Giant hotel on Somerville ave

[ratushebarl]

https://patch.com/massachusetts/somerville/upcoming-somerville-hotel-gets-53-8m-financing

Not exactly Winter Hill but maybe of general interest: apparently they're putting a huge 6-story hotel on that long-vacant lot next to Wings over Somerville and the UPS Store.

I guess it's the leading edge of the Kendallization of Union Square? Not clear to me why anyone would want to stay there now...they're going to walk to Market Basket? Artisan's Asylum maybe? Not exactly a boon to Somerville Ave traffic. Anyway it comes as a suprise to me.

Comments

[mem_winterhill]

Interesting. I hadn't heard about this at all. Thanks for bringing the awareness of that. It is important to see how development goes around the city, even if it's not on our hill specifically.

[ruthling]

i figure it will serve union square and eventually be served by that green line stop. it's also not that far from Harvard, which needs hotels and not a bad walk to Porter square either.

[ratushebarl]

I agree that's the reasoning, what's odd is it's not actually very near any of them: .9 miles from Porter, .6 miles from Harvard, .7 miles from the Union Square stop. That's driving distance for the kind of people who'd stay in it, but driving to those places is the worst and parking there twice as worst.

Idk I don't own a single hotel so what do I know, just seems strange to me, and certainly a big change for that neighborhood.

[kelkyag]

Union also has buses to ~all the other nearby squares, and under a mile of walking distance is pretty reasonable.

Perhaps the hotel will have a shuttle bus?

[secretlyironic]

Six stories is hardly giant.
And on a major road it isn't even notably tall.

People were claiming the beacon Street star market site would also be disastrous at six stories and that's just absurd. It wouldn't even cast shadows on anyone's yard there's no houses next to it!

Same for Davis Square to be honest. 6 story central business district is, like, normal.

[jeffbyrnes]

Hear, hear.

With the businesses that will eventually go into those new buildings at Union Sq, their customers/remote employees/prospective hires will need somewhere nearby to stay. And, overall, we need more hotels in the Boston area, and it’ll further add commercial tax revenue to Somerville.