Green Line could wake up sleepy squares
By Danielle Dreilinger
Globe Correspondent / February 15, 2009
Ball Square didn’t draw much foot traffic on a typical sleepy afternoon last Sunday. A few people walked by the square’s small shops - a salon, a wine store - and the square’s popular brunch
places. Wig Zamore, a Somerville transit advocate who holds unpaid positions on a number of transit-project boards, stood above a small, shabby parking lot. Across the street, a small building
boasted a big “for sale or lease” banner.
But if all goes according to the state’s plan, in five years, that parking lot will be a station for the Green Line extension. The state Executive Office of Transportation issued recommendations Feb. 3 from a draft environmental impact report: five new stops in Somerville, with tracks running along existing rail beds.
Local officials and advocates are already way ahead, thinking about what changes might result.
Community members at numerous urban planning meetings over the last year have assumed that the proposed extension of the Green Line will mean big increases in activity (and rents) all along the line, as was the case with Davis Square after the subway station was built there during the 1984 Red Line extension project. Zamore said it revitalized that neighborhood.
Instead, transit watchers envision a mildly rejuvenated central city and a bustling, dense commercial district in the east.
Instead, transit watchers envision a mildly rejuvenated central city and a bustling, dense commercial district in the east.
“The fabric of the residential districts will be the same,” Zamore said. “You have a valuable neighborhood here already.”
In Ball Square, he predicted, “the restaurants will do even a little better.” He imagined some new, small development running down to Magoun Square, less than half-mile away.
Davis Square was larger and more central to begin with, said city spokesman Tom Champion. “Every stop and every neighborhood has its different scale and density. It’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all.”
Read the complete article in Globe’s City Weekly section.
