I'd like to thank the hypocritical clowns in "Sanctuary City" supporting
Slummerville Somerville, Mass for killing a 500 unit mixed use (ie includes some "affordable") new construction because well it was in their backyard (NIMBY) and it would interrupt business at the local watering hole attended by the weirdos in their local left wing liberal arts schools.
So the Liberals in the cities around Boston (like Somervile)decided to stick it to the wealthier suburbs by having a law passed (
Chapter 40B ) that allowed developers to override restrictive zoning laws if the development included low income housing..effectively making suburban single family zoning rules ineffective.
However some developer decided instead of targeting a suburb they'd leverage this same law to put a development in one of those city's own backyard..as in right in a popular more upscale (relatively) college hipster area...and well of course the city took offense to it..since well that was unfair. I mean who wants those pesky poor people spooking their bread&butter college crowd...how silly.
The 26-story tower would have added 500 apartments, but developers say the city’s inaction forced them to walk away. The city begs to differ.
www.boston.com
Proposed 26-story Davis Square apartment tower stalls as developers walk away
The proposed project would have torn down this block to build a new 26-story residential and commercial tower. Photo by Matthew J Lee/Globe Staff
The at-times controversial plan to build a 26-story apartment tower with roughly 500 units in the heart of Davis Square is no longer moving forward, the developer said Monday.
Copper Mill, the developer behind the project, said it is stepping away from its agreement with the property owners, blaming what it called the city’s failure to act on the proposal.
“It’s simply not feasible to continue to pour capital into a project, even one that would build 500 housing units, when the City continues to demonstrate that it is not serious about building more housing,” Copper Mill said in a statement.
The decision ends a yearslong effort to redevelop the corner of Elm and Grove streets with 502 apartments,
including about 125 affordable units, and roughly 10 ground-floor commercial spaces.
The proposal had become a
major test of Somerville’s efforts to add housing in one of the region’s most transit-accessible communities, and a flashpoint for residents who opposed the tower’s height, design, and potential impact on Davis Square.
On Monday, Mayor Jake Wilson said losing the project is a setback for affordable housing, but pointed to other projects in the pipeline, including 318 units at the former
Star Market site, the second phase of the Clarendon Hill
public housing project, and a
proposed 400-unit development at 90 Washington St., as the city continues its plans for Davis Square.
“Our pipeline looks at this point better than a lot of other communities,” Wilson told Boston.com. “I will point out that we have a crane in our skyline. There’s not a lot of other communities that can say that.”
The city is working on a Davis Square
neighborhood plan that will examine how to balance residential and commercial development in the transit-oriented district. Wilson said the plan is expected to be completed in the first half of 2027.
“We’re not taking our foot off the gas just because this proposed tower is off the table,” Wilson said.
This collection of renderings shows early designs for the proposed tower in Davis Square. – Copper Mill
The
project has been in development for years and drew renewed attention last winter as residents debated whether the scale of the proposed tower fit Davis Square.
Copper Mill filed for a state Chapter 40B permit in December 2025, but the application had remained stalled. At a
March community meeting, residents criticized the project’s size and height.
In response, Copper Mill
released three alternative designs in April ranging from 24 to 26 stories, with changes to the building’s design and pedestrian areas.
The development also called for
rehoming neighborhood staples The Burren and Dragon Pizza within the new building. Wilson said Monday that the businesses’ leases have since been extended, allowing them to remain despite the development falling through.
Copper Mill said it held 75 stakeholder engagement events over three years and was “enthused” by its work with neighborhood groups.
But the developer ultimately blamed the city for the project’s demise.
“The most glaring paradox of this entire arc is that the City of Somerville was the one who had reached out to us three years ago and asked us to formulate a viable housing development for the property,” Andrew Flynn, the owner of Copper Mill, wrote in a letter to the Davis Square Neighborhood Council.
Flynn said the city had “consistently broken its own promises, missed its own deadlines and failed to provide any tangible direction regarding the housing development project,” particularly over the past year.
Wilson disputed that characterization, saying the city never received a formal proposal because
the project was being pursued through the state’s Chapter 40B process, in which a project can bypass certain zoning rules in exchange for including affordable housing. The application has remained paused at the state level since December, he said.
“Typically, when the project remains paused like that at the state level, that doesn’t bode well for the prospects of that ever happening,” Wilson said.
Despite the project falling apart, Wilson said it has sparked a larger conversation about what residents want to see in Davis Square.
“We’re going to look to capitalize on that to drive the Davis Square neighborhood plan forward and get us that really important vision,” Wilson said.
