City Councilors will be wearing a second hat when it comes to the redevelopment of the parking lots behind CVS, the Watertown Library and perhaps others in Watertown Square.
On Sept. 2, consultants from Innes Land Strategies Group spoke to the Council about their role as a Redevelopment Authority, and some of the options for making the projects a reality. The City Council was given the powers of a redevelopment authority in special legislation approved by the Legislature in 1987 after the redevelopment authority formed to oversee the reuse of the U.S. Army Arsenal finished its work.
Redevelopment authorities can undertake projects that the private market cannot undertake on its own, explained Emily Keys Innes. There are two approaches, an Urban Renewal Plan and a Demonstration Project.
City Manager George Proakis said the two approaches have different timelines.
“A demonstration project plan approved by a Council’s Redevelopment Authority in a few months, can result in development in a year, two years, three years,” Proakis said. “An urban revitalization plan put together over the course of the next year is providing guidance for something that might happen four years, seven years, 10 years down the road.”
An Urban Renewal Plan ultimately must be approved by the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities, but there are also steps at the local level.
“Under the Urban Renewal Law, the urban revitalization plan needs a statement from the Planning Board that says that the revitalization plan is consistent with the comprehensive plan of the city,” Proakis said. “I think that, as this team does their work, we will be able to find a way to make a case to the Planning Board that that is the case, that that is an important step, that they are involved in that process.”
A demonstration project, on the other hand, focuses on a smaller area and does not require approval at the state level, Proakis said.
“One of the advantages of the demonstration project plan is to slice off a chunk of this and get started on working on it while we’re doing the rest of the plan, and really test the theories of the plan while we’re still working on the rest of the plan,” Proakis said. “It doesn’t require the state approvals. It does require the Redevelopment Authority’s approval.”
The state’s Urban Renewal regulations talk about a decadent, substandard or blighted open area, Innes said. City Councilor Vincent Piccirilli asked whether this applied to Watertown Square, which he did not see as blighted.
Innes said other parts of the language could be applied in the case of Watertown Square.
“We would not be able to declare Watertown Square under any of the definitions of blighted simply by the conditions of the buildings alone,” she said. “However, the definitions provide additional flexibility. So a decadent area, which I always mentally think of is people sitting around in evening clothes drinking champagne, but it’s not actually that. It is an area that’s on the decline. And it could be on the decline for many reasons. It could be the condition of the buildings — that they’ve not been sufficiently invested in. There are other conditions, insufficiency of light and air. We have looked at areas that have a significant amount of impervious coverage, which is certainly true of a parking lot.”
The parking lot behind CVS could be an option for a demonstration project. For many years, the City has looked at how to build a parking garage on that land, said City Council President Mark Sideris.
“I think, first of all, I think that’s the only thing we own. So I think it’s a good place to start,” he said. “We own the lot behind the library, which is nowhere near as big, right? And we’ve always had — and I can remember even when the previous manager (Michael Driscoll) for many years, and Mr. (Tom) Tracy is here — the Capital Improvement Program always included a parking garage behind the CVS with the funding was to be determined, and that was on there for 15 years in a row. So I think that gives us a place to start, because that’s what we own.”
Innes Land Strategies has already started looking at the possibilities for the parking lot behind CVS, and making sure it is flexible in the future.
“Our design team was already talking about, how could you build in this area a parking garage that could be later retrofitted for housing?” Innes said. “That’s something that some people are or some communities are starting to look at recognizing. Now there may be a need for parking, but 20, 30 years down the line with investment in additional public transit, more people living closer to where they work, shopping closer to where they live, there maybe not as much a need for vehicles in 30 years time, or we have a different structure for how we use personal transportation.”
The area behind the Watertown Library is more complicated, Proakis said.
“I think the library parking lot is a outrageously complex challenge, because the proposal for there that was in the Watertown Square Plan is keeping some parking, doing a library expansion, doing affordable housing, and potentially including the (old) Police Station,” he said.
Any project undertaken by the Redevelopment Authority would be a partnership, Proakis said.
“If we said, let’s do a demonstration project plan, and in that plan include the parking lots and a couple of pieces around it. We can build a structured parking area, an open space, and it’s not necessarily us building any of those things. It’s a partnership arrangement that we need to figure out,” he said. “And these are other questions that I don’t know the answer to today, like, housing is best done by somebody other than a city government, right? It’s done by a partner. Would the partner buy a portion of the parking lot and pay us, and we could use that to pay for part of the cost of the parking garage? If the parking garage had retail in it, is there a partner to run that retail? Because we’re probably not the best retail landlords out there.”
The Redevelopment Authority would also be able to find a variety of sources of funding, Innes said.
“If it’s a public-private partnership, there’s likely some private equity or private development funds coming in,” she said. “There may be state agencies, because although there’s no specific money for this type of project, there is money out there for things like housing, for example, for other infrastructure. So the likelihood is that the funding would be coming from multiple sources.”
The Redevelopment Authority also has the power to acquire land, dispose of land, and even take land by eminent domain, Innes said. Eminent domain does not always involve the taking of large portions of land. Innes recalled a small triangle of land in a property that a community wanted to develop that was owned by the railroad. When the triangle was taken it allowed the project to move ahead.
As part of the process, Innes Land Strategies will also help to educate the community.
“In addition to actual physical meetings, we’ve done sessions where we’ve done the in-person meeting, a virtual meeting. We’ve had pre-meeting materials so people can read them before the meeting. We’ve worked with communities that have newsletters,” Innes said. “So, I think as we move forward with this process, we will be working with City Manager Proakis and staff, to make sure that we’re doing the right things at the right time, to engage people. We have also been frustrated sometimes with — it’s kind of like zoning — people don’t show up until the end. It’s a much stronger process if people show up during the process. So, we’re absolutely committed to helping out, helping with that engagement in any way that we can.”
Watch Watertown Cable’s video from the City Council meeting on the Redevelopment Authority by clicking here.