Jarred Johnson
Greater Boston doesn’t have a land shortage or a capital shortage. What it has is a shortage of sites where large-scale development actually pencils out. That’s fundamentally a transit problem.
The region’s most transformative projects make the case plainly. Assembly Row, Boston Landing, Suffolk Downs and the Alewife area each succeeded because large numbers of people could reach them without a car. That access creates demand, which makes debt service work.
Right now, access of that quality exists in a narrow band of locations, which is why developers compete over the same parcels rather than expanding into new markets.
The MBTA is kicking off work on Focus 2050, the long-range plan guiding where the agency invests over the next 25 years. That document will determine which sites become financeable and which remain marginal. For the commercial real estate sector, it is a crystal ball.
The History Is Right in Front of Us
The first serious proposal for Assembly Square landed in 1998; the Orange Line station didn’t open until 2014. But Federal Realty didn’t wait. They negotiated early, secured the land, and built the Gateway Center mall while the station was still a concept.
Becky Lin
Today, Assembly Row holds roughly 800,000 square feet of retail, 1.3 million square feet of office and lab space and over 1,500 housing units on 145 acres once home to an idled Ford plant.
Boston Landing tells a similar story: New Balance pushed for the commuter rail stop and built around it.The public transit commitment was credible enough to bank on, and private conviction is what made it real.
The Window Is Open Now
What gets written into Focus 2050 will help direct where transit-supported access appears over the next two to three decades. Corridors in the plan, also called the Program for Mass Transportation or PMT, attract state dollars, federal grants and developer interest. Corridors left out get left behind.
Some gains are within immediate reach: infill stations and frequent suburban bus networks connecting Route 128 job centers to the broader system dramatically expanding the geography of viable development.
Tarang Shah
The medium-term ask is a genuine commitment to regional rail – electrified trains every 10 to 15 minutes, with major hubs like Readville and West Station built out for real transfer volume. That makes Allston Yards, Dorchester, and Mattapan competitive locations for growth backed by stronger political alignment than projects that drop into neighborhoods without rapid transit service.
The long-term asks fix problems we’ve spent decades ignoring: a second Green Line trunk to address capacity and reliability, direct subway access to Chelsea and Everett and the North-South Rail Link through-running that unlocks hundreds of acres currently used to store trains.
Dozens of sites in Greater Boston could be the next Assembly Rows, if we line up transit investment and new development.
What Developers Actually Get from the PMT
Transit access makes projects more attractive to tenants, cheaper to build, and easier to finance.
Projects in transit-rich locations are inherently easier to entitle. They reduce vehicle trips, generate municipal tax revenue and align with the state’s housing and climate mandates. Projects in transit-rich locations or that support transit improvements are easier to defend before city councils and neighborhood associations, as they provide more benefits for existing residents.
Transit also decreases the cost of development by decreasing parking and traffic mitigation needs, and enables transportation without congestion.
Better transit also connects workers to jobs outside downtown Boston, expanding the pool for employers across the region and strengthening the case for development in places that have historically struggled to attract tenants.
As the MBTA and municipalities explore ground leases, joint development agreements and value-capture mechanisms at stations like Watertown Yard and Kendall Square, developers who proactively engage with these tools will be positioned to win.
The gentrification concern is real. But the answer is not to block transit investment; it is to pair it with the zoning, affordability, and community development tools that ensure existing residents share in the gains, not just new ones.
What Engagement Looks Like
The projects that reshaped Boston were built through coalitions: municipalities that saw the tax base argument, employers who needed workforce connections and developers who saw the opportunity.
The MBTA is hosting public meetings this spring for Focus 2050. And we at TransitMatters are kicking off our own parallel campaign for ambitious transit, FRAME the Future. It lays out a long-term transit system vision that is future-ready, adaptable, modernized and evolving. We want the real estate and business community at the table.
Public engagement opportunities are a way for communities and organizations to be involved, and is the earliest stage of deal origination. Corridors that receive sustained, organized support from the business and real estate sectors will be more likely to make it into the final plan and get funded.
But if the real estate industry sits this out, it will spend the next 25 years fighting over the same fiercely contested parcels, diminishing the region’s competitiveness and affordability. Don’t wait for the map to be drawn. Join us, and help draw it.
Jarred Johnson is the Boston office director for Toole Design Group, Becky Lin is a masters of city planning and real estate candidate at MIT and Tarang Shah is a Boston-area transportation planner and engineer. Shah leads and Lin is a member of the TransitMatters long-range planning team. Johnson is the former executive director of TransitMatters and is a board member along with Shah, who is the board’s vice president.
