Last Monday night, City Manager George Proakis presented a draft proposal to redevelop the parking lot behind CVS in Watertown Square. There was a lot to like.
Redevelopment of the parking lot, along with several adjacent private parcels of land, would add 200-300 new units of market rate housing, including 30-45 new deed-restricted affordable units through our inclusionary zoning ordinance. And it will add a new public space to the Square in the form of a park or plaza.
But this proposal also spends one of our city’s most precious resources — public land — on a construction project that doesn’t make residents’ lives more affordable, doesn’t make financial sense for the city, and that the city’s own reporting says we don’t really need.
Housing for Cars Watertown?
The centerpiece of the Manager’s proposal is a parking garage on city-owned land that contains roughly two hundred metered spaces over first-floor retail.
Despite the fact that city-owned land is the single best opportunity to build new 100% affordable housing (according to the Metropolitan Area Planning Council presentation), the proposed garage does not include any housing above it. Additionally, the parking fees generated won’t actually cover the cost of building or maintaining the garage.
As Manager Proakis explained, the cost of the garage is also the reason the proposal needs to include a market rate housing development instead of 100% affordable housing. To cover all the garage’s costs, the city needs the higher tax revenue provided by new market-rate housing.
We could be using that revenue to subsidize affordable housing over this garage, or elsewhere in the city. We should dedicate that new tax revenue and our public land for a better purpose aligned with our community’s goals.
Prioritizing the use of public land and acquiring land for deeply affordable housing are elements of our Housing Plan, our Comprehensive Plan, and our Community Preservation Plan. We have here in the CVS lot a rare opportunity to make affordable housing a reality.
Instead, we’re using it to house cars.
There is No Demand for This
The city’s own 2019 parking management plan found that 25% of public parking spaces in the Square are vacant at any given time. This study was done before parking rates were doubled in 2021, which may have driven up the vacancy rate.
The city’s proposal trades 100% affordable housing for parking, even though there are pretty much always 150 vacant public parking spaces in the Square, in addition to spaces in private lots. Plus, the city plans to add metered street parking as part of the Square redesign. More of a good thing is already on its way.
This use of city-owned land is a misstep. A parking garage gives us more of what we know we don’t need at the expense of something we desperately do need. It prioritizes temporary car storage over residents — particularly the 45% of Watertown renters and 30% of Watertown home owners who are burdened by unsustainable and rising housing costs. The city has a responsibility to serve those residents, and an opportunity to make a real difference.
An Answer Hiding in Plain Sight
In the presentation, Manager Proakis said the city couldn’t build housing above the garage because it would trigger the highrise building code, requiring 12 stories to make sense for any private developer.
This simply is not the case. That’s not just our opinion. There’s a recent counterexample one mile down the road.
Housing above a garage with retail on the first floor was recently built by a private developer in Watertown at Arsenal Yards. The Roche Brothers building, which opened in 2021, is a seven story building with first floor retail, three levels of parking, and three levels of housing.
The city didn’t explore partnership with a non-profit affordable housing developer. The city didn’t consider partnership even with itself, the Watertown Housing Authority. And it seems to have forgotten the excellent example set in Arsenal Yards.
What You Can Do
As City Council President Mark Sideris emphasized, this is only a proposal. The proposal will be refined — hopefully, to make even more new housing possible — and then it will be brought before the City Council as well as the Planning Board.
There are two options that would be much better for our community than what the Manager presented:
1 – Affordable housing above the parking garage with first-floor retail, or
2 – 100% affordable housing development instead of a garage.
We encourage every resident who cares about the future of our city to speak out in favor of a more visionary proposal that prioritizes adding affordable housing. Click here to submit your feedback to the city. It may be a more difficult path. We can do it. This is Watertown.
Sincerely,
Housing for All Watertown Steering Committee
Rita Colafella, Sam Ghilardi, Daniel Pritchard, Josh Rosmarin, and Jacky van Leeuwen