See the North Point project to design a car-free neighborhood between Somerville, Cambridge and Charlestown.

CITY LOOKS TO MBTA FOR EAST SIDE ECONOMIC BOOST

The Boston Globe, December 2, 2001

By Dorie Clark, Globe Correspondent

For years, Somerville was a working-class city known for mobsters such as the "Winter Hill Gang." But by 1997, the upscale, liberal Utne Reader was declaring West Somerville's Davis Square one of the 15 "hippest" neighborhoods in America.

What made the transition possible, says mayoral spokesman Sean Fitzgerald, was the 1984 expansion of the Red Line. "It can't be overemphasized how important the T was to the growth of Davis Square," he said. "It's no surprise that when the T was located there, Davis Square took off." The city hopes to replicate the formula of transit-fueled growth on the other side of the city, in both Assembly and Union squares. "With no central downtown, the squares are the visible icons of the city," said Fitzgerald. "Union and Assembly squares are anchors, and all future development there would really hinge on a T station."

In the past, the city of 80,000 often missed out on transportation projects. Somerville won the Davis Square stop only when North Cambridge business owners objected to the MBTA's plan to have the T run up Massachusetts Avenue. While Cambridge has six subway stops, Somerville has only one. Cambridge has 30 bus routes; Somerville 13. And despite several commuter rail lines that snake through Somerville, none actually stop there.

"The mayor wants to see Somerville as a place to get to, not just go through," Fitzgerald said. "The key to that is public transportation."

Both Mayor Dorothy Kelly Gay and her critics agree mass transit is critical to the future of 145-acre Assembly Square.

Steve Post of the city's Office of Housing and Community Development said Somerville has paid $250,000 for a feasibility study to be completed next spring on a stop, and that the Sturtevant Partnership - planning to build homes, offices, and small retail shops on the site - has pledged $2 million toward station design.

Yet the project may be years away: the MBTA's five-year Capital Investment Plan doesn't even mention an Assembly Square stop.

But Somerville could have three other subway stops by 2012 if the MBTA fulfills its pledge to extend the Green Line. If the state and the City of Cambridge agree, the Lechmere T station, now the end of the Green Line, will be moved across O'Brien Highway into an area where developers have proposed building a new residential community called North Point. From there, the T would extend along abandoned train tracks, with stops roughly at O'Brien Highway and Washington Street in Somerville; behind City Hall in Gilman Square; Ball Square; and Medford Hillside.

Though the MBTA has previously fought similar initiatives, such as restoring Green Line service to Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, the agency seems committed to the Medford Hillside extension, particularly because a proposed new Lechmere station site is more convenient to the existing railbeds.

"It'd make it pretty much a straight shot," said MBTA spokesman Joe Pesaturo, "and certainly less costly."

There's one critical problem, however. According to Jeff Levine, Somerville's director of long-range planning, "They propose rail where we don't need it or want it in Somerville, and they don't propose it where we really need it, in Union Square."

The MBTA's plan would have the first T stop fall outside Union Square - too far away to help local businesses. While the City Hall stop would benefit municipal workers, no other large employers are in the area.

The city instead would like an extended Green Line to travel to the heart of Union Square, and continue up the Fitchburg commuter rail line along Somerville Avenue to intersect with the Red Line at Porter Square - or from Union Square, follow the MBTA's proposed path behind City Hall and through Ball Square.

But because Porter Square already has a T stop, and the latter plan would require tunnelling underneath Prospect Hill, the proposals are less popular with the MBTA. That means, since the Green Line extension isn't a done deal, Union Squa
With the talk of new subway stops, "there's a lot of concern among people who live in Union Square about gentrification," said Christi Wrigley, the city's director of transportation and commercial development. "Davis is a wonderful model,re - the part of Somerville that city officials are most desperately fighting to revitalize - risks losing out on any form of rail.
a gateway into Somerville, a pride of the community, but Union is going to be different than Davis."

She insists the city will fight to keep Union Square's racially diverse, immigrant character. If the trajectory of Union and Assembly squares follows that of Davis, however, there's only so much the city can do in the face of market forces.