Development Concepts

Since last December, the Washington Street planning team has heard from hundreds of residents about their preferences for redeveloping the City's 90 Washington Street property. We even had people build their ideal development visions using Lego at our BYO Design Workshop on August 4th! In February and March, the team surveyed neighborhood residents about seven possible different development layouts, shown below.

Overall, the design concept surveys indicated that voters want to see a mixture of public and private uses developed on 90 Washington Street, with civic buildings (the new Public Safety Building) and public green space mixed with privately-developed residential and commercial buildings. Most survey respondents (42%) preferred a public green space on Washington Street to "knit" civic and private development together into a cohesive whole. A smaller, but significant, group of voters wanted much of the property be left undisturbed to preserve the existing trees on the site. It should also be noted that 28% of voters preferred other redevelopment concepts than what were displayed in the survey, some of which were displayed at the Design Workshop.

Please let us know what YOU prefer! There's still time to register your input. If you have a group of neighbors or community organization that want to participate in a design workshop, we'll come to you! Just reach out to tfields@somervillema.gov.