A new ownership group is revising plans for a commercial development on the outskirts of Somerville’s Union Square, dropping a 330-room hotel while retaining a pair of office-lab towers.

Capital Hall Partners, Spaulding & Slye Investments and Union Square master developer US2 are partnering on the 980,000-square-foot Gateway Innovation Center project at 200 McGrath Highway, which is expected to submit a master plan later this year to begin the local permitting process.

Under plans presented at a community meeting last week, developers unveiled changes including a height reduction for one lab tower and the elimination of the hotel segment.

The development project was originally launched in 2020 by Capital Hall Partners, which submitted plans to state environmental officials for a development including two 377- and 297-foot-tall life science buildings and a 254-foot-tall hotel.

The firm brought in additional investors in Boston-based Spaulding & Slye Investments and Union Square master developer US2 this year.

The latest proposal reduces the size of the project by 574,000 square feet from the original 2020 version, Stantec Senior Principal B.K. Boley said during the presentation. The third building was eliminated to accommodate the city of Somerville’s potential plans for a park on a corner of the site.

The redesign reduces lab building A from 20 to 12 stories and while increasing building B from 14 to 16 stories. The underground parking component shrinks from 900 to 588 spaces.

Community benefits from the project include $10 million to the city’s affordable housing trust, $2.5 million to the job creation and retention trust and $4.7 million in transportation projects.

US2 broke ground last summer on a 450-unit apartment tower and 194,000-square-foot office-lab building in the first phase of its 2.4 million-square-foot mixed-use project in the city’s Union Square redevelopment, spanning 15 acres near the Union Square station on the MBTA’s Green Line Extension.

New Owners Update 980K SF Gateway Project in Somerville

by Steve Adams time to read: 1 min
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