These are just some of the municipal meetings and civic events for the coming week. More are on the City of Somerville website.
Winter Hill school design vote
School Committee and School Building Committee, 4:30 and 6 p.m. Monday. School Committee members vote in the evening on a design to present to the state for funding of a 925-student complex at 115 Sycamore St., Winter Hill, to meet the needs of the community from the closed Winter Hill Community Innovation School – and, probably, the aging Benjamin G. Brown School. It follows the School Building Committee’s regular meeting, which includes a vote to approve a recommended design. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Homebuilding in Union Square
Community meeting, 6 p.m. Monday. Developers Joe the Architect propose to put up a three-story building at 314-316 Somerville Ave., Union Square, with seven homes and a commercial tenant, filling a site of a one-story commercial building – the Fiesta Haitian bakery and restaurant – that went unused after a 2013 fire and was demolished after a partial collapse in February 2025. The project needs a special permit for residential use from the Planning Board.
Splitting a Spring Hill lot
Zoning Board of Appeals, 6 p.m. Wednesday. Members consider splitting the lot at 17 Monmouth St., Spring Hill, now the site of a five-bedroom, five-bathroom home built in 1900. As a Somerville Housing Authority property, it gave single-room occupancy to elderly or disabled residents selected through a Medford organization called the Walnut Street Center. In June 2024, board members voted to take the house out of the SHA portfolio because it was “functionally obsolete” – it lacked accessibility to people with physical disabilities – and because the center had voluntarily vacated the property several years earlier, saying it had no clientele to house there. The applicant for the splitting of the lot is Sanjay Kansagra of Burlington, whose Sems Holdings also has property on Tremont Street near Inman Square. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
AI and school discipline issues
School Committee Rules Management Subcommittee, 5:30 p.m. Thursday. Policy around harmful artificial intelligence is discussed, as well as disciplinary issues such as time outs, restraints and seclusion. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Challenges to a 24-hour Dunkin’
Planning Board, 6 p.m. Thursday. We’re finally talking about proposed 24-hour operation at the Dunkin’ Donuts at 222 Broadway, Winter Hill, a major thoroughfare fronting on a largely residential area across from Foss Park. The store closes at 8 nightly. The request comes from a new owner who is looking forward to adding a Jimmy John’s sandwich operation within the same building. It is only one of several city businesses asking recently to stay open longer – but this one is resisted by neighbors who complained at a Wednesday community meeting of rats, noise, light and feeling unsafe because “it is a place where people hang out and gather” that, when open 24 hours, will be “a magnet for people coming home from clubs and entertainment venues late at night … the place is going to be dead from 8 to 1. There won’t be a single person in there, and then it’s going to be packed with drunken young men.” (There were also commenters who felt the expanded hours and service would be a welcome amenity.)
Also continuing on the agenda from past meetings: A four-story, 29-unit apartment building proposed for 32-40 White St. at the White Street Place cul-de-sac, across from a shopping center now known as The Mix Porter Square. The apartments would replace two homes and the long-closed Fleming Printing. A four-story laboratory office building (with a fifth floor of mechanicals) was proposed for this site in 2022, but the developer withdrew when a Planning Board memo in 2023 limited its available square footage. In the new plan, among a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom homes are five that are deeded as affordable. There will be 29 long-term bicycle parking spaces and four short-term, but no car parking is included – and because they will be within a quarter-mile of a T station, residents can’t apply for on-street parking passes.
More issues that are back: A 19-story lab building at 120 Middlesex Ave., Assembly Square; and 6 Wheatland St., also near Foss Park but in the Ten Hills neighborhood, where more than a year ago a landowner said they wanted to build five units of housing by tearing down the current two-unit structure on land behind a convenience store and the Dumpling Garden restaurant.
Walkers, bicyclists and transit
Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee, 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday. Should this committee merge with the Somerville Bicycle Advisory Committee? It’s the recommendation of the Review of Multiple-Member Bodies Committee, which convenes every 10 years to get city government working more efficiently as needs for committees come and go. Members will also take 40 minutes to talk about designs for replacing the state’s Squires Bridge, which goes over rail tracks (for the MBTA commuter rail Fitchburg line; Union branch of green line trolleys; and Grand Junction rail line) on Route 28, known as McGrath Highway in Somerville and the O’Brien Highway in Cambridge. At Boynton Yards, 101 South St., Ward 2, and watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Davis Square ‘Summer Glow Up’
Ribbon-cutting, 4:30 to 5 p.m. Friday. Directly before the Down in Davis: Alive at Five band performance at Statue Park, this ceremony marks the completion of recent public space improvements that include turning a traffic lane into pedestrianized public seating and new placemaking art at Statue Park. In-person in Davis Square Plaza.
This post was updated Aug. 17 to reflect a changed School Committee agenda.
