It would have been unimaginable a decade or two ago, when the “Slumerville” tag still actually meant something. But arising Somerville is giving a complacent Cambridge a run for its money as the hippest and hottest place to live in New England – and not just for the crunchy granola crowd.
As Cambridge sits on its hands, with a dwindling number of homes and condos for sale and, beyond the ubiquitous luxury apartments, little new construction in sight, Somerville has become building boom central.
Not only does it have a surge of condo conversions and mega developments pouring more residential units into a market starved for inventory, but Somerville is also poised to capitalize bigtime on the $1.6 billion Green Line extension, which is already putting long-neglected parts of the city on the map for buyers.
Sure, Cambridge is still a super place to live, but that doesn’t mean all that much for the growing numbers of frustrated buyers who can’t find a condo or house to buy in the city, however humble and outrageously overpriced.
“There are a lot of reasons to feel confident about a significant appreciation for Somerville condos in 2015,” noted David Bates, a top Raveis broker and market observer who authors The Bates Real Estate Report blog (and contributes to this newspaper).
Two Billion-Dollar Neighborhoods
Somerville right now has two billion-dollar mega projects taking shape. The first installment of the $1.5 billion Assembly Row project made its debut last summer, with hundreds of apartments, restaurants, stores, offices, a movie theater and even a giant Legoland Discovery Center.
The icing on the cake is Assembly, the new Orange Line T station. It’s a remarkable transformation for what was long an urban wasteland, and it’s just the beginning, with developer Federal Realty intent on creating a new neighborhood.
Millions more square feet of new development is planned over the next several years, including a total of 1,800 apartments by the time the massive project is complete.
Somerville’s second billion-dollar baby is nothing less than a sweeping transformation of already trendy Union Square, with plans to piggyback on the Green Line extension, which will give the neighborhood its first T stop. Roughly two million square feet of new homes, offices and shops over 12 acres are planned over the coming years in Union Square.
In a first step, an old Washington Street funeral home was recently leveled to make way for 30 condos, while the former Boys & Girls Club building will make way for 35 affordable apartments.
But it’s not just all about the big projects; dozens of small-time builders and developers are also rushing to cash in on the Somerville residential boom. There has been a surge of industrial buildings being converted into condos, from warehouses to old garages.
And the planned Green Line extension, which will add new stops in Somerville, is already driving up prices in long-bypassed neighborhoods like Winter Hill and Magoun Square.
Leading the charge is Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone, who last fall increased the city’s housing production goal to 9,000 new homes, condos and apartments by 2030, a 50 percent jump.
“Somerville’s leadership … keeps the short-term pulse with its eye on the long game,” Bates writes.
Just Over The Line And in Cambridge?
Well, there’s NorthPoint, where plans for a multibillion-dollar new neighborhood have immense potential, but also have been moving in slow gear for years now. Frankly, it’s nowhere close to making the kind of splash Assembly Square is making in Somerville.
Some luxury apartments have gone up in the Alewife area, and the lab building boom in Kendall Square is as heated as ever.
But, for the most part, Cambridge is up to its old tricks, fighting endless battles over the direction of future development of the city, even as the world changes around it.
An effort to redevelop the Middlesex County courthouse in East Cambridge has been stuck in neutral, mired down in predictable neighborhood opposition.
If that weren’t enough, City Councilor Dennis Carlone is leading a campaign that would effectively give the council power to green or red light new projects – not a reassuring prospect given the council’s anti-development rep.
Meanwhile, home and condo sales are plunging, with little if any new construction coming on to satisfy years of pent-up demand. The number of condos sales in Cambridge slid to 611 through November, down from 786 during the same period in 2013, Bates noted.
So sure, Cambridge, rest on your laurels and keep turning away all those hordes of buyers eager for a taste of life in the ivy-clad city.
But watch out, because Somerville has your number.
Email: sbvanvoorhis@hotmail.com
