August 2020 News

Comments Due Soon for Winter Hill and Boynton Yards

September 07, 2020

Somerville YIMBY

Boynton Yards, a 6.5-acre site just outside the core of Union Square, has been a focus for development planning for some time. It's a mostly industrial and commercial district that's got some major problems: it's disconnected from other parts of Somerville, hard to navigate, unfriendly to people on bikes and on foot, and in general due for an upgrade.

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. The good: green building standards, lots of civic & arts space, major upgrades to bike infrastructure, and a very substantial amount of commercial/industrial space, which Somerville's tax base could really use. In addition, it includes roughly $24 million in linkage fees for jobs, affordable housing, and transit. And although it does have a lot of parking - roughly 1,000 spaces - that's still a pretty good ratio, given that it's expected to attract about 4,000 jobs.

Written public comment on the proposal is due September 10.

Please send your comments to

A slightly smaller but also very important new projects coming up in the city is the newly updated Winter Hill Urban Renewal plan, which aims to deal with the vacant Star Market site on Broadway. It's looking like the private market isn't going to solve this problem and the city's going to wind up taking the site by eminent domain.Steering Committee member Jeff Byrnes attended a recent community meeting on this plan, which is now open for public comment. The city and the Somerville Redevelopment Authority have listened to a great deal of feedback from the community and have drawn up a design featuring a new city park with lots of green space, at least 200 new homes with an emphasis on affordability and preventing displacement, and some retail, ideally involving groceries.

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