The first by-right residential project, a five story mixed use building at 33 Mt. Auburn St., was approved by the Planning Board on Dec. 3. The development will have 40 residential units, and commercial space on the ground floor.
The building will have a mix of units, with 12 one bedrooms and 28 two bedrooms, with a total of six affordable units. They will be located in four stories above the ground floor, with the top story set back 7 feet from the streets and the neighboring buildings behind it.
The ground floor will have a lobby and nearly 2,600 sq. ft. of commercial space that could be split into two smaller spaces or combined into one larger space. There will also be a and a garage with 20 parking spaces and 40 bicycle parking spaces. In addition there will be six more short-term bike parking spaces in a rack on Mt. Auburn Street.
The property does not include a triangle at the corner of Mt. Auburn and Taylor, which is a City right of way. Developers plan to create a public pocket park in that space.
The project is located at the corner of Mt. Auburn and Taylor streets. The site is currently vacant, after the previously existing building was demolished about 11 years ago. Another proposal for the property was approved in 2018, but never constructed.
The parcel used to be the location of Port Oil. As part of the Watertown Square Area Plan Zoning, the lot was zoned as Watertown Square 3 (WSQ3) and is in the by-right area.
The zoning changes were part of Watertown’s efforts to comply with the MBTA Communities Law which streamlined the process for multifamily residential projects. Due to both the zoning and being in the by-right area, the project only required the approval of the Planning Board, unlike most which require the Zoning Board of Appeals vote, too.
The MBTA Communities Law also limits what the Planning Board can demand, as long as the project fits within the zoning requirements. Watertown Director of Planning and Zoning Gideon Schreiber told the Planning Board that the project requires only a simple majority, and while the board could include conditions for the approval, there are limitations.
“You can make conditions but not so that it makes it not viable for the project to continue,” Schreiber said.
The Planning Board had questions about the traffic created by the building. Traffic engineer Jeffrey Dirk of Vanasse & Associates, said the building is expected to add 20-30 vehicle trips during the weekday peak traffic hours, which he said is one vehicle every two to three minutes.
Planning Board member Abigail Hammett asked about whether cars would back up if a vehicle is trying to take a left from Taylor onto Mt. Auburn Street. Dirk said the driveway is 75 feet from the intersection, and the models did not show that vehicles would stagnate at Mt. Auburn Street.
Planning Board member Jason Cohen noted the garage entrance and exit is located on Taylor Street, a narrow street, and asked if they could push the garage door back so that a vehicle can get off the roadway to wait for the door to open. Designers said that the driveway is about 20 feet wide there, which should be wide enough.
More could be done with the pocket park, Planning Board members told developers.
“For me the concern is it really looks like an extension of lobby of the building, not a public space,” said Associate Planning Board member Sarah Scott.
Scott suggested that signs that include the history of the site being a former railroad could be included. Hammett said she would like a greater variety of plants than shown in the plans.
There will also be space in the park for public art, Schreiber said.
The building shares a “party wall” with the property on the next property along Mt. Auburn as you head closer to Watertown Square. The design calls for a large flat wall with no windows, said project architect Alex Brownwell from PCA Design. This was done because the next door property could be developed with a building of the same height and no space in between, which would cover the windows.
Planning Board member Payson Whitney said the large wall could be an opportunity for a mural or another type of public art. Brownwell said one comment they received was that people might like the mural so much they would not want it to go away. Hammett said that she has seen places where murals were covered and later unveiled when an adjacent building was torn down, and took a tour of them in San Francisco.
The Planning Board voted unanimously to approve the project, saying it met the minimum requirements of the Zoning Ordinance, and added a condition that developers consider public art on the large wall.
See the project design documents by clicking here. The City of Watertown Planning Department’s report, with the conditions for the project, can be seen here. See all the project documents by clicking here.