An iron worker stands atop a bridge that will carry Green Line trains from Cambridge and into Somerville and Medford on Jan. 20, 2020. Photo courtesy of MassDOT.
Land near the under-construction Ball Square Station could become a target for mixed-use real estate projects featuring transit access as a focal point, but talks about the development will not take place until well after the Green Line Extension fully opens in May 2022, an MBTA official said Tuesday.
Although the station on the Somerville-Medford Line has been targeted for future transit-oriented development, Terry McCarthy, the project’s program director of stakeholder engagement, said “it’s a little early” to kick off discussions about blended residential and business construction near the stop, with passenger service still nearly a year away.
“MBTA operations doesn’t want to review the transit-oriented development potentials until after we’ve started revenue service,” McCarthy said during a Green Line Extension Community Work Group meeting.
The next steps for transit-oriented development are unlikely to occur until fall 2022 at the earliest or up to a year after passengers begin riding, he said.
The transit agency will need to complete laying tracks and constructing power infrastructure and the station, McCarthy said, before officials will have a final sense of exactly how large a plot is available for development highlighting access to the station. Developers would then bring proposals to the T for review.
The Baker administration and lawmakers have targeted transit-oriented development as a tool to expand the state’s limited supply of affordable housing and to encourage more workers to commute by train and bus rather than adding more vehicles to already-congested roadways.
Officials originally hoped to complete the entire Green Line Extension project and open it to riders by the end of 2021, but the project – which remains on budget – has been delayed by COVID-19 impacts.
Trains should begin accepting riders in mid-December for the short Union Square branch and by the end of May 2022 for the longer Medford branch under the revised schedule, McCarthy said.
