Getting it right in Union Square

By William C. Shelton

(The opinions and views expressed in the commentaries of The Somerville News belong solely to the authors of those commentaries and do not reflect the views or opinions of The Somerville News, its staff or publishers.)

It will come as no surprise to regular readers that I was deeply unhappy with Assembly Square planning. The public processes were window dressing to satisfy regulatory requirements and create the illusion of democracy. The real intent all along seems to have been rewarding the original developers by enabling them to leave town with $30 million in profit created solely by city decisions. The new developers have been a welcome change.

As wrong as the Assembly Square planning process was, the Union Square process is right. Public participation is fulsome, innovative, effective. And it shows, in a plan that is continually getting better and better.

Monica Lamboy, Director of the Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development, Planning Director Madeleine Masters, and their colleagues began by widely soliciting the hopes and concerns of stakeholders. They convened an ongoing focus group comprising 22 stakeholder representatives. It met for four months to tease out the subtleties of their concerns and the inventiveness of their creativity. The planners obtained feedback from the Board of Aldermen, and they conducted public meetings.

Genuine listening is demonstrated by changed behavior. The current plan has now been through three major changes and dozens of smaller improvements that resulted from ongoing insights. With each iteration, city staff has held public meetings to explain and listen.

When people know that they are being listened to, they act on their hope and unleash their enthusiasm. And when people carefully listen to each other, their conflicts turn into creative solutions.

City planning leaders convened a group of local architects who dove into the Square's possibilities. Union Square Main Streets' Director Mimi Graney arranged for their use of 3-D modeling technology. The architects became so involved that they are asking for just a little more time to refine their creation.

Throughout the process, the planners have worked to demystify terms of art so that average folks can understand and use them. For example, Floor Area Ration or FAR means the sum of square feet of all the floors in a building, divided by the number of square feet of the lot that it is on. Economic Development Director Ron May spent a day at the Union Square Farmers' Market encouraging kids and adults to play with 3D representations of buildings and lots. By doing so, they learned how FAR changes with buildings' heights, setbacks from lot boundaries, and step-backs from their footprints as they rise higher.

The proposal resulting from all this is a model of good planning. An essential element of smart growth is to locate development density close to the kind of transportation infrastructure represented by the Green Line. The Union Square plan does this with office space that will produce much needed tax revenues, housing that is affordable to a broad mix of incomes, and retail and service uses that will support both. All of the differing uses work together to create a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts. That is as it should be, but so rarely is.

Putting offices and apartments atop retail and service uses extends the hours of pedestrian vitality, while reducing crime by ensuring round-the-clock eyes on the street. It increases merchant sales to office workers during the day and residents in the evening. Reduced parking requirements anticipate soaring fuel costs and the Green Line's arrival, while it encourages the location decisions of goods and service providers who improve the mix but do not need, and could not provide, the parking required by today's zoning.

The plan embodies principles of an urban pedestrian-oriented environment, which include siting buildings close to the street, with frequent doors and windows opening onto the street. Yet the plan ensures a smooth transition to residential districts, with buffer zones and buildings set back from the rear of their lots. Design guidelines provide for building quality, compatibility, and the integrity of the Square's historic heart.

Proposed building height requirements are, I believe, an effective compromise between those who want to maximize tax revenue, and the small but vocal group concerned with shadows, out-of-character structures, and having their views blocked. In addition, the higher that a residential building goes, the greater must be its percentage of affordable units-up to 18 percent. Personally, I'd like to see more than half of the units affordable, but we can only impose the most demanding requirements that the market will support.

The matter of artist housing has been widely criticized and widely misunderstood, including by me. As it turns out, it only applies to those residential properties that include affordable live-work units. Half of them would be set-aside for artists. It's hard for me to conceive of families who would want or use live-work units, who could not be defined as “artists.”

My primary complaint about the plan is that there is too much housing in it-way too much. Already the densest city in New England, Somerville doesn't need more residents, it needs more tax revenue. Housing produces two-thirds the tax revenue of commercial uses, but double the municipal costs.

While we're good at persuading bond raters of our continuing fiscal health, the underlying reality is grimmer. And while we have a tremendous need for housing that Somerville's families can afford, intensive office development can throw off the kind of tax revenues that could support housing elsewhere in the city, where development costs will be lower.

Yet, as a whole, the plan is a good one. No one gets everything that they want when honest and thoughtful people of goodwill compromise, but we all get so much more that we need. Planning staff has reduced the plan to clear and clearly implementable zoning that will go before the Planning and Aldermanic Boards this fall. Come the public hearing, city officials may be disoriented by my enthusiastic support.

Comments

[JPM]

Bill, you always write informative posts. I am slightly perplexed by your support of a large number of affordable units.

As you know, all it does is drive up the rents of the remaining market rate units. Also it is always seems to be "connected people" get many of these income cut off affordable units...nudge nudge wink wink.

As for artists, I have nothing against them. However, why should the city provide them with subsidised housing at everyone else's expense. How about affordable housing set asides for public defenders who make $38,000 a year, or social workers etc......you get my point. There are plenty of low paid important jobs.....I don't see why artists should get special treatment. They decide to be artists after all.

Funnily enough, when it comes to income cut offs on affordable housing I a little too much to qualify....however they do not take into account student loan repayments that must be made every month. Once my loans are fatored in I am poorer than most of those getting these affordable places. However, the guidlines only care about gross income.....so in effect you are punished for getting an education and rewarded for having no debt, likely because you did not go to college and/or grad school.

However, when it comes to real estate I am a firm belive in one thing: let the market decide, and life where you can afford. I saw what political intereference in the real estate market did in NY and it was dreadful. You certainly needs laws to protect tenants from slum landlords, safety violations etc.....iother than that leave it alone!

[Bill Shelton]

First, thanks JPM. Yes, excluding from housing affordability calculations debt service on student loans does seem to me to be unjust--in cases where graduates choose occupations that make the world better for all or provide some essential public service, like your public defender/social worker. These folks will spend many, many years paying off their student loans. Doing so will absorb much of their disposable income. Simply including student loans payments in the calculation would make things easier for these people, while automatically excluding those with highly lucrative jobs by virtue of their incomes.

And, as I expressed to Ms. Lamboy & Ms. Masters when I interviewed them, I too believe that artists should not receive a break merely because they are artists. But it is hard for me to imagine someone who would want to buy and maintain the extra space in a live-work unit whose activity in the work portion could not be defined as"art."

The city's planners view the density of artists in the area as providing a competitive advantage that will bring out-of-towners to shop, locate offices, dine in restaurants, and leave their money here, creating jobs and tax revenues for residents. As competitive advantages go, it doesn't seem to me to be that strong, but it may work.

On the affordable housing question, we'll have to disagree. Yes, in a perfect market with perfect information, removing a certain portion of housing from the market that those with the means to do so would otherwise be willing to pay a higher price for, will increase the average price of units that remain in the open market. This tendency is moderated somewhat by the fact that affordable units are more often those that a person of means would not choose to buy, but the price increase is real.

However, the housing market is regional, while I live in Somerville. As I have often written, I see more and more people who take no part in the life of the community displacing Somerville residents who have, throughout their lives, made contributions to the community's well being that, in their absence, must become services provided by government and paid for by you and I.

I don't want to live in a bedroom community. I don't want to live with people who are all the same. What I pay for my housing includes debt service, taxes, insurance, and maintenance. I don't believe that the net impact of increased housing prices resulting from removing what is a small proportion of housing from the free market is going to be much higher than that of forcing out families whose absence will result in increased taxes.

[nobody]

I think there should be more offices, make Union Square vibrant during the business day to support business and keep the square vibrant all day and night long. Also given that Roosevelt towers is like two blocks away from Boynton Yards (which is where the tall buildings we're talking about will go) I don't think subsidized housing should be a major goal for the health of the neighborhood. Above a certain % and its dangerous.

[JPM]

Bill I will address your points later in full.

For now I will say this:
The one major flaw with these feel good policies is that they have loopholes in them that you can drive a truck through. The major one is that the income cut offs are determined by reported income: i.e. income that you declare in your tax returns and reported on W2s. What often happens is that people get theses cheap apartments and they are working under the table and are actually doing very well....and now they get a cheap apartment as well. Like a lot of feel good poilcies...when you examine them more closely they fall apart.

[Adam Rich]

nobody,

If you feel that a concentration of families making $60,000 a year is dangerous, you may want to consider living in another city. The affordable housing used in the zoning plan is based on the area median income, a calculation that includes wealthy suburbs. This affordable housing, in theory, will protect the very large percentage of people in Somerville who qualify. We are not talking about deep subsidies here. The unfortunate reality is that many people in Somerville will not be wealthy enough to afford the affordable units.

[JPM]

Adam. If you can't afford to live in Somerville then live somewhere else or make more money.