The opening of the first new subway line stop nearly 30 years is expected to have a massive economic impact.
For more than 50 years, the Assembly Square area of this city -- named for a Ford Motor Co. assembly plant that closed in 1958 -- struggled to get one after another redevelopment project going.
Tuesday, owners of Federal Realty Boston and state and city officials celebrated a development that actually merits the adjective "transformative:" the opening of the first new stop on the four core Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority subway lines since May 1987: the Assembly stop on the Orange Line. It puts the $1.5 billion redevelopment project, about a third of which is already in the ground, just 4 stops from downtown Boston.
"We wouldn't be a neighborhood here without the Orange Line," said Federal Realty Boston president Don Briggs. "It is the linchpin of opening up essentially 150 acres here."
With the Orange Line service in place, the state's biggest employer, Partners Health Care, is expected to officially break ground this month on a new headquarters next to the T stop and Assembly Row consolidating nearly 5,000 jobs.
Having Orange Line service at the doorstep, Briggs said, "definitely raises the bar and increases foot traffic and makes this all the more attractive for people who choose to live here and choose to work here."
Somerville Mayor Joseph A. Curtatone said the T stop "is critical. It really unlocks the full potential of the site." Somerville looked at various proposals for redeveloping the site, including Ikea and other big-box parking-intensive stores, before going with the concept of creating the equivalent of an entire new neighborhood with thousands of residents and thousands of workers. "Prudent, smart investments in planning, having a vision, not selling this short for a casino or some other fly-by-night plab -- this is the way to do it," Curtatone said.
When the Partners headquarters and other office space and retail and restaurant complexes are all built out by the 2020s, the site's expected to have generated, Briggs said, more than 19,000 net new jobs.
Business
With videographer Nik Saragosa
