Mayor Curtatone is looking forward to what he believes will be a great boon to Somerville as the Assembly Square development takes shape.

By Andrew Firestone

Mayor Joseph Curtatone has devoted much of his time during his administration to the many tasks of zoning and preparing the urban wasteland Assembly Square for its makeover. Now, he says, the time has come for the vision of the 45-acre plot to become reality.

“Assembly Square will be a neighborhood for all,” he said. “What we do not want are gated communities; gated in terms of who lives there, and gated in terms of who the consumers are. It has to be a neighborhood and district for all. That is what makes Somerville so Somerville.”

The Mayor said that Assembly Square, like Union Square and Davis Square, would have its own flavor once fully built out, and it was that Somerville taste that would entice tenants on the road to construction. “I’ve always viewed Somerville as a city of neighborhoods and squares; this incredible necklace, and its charms are its neighborhoods and squares.  And every neighborhood and square is authentic; they embrace a diversity of culture and ethnicity. It’s such an ingrained value in how we see ourselves, and who we want to be.”

“[Our squares] are all diverse, flexible, creative,” he said. “They are all hip. They are all funky, and freaky, and Assembly Square will be very Somerville in that fashion as well. What we don’t want is what you can get anywhere else.”

“We are building the next best new neighborhood on the eastern seaboard,” said Mayor Curtatone, “but what we are creating must be so Somerville, that it should have its own uniqueness and authenticity, similar to every square and neighborhood in this city. We don’t want to be homogenous.”

With the fiscal year 2012 underway, the building of the first phase of Assembly Square has begun. Already residential developer Avalon Bay has begun construction of the planned 420 units with over 1500 on the way, while Federal Realty Investment Trust has unveiled plans for retail outlet stores, possibly as many as 50 stores.

“It’s going to have a unique shopping experience in terms of bringing the outlet concept, not boxes and a lot of parking blitzkrieg, shopping to get out, but having that high quality economic value, Main St. experience, where you are walking along main street, enjoying the waterfront, the cafes and the shops, and at the same time being a future center of technology and innovation, the next new great center here in the metro region.”

Assembly Square still has a long way to go in terms of its development. While plans for the new Mystic River park are underway, skeptics have pointed out that the water quality of the Mystic is very poor, with a grade of “D-” presented by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2011.

“The long term goal is to make that swimmable and fishable, that should not be beyond the realms of expectation,” said Curtatone.

As development spreads out from Assembly Square, Curtatone said that he hopes to see the new rezoning process take place in Brickbottom and Union Square as well, doubling the stories of Union Square, and opening up Brickbottom to allow for more commercial development.

“In Somerville one of the worst policy decisions and implementations has been in and around transit in a built environment; bringing in so much transportation infrastructure like I-93, expanding [Rt.] 28, bringing in all these commuter lines and none of them stopped or served Somerville and in the case of the Inner Belt [and] Brickbottom, actually land locked that district, about 138 acres of great developable land with rail and highway infrastructure,” he said. “We created our own barriers to commercial activity, not to mention the social and health consequences to the city.”

The Mayor and his administration have been in negotiation for many tenants, whom he hopes will make Somerville their home and alleviate the pressure the city places on its residential taxpayers. “Much of what we’re doing is not so much talking as listening with our Future Economies commission, which we established to get a gauge, understand, and prepare ourselves for the next generation of the next best thing.”

Ideally, the planned 1.75 million sq. ft. of commercial development in Assembly Square will include science and technology industries, including computer science, nanotechnology, biotechnology. “What is that?,” asked the Mayor. “What do the research universities think of that? All those startups, what kind of activity are they engaged in?”

What I want to know from CEOs is, as we reach and recognize the strengths of what Somerville is, and who we are, how do we prepare ourselves, and is our framework for economic development, ‘does it make sense to you?’ And we look for confirmation of that, or understand how they make their decisions on where to expand.”

“When I speak to CEOs, I talk about what is so Somerville,” he said. “It’s not a hard sell, it’s an easy sell, because what they all see, and what they all know, is that all the focus of future residential, commercial activities is coming back to the urban core.”

“Workers today want to be in and around the lifestyle centers, near and around the research universities, and the house of commercial and cultural activity, not around some off-ramp in the suburbs.”

Assembly Square represents a public investment of almost $130 million, in terms of state funds, city bonds and federal stimulus money. All told, the development is planned to be a center of entertainment, shopping, commerce and community.

What will differentiate Assembly Square from other developments, such as the Natick Mall area, and Kendall Square, is that “it will be a neighborhood,” said Curtatone.