Dear Billy T and Somerville/Medford News Weekly Speakup Line,
Dear Members of the Somerville City Council,
With input from, and on behalf of, the residents of Cobble Hill Apartments as well as all who enjoy and celebrate urban green space, please hear us out one last time.
There are moments in Somerville’s history when its stated values are tested by its actions. The redevelopment of 90 Washington Street is one of those moments. The city owns the property and the decisions made about its future will demonstrate how much the City values the green space already there.
Somerville’s elected officials have consistently committed the City to climate resilience, environmental justice, a healthier urban forest, and the expansion and protection of its tree canopy. Cobble Hill residents believe those values are broadly shared on every street in every neighborhood of our city. But commitments to green space are easiest to make when nothing else is competing with them. The difficult decisions only come when preserving mature trees and meaningful open space competes with development density, financial considerations, and other legitimate public objectives.
These difficult choices are nothing new. In the late 1880’s Boston’s Emerald Necklace faced the same pressures from city officials who opposed Frederick Law Olmsted’s vision on the grounds that it did not make financial sense. He countered their arguments by pointing out that parks are financial drivers. We ask you to think about his legacy the next time you walk the Esplanade or visit the Arnold Arboretum and his foundational beliefs that green space is a social and public health requirement.
For historic perspective, the SRA’s 90 Washington Street Civic Advisory Committee (CAC) was assembled in January 2023 to deliberate on how best to develop the site. It took the 12-member Committee 17-months of thoughtful, community focused, and inclusive discussion to narrow down 78 potential contractors to 3 finalists, and then put forth development criteria guidelines for a Request for Proposal (RFP). On May 14, 2025 the Somerville Redevelopment Authority’s Board were presented with the CAC’s final presentation of development criteria recommendations. Included were the following three guidelines:
Minimal site disruption – preserve as many existing trees as possible and the raised “berm” in the middle of the site to the greatest extent possible.
Preserve Access to 84 Washington Street – existing parking lot and access to trash pickup and loading zones for 84 Washington Street.
Preserve existing parking lot – 37 parking spaces between 74 and 84 Washington Street, two subsidized apartment buildings abutting the site.
When the SRA board members were asked for comments, one member expressed his displeasure by questioning the logic of building-out anything less than the entire 4-acre site. His was not a rhetorical question. Yet remarkably, there was no follow-up to help explain why CAC placed such a high value on preserving green space for East Somerville or seeking restorative justice by returning Cobble Hill’s elderly parking and emergency/trash access behind 84 Washington Street.
It was only then the Somerville Redevelopment Authority made their intentions clear that financial considerations would weigh premiere in its selection of a development proposal. In response several members of the CAC rightly questioned why they were asked to participate at all if their thoughtful recommendations had no bearing on the outcome.
It is now the City Council’s turn to consider whether financial gain adequately protects the environmental resources of this site and the residents of Somerville who will live beside it well into the next century.
A newly planted tree is valuable, but it is not the equivalent of a mature tree. A landscaped strip between new buildings may be attractive, but it does not replace an established berm and green space that has provided lush urban greenery for more than four decades. The loss of these resources deserves careful examination before, not after, the land is disturbed.
To be clear, Cobble Hill is not asking the City Council to stop the redevelopment of 90 Washington Street. We are asking you to revisit the green-space priorities advanced during the Civic Advisory Committee process and ensure that they are meaningfully reflected in the final agreement. Before approving the Land Disposition Agreement, please satisfy yourselves that everything reasonably possible has been done to preserve the environmental assets of this four-acre site and protect its immediate neighbors.
The landscaped buffer adjoining Cobble Hill contains mature trees, vegetation, and a green berm that have existed for almost half a century. It is not simply decorative landscaping. It provides separation from an intensely developed urban environment, contributes to East Somerville’s tree canopy, moderates heat, provides wildlife habitat, absorbs stormwater, and gives hundreds of nearby residents something increasingly scarce: daily contact with meaningful green space.
These benefits are particularly consequential for Cobble Hill’s elderly residents and its surrounding environmental justice community. East Somerville needs more tree canopy, and preserving established trees should be an essential part of meeting that need, not less.
This concern is not new. The City’s own Urban Forestry Committee issued memoranda concerning 90 Washington Street in January 2022 and again in May 2026. Residents have repeatedly raised the importance of the existing trees, berms, and landscaped buffer during the public process. The environmental consequences of redeveloping this property have been before the City for years. We are now approaching the point when decisions about those resources will become irreversible.
Cobble Hill residents recognize the difficult balancing act before you. Somerville needs affordable and market housing, economic development, tax revenue, and transit-oriented development. Somerville also needs to remain livable. These objectives should not be treated as mutually exclusive. The question is whether a capable development team, working with a city committed to climate resilience, can achieve its development objectives while preserving substantially more of what already makes this site environmentally valuable.
Before casting your vote on the Land Disposition Agreement, we respectfully ask each member of the Council to consider:
Has financial return been given greater weight than the long-term environmental benefits of preserving mature trees and meaningful green space?
Has every reasonable alternative for preserving the existing tree canopy, berm, and landscaped buffer been examined?
Can buildings, parking, entrances, access drives, or other site elements be repositioned to protect additional green space?
Has the Urban Forestry Committee been given a meaningful opportunity to evaluate the final development plan?
Have the effects on the adjoining environmental justice community, including its elderly residents, been adequately evaluated?
If additional green space can reasonably be saved, why would we choose not to save it?
These questions must be addressed while the answers can still change the outcome.
As abutting neighbors, there is also a practical environmental concern associated with disturbing the existing green space and berm that we believe warrants careful review before the LDA is approved. Previous environmental investigations of 90 Washington Street identified contaminated historic fill beneath portions of the eastern berm, including petroleum-related compounds, VOCs and SVOCs at concentrations exceeding applicable MassDEP cleanup standards. While these materials were not found to present an imminent or substantial hazard under existing conditions, disturbing them through excavation will require additional testing, environmental controls, management of contaminated soil, and off-site disposal.
The distinction between leaving material undisturbed and excavating it deserves careful attention. Before removing mature trees and disturbing this long-established buffer, please satisfy yourselves that the environmental consequences and potential remediation costs have been fully evaluated—and that the disturbance is truly necessary. Revising entrance locations, access drives, or other site elements may offer an opportunity to preserve additional green space while reducing the extent and cost of handling contaminated fill. That possibility should be examined before the site plan is final.
Wood Partners has been selected as the City’s development partner. The substantial revisions between its initial proposal and best-and-final offer suggest that the team was highly responsive to the SRA’s priorities. There is reason to believe that clear direction from the Council could produce further improvements as well.
The Land Disposition Agreement remains subject to approval by both the Somerville Redevelopment Authority and the City Council. That approval authority matters. It is the Council’s opportunity to determine whether the agreement governing this publicly controlled land adequately reflects the values Somerville has spent years articulating.
The project’s history makes that responsibility especially important. Since the City’s approval of the Demonstration Project in 2019, the redevelopment priorities have changed substantially, and its financial challenges have become increasingly more consequential. That experience should reinforce the importance of asking difficult questions now, while the Council can still influence the outcome. The time and money already invested should not prevent careful examination of whether the proposal can be improved.
Our concerns were expressed far more personally before the Council last week by Anne Ryan, a longtime Cobble Hill resident and leading advocate for preserving the community’s green space. Anne spoke from the perspective of someone who experiences this environment every day. She described the protection the trees and berms provide from noise and heat and asked the City to recognize their importance to the elderly residents who call Cobble Hill home.
We are grateful to Anne for reminding us that these decisions will forevermore directly affect the daily lives of the people who live beside this property. Their consequences will be experienced by Cobble Hill residents and our residential neighbors for decades to come.
We are asking the Council to do more than approve the sole proposal to consider after a lengthy procurement process. We ask you to use the authority still in your hands to make that proposal better.
For the mature trees and established green space at 90 Washington Street, this is a last call. Once trees are removed, the berm is excavated, and buildings and access roads occupy the land, the opportunity to preserve what exists today will be gone. Replacement landscaping cannot restore four decades of growth within the lifetimes of many residents who depend on it now.
If additional mature trees, green space, and the existing landscaped buffer can reasonably be preserved, now is the time to secure that protection in the agreement and plans you approve. Your decision will become part of Somerville’s landscape – and the Council’s legacy – for generations.
Thank you for your service to our city and for your careful consideration of this letter.
Very respectfully,
Kevin Wiggins
Property Manager
Cobble Hill Apartments