Read the Concept Design Community Engagement Report

In May 2025, the City published concept design options for our Western Pearl Street Reconstruction project. We spent the next month engaging community members to gather feedback and promoting the project to spread the word about the street redesign. Mobility Division staff hosted an outdoor open-house event in mid-May, and from May to late June we hosted two virtual office hours, held a street outreach pop-up, conducted an online survey, posted flyers to more than 380 homes, held a youth focus group with Groundwork Somerville, held a meeting with Pearl Street Park residents, met with Gilman Square Neighborhood Council members, tabled at the Carnaval street festival and met with the Pedestrian and Transit Advisory Committee and the Somerville Bicycle Advisory Committee. We’d like to thank all our community members and partners who participated and supported this important work!

We are proud to document all this work in the Western Pearl Street Reconstruction Concept Design Community Engagement report, which describes all the outreach activities we held, and publishes all the feedback we heard. The beginning of the report summarizes what we gathered, and each section describes the specific comments and feedback that we collected. We estimate that we spoke with 283 people in this phase of the project.

City staff are now working to incorporate this public feedback into the next phase of the design. We anticipate bringing an 80 Percent Design to community members in the fall, with another round of public feedback that will help us work towards finalizing the design over the winter and preparing for construction to take place between 2026 and 2027.

If you have any questions and comments, please email transportation@somervillema.gov or call 311 at 617-666-3311.