark.
“I completely agree with you that this building can’t look like it does now, because it looks like it belongs in The Seaport or Kendall Square,” Andrew Flynn told hundreds of Davis Square neighbors packed into the Crystal Ballroom for two hours of Q&A. “Kendall Square and The Seaport, to me, they are sterile. They are soulless.”
While saying he loved his team at CBT Architects in Boston, feedback on the building had been consistently negative. “The biggest compliment someone could give us six months from now is ‘That building looks like it belongs in Davis Square, and that building does not look like a Seaport building,’” Flynn said.
The renderings would be available to visitors “within the next 30 days” at a project office Copper Mill plans to open March 23 in the former Caramel patisserie at 235 Elm St., one of the businesses that closed in 2022 and 2023 when the properties were expected to be developed into labs by a British company called Scape.
Flynn left Scape and formed Copper Mill, bringing forward in October 2024 a residential and retail proposal instead. The parcels for the proposal have been priced at around $43 million by the real estate company Myer Dana and Sons, a price that helps define the projects that might go up to replace aging properties – some described by Flynn as “basically unoccupiable.”
“We don’t expect that exactly the building we proposed is what’s going to be built, but the density and the height is the only way that anything will be built on this site,” Flynn said.
Silence, then a state filing
After a series of public meetings, Copper Mill went largely silent for a year, then filed for site approval Dec. 22 under state Chapter 40B rules for projects that include significant amounts of affordable homes.
The development team had been working hard to file with the state earlier in December, Flynn said, suggesting the timing was meant to capitalize on the arrival of Jake Wilson as mayor in January. He replaced two-term mayor Katjana Ballantyne, whose administration “directed [us] to slow down about a year ago, kind of directly and indirectly. And so that’s what we did,” Flynn said.
The 40B process is paused for questions from the MassHousing agency, and some residents assert the filing could be fought on “safe harbor” grounds, meaning Somerville has fulfilled its obligation to build significant amounts of affordable housing.
Flynn was asked whether he would withdraw the state 40B application and commit instead to working through a city process.
“It is something I need to think more about,” Flynn said. (When Flynn added it was “the first time that question has been put directly to us,” objections rang out from the audience that the Davis Square Neighborhood Council had asked previously.)
Hooting, booing and applause
The chance to build so many homes near mass transit, and the fact that 126 of the homes would be deeded as affordable, had many supporters at the meeting. But more were critical of the tower design as being too high and out of scale with the rest of Davis Square – its three-story podium of retail is as tall as the closest buildings and much of the rest of the neighborhood.
Another sticking point was the loss of the businesses in the property to be developed – including The Burren, a 30-year-old Irish pub – and design was a problem again: Despite Burren owner Tommy McCarthy going on record as a supporter of the Copper Mill project and signing a deal to return after construction, one commenter said he couldn’t imagine the bar and its musicians being at home in the currently proposed building. “That’s the place you go for a coffee with your MacBook and to call into your Zoom meeting,” a commenter said. Residents called for natural brick and less glass.
There was hooting, booing and applause as a line of speakers alternated between supporters of the housing and those calling for the tower to be shorter or for the homes to be 100 percent affordable instead of a mix, those seeking to retain the character of Davis and those citing examples of what results from stagnation, and people bringing up issues of parking restrictions and unit size. (“I think unit mix is something that we are in the process of revisiting,” Flynn said.)
“Dialogue really became toxic”
For Copper Mill to go forward with “a viable, feasible project,” consensus and approvals would be needed this calendar year, leading to construction beginning possibly as soon as 2027, Flynn said. Without that, the company might “have to move on.”
Many in the audience cheered at that, and Flynn said “it’s a little bit of a shame to hear that folks would rather run us out of town than work with us.”
The year’s silence, he explained, was also due to the negativity of public response. “We were trying to engage in dialogue that folks really were not reciprocating. The level of vitriol and the spirit of the dialogue really became toxic this time last year,” Flynn said. “You guys may say I’m a complainer or I need thicker skin. We have thick skin. We are here again. But some of the things got really personal.”
Anger at price and lack of plan
Some of the ire in the audience was shared with Myer Dana and Sons for its land price. “Everyone here should be outraged,” said Alex Pitkin, the Symmes Maini & McKee architect who designed the new Somerville High School.
Somerville government also came in for criticism, as residents in the audience wanted Copper Mill to hold off on design proposals until comprehensive planning for Davis Square was complete.
“The planning department did us a disservice. They did Davis Square a disservice. We were promised a Davis square area plan, and they abandoned Davis Square four years ago and left that plan hanging,” Pitkin said, calling on Wilson to see the plan through promptly.
Hiring, then six months
Wilson attended the meeting, hanging out at the back with Tom Galligani, executive director of the city’s Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development. Afterward, approached by residents, the mayor assured them that the Davis Square plan didn’t “need to start from scratch,” but was being held back by four vacancies among staff.
“Planning got decimated, and so that’s been our top priority. We can’t plan without planners,” Wilson said, noting that the first new hire was to begin work Monday. A second offer, for a senior planner position, was accepted this week and that person could start as soon as next month.
Once the department is staffed up, Wilson said, completing a Davis Square plan is “probably a six-month process.”