Michigander in Mass

As the Brickbottom 18th Open Studios approaches (it's this weekend), I got to thinking: where the Hell is Brickbottom anyway?

It's been in the news recently. This is from a City of Somerville press release from just two days ago:

The Brickbottom District, once a thriving neighborhood that became an early casualty of urban renewal, sits just across the Boston city line, adjacent to the McGrath O’Brien Highway. The area is currently home to a number of small businesses, primarily those engaged in auto repair and auto-related services. There are also several underutilized industrial sites and vacant lots and a trash transfer facility on city-owned land. Mayor Curtatone recently announced that the City had reached a new agreement with Waste Management, Inc. that will relocate the transfer facility within three to five years to a more remote site.

The city is teaming up with the Boston Society of Architects to hold an international urban design ideas competition for the industrial Brickbottom area in East Somerville.

Somerville Mayor's Office of Strategic Planning officially launched the competition ("BrickBottom - EDGE as CENTER") at a session at this week's BuildBoston conference (which by the way has some great tours of the city of you don't mind the price). The BSA and the City of Somerville have invited designers to envision the future of the "pivotal post-industrial area."

From the program:
Urban design schemes for the area will conceptualize the ideas of neighborhood and infrastructure that accompany the redevelopment of large areas of underutilized industrial land. Given the sites current potential for development and future light rail transit connections, coupled with existing physical and economic constraints, the competition asks: what is the future for the BrickBottom District in the contemporary urban context?

I will reiterate some comments Wig Zamore made on the S_T_E_P mailing list:

The Green Line extension, the future form of Route 28 (boulevard or arterial sewer) and the relationship of Brickbottom to Union Square will all undoubtedly be important for designers to consider.

It will also be interesting to see the full extent to which this competition engages the Somerville community and how it treats the land use - transportation - air quality - public health continuum that affects eastern Somerville.

Brickbottom re-development will be post-Assembly Square. Thus how the urban designers deal with the 100,000 trips per day predicted by Federal Realty for Assembly Square may be the single biggest issue they face.

I agree. This distric would be served by the proposed Washington Street Green Line stop on the new Medford extension (where the rails cross Washington Street in the map above). This area suffers from a similar problem to that of Assembly Square: access is relatively limited: for Assembly, it's either Rte. 28 or I-93 (crap, my exit off I-93, exit 28, will be badly impacted by the traffic going to Assembly Square from either direction--I hope most of that traffic is off-peak). The river and rails cut the site off on two sides, at least for auto traffic.

In the case of Brickbottom, it's Rte. 28 again (aka McGrath/Obrien Hwy.), or Washington St. The rail cuts it off from the Innerbelt industrial area.

Some suggestions to help integrate these industrial areas:

1. Connect the Brickbottom area via roads and pedestrian tunnels to both the Innerbelt and Northpoint districts.

2. Enable better and more pedestrian access to Union Square.

3. Visually and physically connect the Washington Street T stop to Brickbottom--ensuring pedestrian traffic.

4a. In addition to the Washington Street stop, add a 'T' station at the junction of all three districts (the lower right corner of the map), with pedestrian access to all three districts and service (potentially) from both the Union Square and Medford spurs. Call it Brickbottom/Innerbelt or some such thing.

4b. If this doesn't fly, at least call the Washington Street station Brickbottom.