While Newton debate the Northland Needham Street development culminating into a vote on Super Tuesday (March 3, 2020) Wellesley is well on its way to approve a redevelopment of the Wellesley Office Park where Route 9 and 95 intersects on the Newton border.
This very large project is sited on the sliver of land between the Charles River and Rt 95, just over the Wellesley border from Newton, alongside Route 9. The project is planned for 550-600 residential units, 650k sq ft office space, 11.5 sq ft of retail and a 150 room hotel. What makes the site especially challenging is that all traffic to/from the site is via the one access point on the Rt 9 West entrance ramp
This will create additional traffic strain for both Newton Upper Falls, Waban and the Northland Needham Street Project. Both the Newton Planning Department and the Waban Area Council have voiced their concerns. Is this good or bad for Newton?
Here’s what the Newton Planning Dept had to say about it:
In reading the concerns of the Planning Department, they correctly raise the issue of access to public transportation. If Google map is accurate, a footbridge across the Charles river at the intersection of Larkspur and Quinobequin would create a walkable route to the Waban t stop. And before the comments start about the green line being inadequate, how about we work for the next 4 years making the green line adequate, with connections to the Indigo line. Public access acrosss the river, public sidewalks, and public transportation.
Its pretty hard to imagine how the traffic for this project is not going to be a real problem. Today it is already a problem. For hours a day a cop car has to be stationed there to manage getting today’s office park traffic in and out on to the Rt 9 entrance ramp. The new project will have the same amount of office space and add 500 units of housing, a 150 room hotel and lots of retail but the only proposed changes to that one exit/entrance is some improved signs and road markings.
I can’t see how this is going to possibly work.
Disclaimer: I have a particularly vested interest since that entrance is just a couple of blocks away from my house.
@Jack Leader – I totally agree that the pedestrian bridge across the river should be built and would be some help and a big asset. That said, I think it will take more than a pedestrian footbridge to make that entrance/exit workable.
Every time I bring up the idea of regional planning, Newton folks complain that we would need to give up our autonomy along the way. This is an example of where regional planning could be positive for Newton by helping us have a stronger voice in a neighboring plan.
If we had a regional housing authority we could help a project like this take Newton’s concerns into account. Keep in mind that Needham has an interest in what we build on Needham Street and Watertown has an interest in what we put on California Street.
Maybe it’s time to think bigger than just Newton.
Gasp! That’s blasphemy!
Oh, wait, I agree.
And that’s exactly the point Amy Dain was making when she talked about this and other projects in her recent article in Commonwealth.
As a neighborhood very close to the Wellesley Office Park, I can’t begin to tell you how much the traffic has changed with the inability to get to the park from Route 9. The intersections of Chestnut and Quinobequin are more dangerous than ever with people not stopping.
Walking to Waban and Eliot is great, however the car is the king around here. I can’t even imagine what traffic will be like with retail in and out of the office park. But on the plus side, it won’t add students to NPS.
Now this is odd. I wrote an article about this very situation, “Smart Growth for Wellesley and Newton,” and posted it on January 12 on…Village 14! Here is the link:
https://village14.com/2020/01/12/smart-growth-in-wellesley-and-newton/#axzz6D6zKMGRe. Lots of people posted comments at the time, less than a month ago.
Oh, well….
I should have credited Bob Jampol for the footbridge idea, my mistake. I would suggest a lovely bridge, along the lines of the Longfellow Bridge to get car traffic out onto Quinobequin, but that would be DOA.
I’d settle for a footbridge for pedestrians and cyclists. It saddens me, of course, that the development area was once known as Kildare Flats and home to hundreds of migrating butterflies in the season, as Bob Burke recounted. Though we cannot recapture the rustic quality of historic Newton, we ought not to go overboard in developing it beyond recognition.
As I pointed out in my piece, and Greg seems to echo, development in one community has consequential impacts on neighboring communities. Hence, the need for regional planning. Who can argue with that?
Well, as Dain points out, the municipal planners and public who oppose projects in their town centers but allow or encourage them on their borders, might argue. Or at least that’s what happens in practice.
There is an accident almost every other day near the office park and 128 and rte.9. More people mean more cars and most likely more accidents and traffic jams. There are so many vacant buildings old and new. Why not find occupants for the 0nes which exist?
Actually Susan. Sometimes more cars means everyone dives slower and there’s fewer accidents. Just saying.
We have a severe housing inventory shortage in eastern Massachusetts. This doesn’t seem like the ideal location to me either but it’s what happens when all the preferable locations get boxed out by opposition. Meanwhile, businesses are reluctant to fill those empty buildings you’re referring to because they can’t find workers in this market because, like I said, we have a severe housing inventory shortage in eastern Massachusetts.
That detail cop at the entrance to William Street has been there since I was a kid, so I’m astonished that one is still there 40 years later and Wellesley never tried to do anything about the entrance when the state reconfigured the Route 9/128 interchange as a parclo.
There’s a similar street configuration in the same quadrant of the Highland Ave./128 interchange in Needham. Historically, Needham’s most dangerous intersection in terms of personal injury and property damage has been Wexford St. at Highland Ave., which like William St. pops out into a high-speed thoroughfare only 400 feet from the northeast onramp of the 128 interchange. But when the state reconstructed the Highland Ave. interchange, nothing was done about Wexford St.
PS After having a look at Bob Jampol’s original article on this subject, I was further astonished by Bob Burke’s observation that the MBTA station is named Eliot while the street is named Elliot. For me the reverse Helvetica typeface at the station was evidently so authoritative that I must never have bothered to look at the Newton street signs.
Perhaps towns and cities should have thought about the lack of affordable housing before granting building permits to contractors ! I am not a planner but I am concerned about the lack of affordable housing and the en vironment. Mom and pop stores are closing because the big box stores,the internet shopping and landlords keep raising their rents. I am not a supporter of this project. We can agree to disagree.
Yes Susan. But it seems we agree. Cities and towns failed us or gave into opponents (same thing). And here we are.
Big corporations opens up large operations IN BOSTON. Large companies in the 128 belt are closing their doors and moving their headquarters to TO BOSTON.
This is why there is this “severe housing shortage” that many of you like to tout. We do need more affordable housing, but where I disagree with Dain and others is who should bear the responsibility of this situation.
Boston created this. Boston benefits from the high rate of commercial tax revenue. Yet it’s Newton that is being asked to carry the burden, by increasing density, dealing with traffic, school over crowding, and the cost if increased need for city services overall.
This is unfair, and another reason I will be voting No on March 3rd.
Bob, I remember your post. It was appreciated then, and it still rings true now. But seeing the opposition posted prominently on the Waban Area, and with the Northland referendum coming to vote in a few weeks, I thought it was timely to resurface the topic.
Northland said phasing cannot be done, yet it is. And with this Wellesley project so close, and with support of their town, it’s only logical and in Newton’s best interest (traffic) to scale down!
@Matt yes Boston has a large number of employers, but that doesn’t mean the 128 belt is ignored. Boston Properties, one of the largest owner/ developers in the nation, is betting big on the 128 belt. In addition to the property they own in Needham they continue to purchase properties in Waltham. I’ve heard from top execs there that they believe the Millennial migration to the suburbs is underway and those millennials will remake the suburbs just as they remade cities.
Companies that have opened in Needham’s recently built class A office space in recent years include: TripAdvisor, SharkNinja, NBCUniversal, BigBelly Solar, Candel Therapeutics, Allego, Verastem, Workbar and a few others. In Newton you have Examity (in the newly rebuilt Newton Nexus) and UMass Amherst Mt Ida is opening an environment that matches employers with students; CoachUp took residence there.
Up in Waltham the newly rebuilt former postal facility now called “The Post,” which is more than 400,000 sq ft., is fully leased out with Deciphera Pharma, Boston Dynamics and a few other companies. Also in Waltham, near the Belmont line, you have both Veo and Vecna robotics. One of the hottest companies in the beverage market, Spindrift, is located in Newton.
Yes, Boston has a lot of jobs, but there are many here too. We can have more, if we make it easy for people to get here. My office is in Nonantum and a big frustration on the part of the younger people working here is that they have to drive, since they can’t afford to live nearby. Some do, in places like Brighton, Waltham and Watertown, but not Newton.
Greg says:
“Actually Susan. Sometimes more cars means everyone dives slower and there’s fewer accidents. Just saying.”
Sometimes. But likely not at a location like this one where there are speed differentials.
And as for Matt’s pining about the downsides of adjacency to Boston’s economic engine…1. Boston has shaped the communities around it for hundreds of years. That’s the definition of streetcar suburbs. You may not like it, but it isn’t exactly a surprise. 2. The choice of good, well-paying jobs in a compact metro area has huge positives for Newton’s residents. No, it doesn’t serve everyone as it should. Yes, it has downsides that we have to manage and mitigate. But tell Detroit about how horrible our lot is.
@Matt Lai – Sounds like you’re saying Newton should only house people who work in Newton
As Mike Halle pointed out, from the mid 1800’s on Newton has primarily been housing for Boston. Most of our favorite villa.ge centers developed around the railroad stops that allowed people to live way out in the country in Newton while working in Boston