By Joseph A. Curtatone

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

We learned some great news this week, as software company SmartBear announced that it will be the first tenant in Assembly Row’s Class A office building, following Partners HealthCare’s announcement that it will build a new office building in Somerville’s newest neighborhood. In choosing Somerville, SmartBear’s CEO specifically cited public transit options, moving closer to other technology companies in the urban core, and amenities that tech workers seek—the culture, art, food scene and more that make Somerville attractive. The company’s move is an important indicator that the years of community planning we’ve done around smart, transit-oriented development, are building a stronger local economy for all our businesses, expanding our tax base and bringing high-quality jobs to Somerville. And we’ve done all this by staying true to ourselves and leaning on our strengths.

What are those strengths? As the saying goes: location, location, location. But in Somerville, it’s also about the vision and determination of our people, people, people. As for the location part, we know about the historic return to the urban core underway. That includes young people wanting to live in vibrant city squares to baby boomers wanting walkable amenities—and it includes our longtime residents no longer planning to leave (trust me, I remember when nearly everyone’s big dream was to get out of Somerville). But that return to the urban core also includes quality job providers like software companies, life sciences, biotech and greentech that will form the foundation of the 21st century economy. Attracting and retaining those companies working in research and development, innovation and creative industries is a critical component of Somerville remaining competitive in the new industrial renaissance. With so many of those companies seeking to locate in the urban core where they can meet and collaborate with like-minded entrepreneurs, our community has worked to make Somerville an obvious choice. That’s where our people come in.

We, as a community, have worked to expand access to quality public transit with the Assembly Orange Line Station and the Green Line Extension. We have worked to create walkable, bikeable neighborhoods and make those connections between neighborhoods, and we have committed to creating high-density, mixed-use developments near public transit. This community vision—and elbow grease—is drawing companies like SmartBear to our city and our residents in turn will reap the benefits of hosting them here.
Bringing high-quality jobs to Somerville is one of the goals that the community charged us with in our comprehensive SomerVision plan, and SmartBear’s move to Assembly Row is another step toward achieving our goal of 30,000 new jobs by 2030. Most of our residents currently leave the city to go to work. By bringing more job opportunities to Somerville, we can give our residents better options that also improve their quality of life. With local jobs in the city, residents can spend more time with their families and less time commuting. Local jobs also affords residents the ability to ditch their cars and walk or bike to work, which improves both personal health and overall public health as we take cars off the road and their emissions out of their air.

Office jobs make our local economy stronger still by supporting other local businesses. It brings in the daytime population that eats, shops and purchases services in Somerville. If there isn’t foot traffic throughout the day, independent small businesses can struggle. Too few office workers is why you see restaurants that only open for dinner. But when we have groundfloor retail and restaurants with offices above, it creates an 18-hour economy that is a huge boon to local businesses, with office workers supporting businesses during the day, and residents and visitors supporting them at night.

Bringing new office-based businesses to Somerville also benefits our community by expanding our commercial tax base. Cambridge is able to maintain the lowest residential taxes in the region due to their city’s sizable commercial tax base. It’s a simple formula, the greater the percentage of commercial taxes versus residential, the less homeowners must pay in taxes while still receiving the same level of quality services—because commercial business owners are chipping in more. But we don’t want to make that shift on the backs of our cherished small, local businesses. We need large office tenants like SmartBear to bring that needed growth in commercial taxes. The bond rating agencies know this is a solid strategy, which is why they specifically cited our growing commercial tax base when awarding the city it’s highest bond ratings yet. Those high bond ratings in turn save our residents and property owners money, because it lowers the cost of borrowing for the city.

We can achieve all these benefits as long we play to our strengths. SomerVision is not a plan about what we want to build, but about what we want to be and what we value—being an active, vibrant, diverse city. When we can attract and retain upper-floor businesses to our city, we can achieve the community’s goals of more jobs, more support for local businesses and an expanded tax base that benefits everyone.