Improving Porter Square: Residents Consider Development Concepts

The space above the train tracks between Porter Square Station and Beacon Street could turn into homes, shops or a small hotel if residents agree on a design and the MBTA finds a developer to carry it out.

Representatives from the city, the MBTA and a local design firm presented to about 20 residents Tuesday night possible uses for the parcel, which borders Somerville Avenue and sits in both Somerville and Cambridge.

The meeting was the fourth in a series called the Porter and Wilson Square Visioning, organized by the city’s Office of Strategic Planning and Community Development. The city is seeking pedestrian-friendly development on Somerville Avenue and other nearby streets. The air rights development  would likely include ground-floor shops and upper-story housing.

Tim Love, a consultant and urban designer for Transit Realty Associates, the real estate arm of the MBTA, presented design concepts at the meeting. Love works as a consultant and urban planner for the Massachusetts Port Authority. He said he’s trying to figure out for the state if allowing private developers to build over the MBTA tracks would benefit the neighborhood.

The dimensions of the piece of land favor homes or a stack of small shops that wouldn’t rise any higher than 65 feet, or about four stories, he said. The development could also fit one level of parking.

Any development is a long way off
Given the lull in real estate development, it’s unlikely the MBTA would be able to find a developer any time soon, said Gregory Dicovitsky, the senior project manager at the MBTA's development and real estate department. But he said he supports the series of community meetings.

“If the market starts turning around,” he said, “do you want to be having those discussions in a rush or be having them now?”

Consulting Somerville, not just Cambridge
The MBTA first requested bids for “air rights” to build above the authority-owned tracks in 2003, said Dicovitsky. But the authority and developers largely overlooked the interests of Somerville residents, he said, preferring to confer with those in Cambridge, in part because the city’s zoning code better accommodated the project. This time around, Dicovitsky said, the parties would consult Somerville first.

“We didn’t want to, frankly, shortchange Somerville in this offering,” he said.

And he said he wanted the project to fit well in both cities.

“We’re back to find out if it means sense here. We’re not interested in forcing anything.”

How to revitalize Somerville Avenue?
To connect pedestrians to the development and solve certain design problems, Love suggested setting the building back from Somerville Avenue enough to build stairs and an elevator that would lead up to it. He also suggested that very small businesses, like newsstand or cafés, could set up shop along the face of the development, a practice common in the Porter Square Shopping Center and Boston's Downtown Crossing.

The design firm believes those concepts would “activate” the street, which it describes as “desolate” on its website.

“Walking it even on a good day doesn’t do anything for me,” said Dicovitsky as he visited one of the small groups that were discussing the different development ideas.

“It is quite ugly,” said a woman in the group.

But another woman said she liked the open space along Somerville Avenue and worried that construction would disrupt the neighborhood and that the development would attract too much traffic.  

“I think there’s more bad that comes with it than good,” she said. 

The next meeting will take place in mid-June, and the city plans to present a design proposal in September.