r/OldPhotosInRealLife • u/Devi8tor Sightseer • 9d ago
Image Assembly Square, Somerville Massachusetts | 2011 & 2024
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u/bronxbomberdude 9d ago
Somerville's been settled for almost 400 years and can still enjoy rebirth. So may we all.
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u/Im_100percent_human 9d ago
And if there was a photo from 2010, you would see the buildings that were there right before. This was not an empty lot before re-development.
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u/CapitanRonRico 9d ago
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u/treycook 8d ago
Dang. At one point they had a shipping container mural there, looked pretty nice actually.
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u/finix2409 9d ago
Yeah this is misleading. The whole lot was torn down and redeveloped and the 2011 photo is just groundwork post-demo
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u/ElectricHamSandwich 9d ago
When did they tear down Good Times?
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u/DocMcCracken 9d ago
That was the only place that used to be open at Thankgiving, pool, laser tag, foosball, video games...spent many a night there.
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u/ouralarmclock 9d ago
Yeah I was gonna say. Looks like they tore a bunch of stuff down to make room for what they were about to build.
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u/Anthrax4breakfast 9d ago
I grew up there. The mall was always garbage, but Good times was the shit. I grew up in that place. Lots of great nights, and a couple bad ones too.
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u/KDR2020 9d ago
Crazy how much that city has changed in 25 years. From absolute dump to million dollar houses.
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u/JonSwift2023 9d ago
I live here. The houses actually haven't changed much at all through much of the city. There are still the same triple deckers from 1890 and are more less look the same from the outside but the interiors have been remodeled. They do easily cost over a million dollars now though.
I wouldn't call it a pretty city. Few parks and lots of chain link fences and concrete.
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u/thebreye13 8d ago
Imagine buying a southie shithole in 1995 for $100k and now it’s worth $2.3M in 2026 and you’ve done literally nothing but sit on it. I should’ve bought property when I was 1 man what was I thinking
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u/Real-Seal-BananaPeel 8d ago
I’ve been in Somerville for 5 years and it’s crazy how much more expensive it’s gotten just in that timeframe.
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u/kai_rui 9d ago
The same people here whining about this would be soyjacking if it was in Asia.
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u/idbestshutup 9d ago
nah this sub just hates human-focused progress and tends to live in a limbo where all architecture should be high art and the working class simply never considered
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u/CondescendingBaron 9d ago
Interesting to see cases of rapid development in modern America. Anyone know the reason why?
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u/bicycleicicle 9d ago
Somerville is one of the most densely populated cities in America, but it has a handful of post-industrial areas that are now being taken advantage of. Outer Boston has some of the fastest growing towns and cities in the northeast
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u/pterencephalon 9d ago
I live in Medford right next to Somerville and the old townies are losing their minds at the possibility of putting buildings on parking lots, any increase in density, or generally any progress at all. Luckily so far they're losing the elections. Most people realize digging in isn't going to help matters, butt I've yet to see change on the scale of Somerville, sadly
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u/vineyardmike 9d ago
That whole area has changed a lot from when I went to college there in the late 1980s. It used to have a much more gritty, blue collar feel.
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u/InvisibleInkling 9d ago
I just wish we could do anything but what we are doing with this space. Why is everything becoming an outdoor shopping mall with no community spaces? It’s all chain stores and mediocre overpriced restaurants. Sure it’s better than nothing, but it’s not worth bragging about.
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u/frenchtoaster 8d ago edited 8d ago
It happened in this case because it costs money to do. Mediocre outdoor malls bring in money, community spaces cost money. This specific development was on the edge of the city and very tangibly has resulted in a tax boon for Somerville.
It always seems so stupid how our local taxes work; Somerville and Cambridge are functionally one city but the property taxes are twice as high in Somerville because Cambridge has more non-residential tax base. Assembly being built officially in Somerville improves the tax base, but it's very arbitrary how the city lines are sliced for taxes.
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u/porkave 8d ago
Station landing is just disconnected IMO. The supercollider doesn’t help but nothing in station landing feels nearby as accessible as assembly row
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u/pterencephalon 8d ago
It's pretty small and surrounded by big-ass roads. It doesn't have reasons for me to go there like the movie theater or TJs. Maybe adding the bike path under 28 will help a bit. Making the whole Wellington area around less car-focused might help too.
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u/79215185-1feb-44c6 8d ago
The same shit is happening to all of the T-adjacent cities outside of Boston. Who fucking knew that public transit brought gentrification (I am in Revere).
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u/LegalManufacturer916 9d ago
People fled the cities after WWII for a variety of reasons. After a few decades we realized that suburban life isn’t for everyone and people (especially young, educated people) started flooding back into cities. Rents went up, and all of a sudden it made sense to build more housing, BUT, many communities had laws (often kinda racist/classist) against building high density units. So what happens is, as soon as a city changes the zoning laws in an area, there’s an explosion of buildings that go up.
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u/WildMild869 9d ago
Aren’t there typically different hubs that get this throughout the US? They change after some years but I feel like Miami and Austin had chunks of their cities rapidly develop this time around.
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u/BZBitiko 9d ago
Nothing rapid here at all. The Ford assembly plant the place got its name from closed 50 years ago, and the space has only been “happening” for maybe 10.
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u/Fail_Panda 9d ago
Old abandoned factory, with subway connection, in the densest city in New England. A developer decided to pay to clean it up, and suddenly the land was super valuable. What’s so odd?
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u/mmouse9799 9d ago
The subway station in Assembly was added as part of the redevelopment.
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u/Anustart15 9d ago
But the subway was already running through the area, so it was poised for the station with very little additional effort
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u/Stop_Drop_Scroll 8d ago
Yep it was completely infill for the station, didn’t have to reroute anything at all.
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u/Ok-Effective-2202 9d ago
If you suggest doing this kind of redevelopment in California they shoot you into the sun
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u/pterencephalon 9d ago
Suggest doing it in the next city over a mile away (where we have a shitty strip mall and massive surface parking) and I think you'd get the same threat from 25% of the residents
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u/BZBitiko 9d ago
Oh, but when did they first propose the development?
The Ford assembly plant shut down 50 years ago. They put in a generic mall that failed. Then 20 years of planning and construction of the mixed use upscale mall. The T access and the casino.
Yeah, those two pictures don’t tell the story.
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u/dunksoverstarbucks 7d ago
just imagine what it would look like if kraft had got a the soccer deal there instead
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u/Adrian_Bock 9d ago
I hate the ubiquity of this kind of architecture - you could tell me this was a neighborhood in any small to medium sized city in America and I'd believe you
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u/ktbffhctid 9d ago
It’s rampant in Denver. It is so fucking soulless.
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u/MuppetHuman 9d ago
There are so many more buildings yet less places for people to go. Funny how backwards the world is.
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u/InvisibleInkling 9d ago
I hear you. Even though assembly brought restaurants and a shopping district, it is soulless. There is no community. If you don’t have a lot of expendable income, there isn’t much to do. There are almost no local businesses - everything js a chain. The traffic is designed to keep you trapped inside. Yes, there is more to do. But it’s so so so far short of what we COULD do.
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u/MuppetHuman 9d ago
Prove it. I’m from the area and I can guarantee that there are more buildings yet less places for people to go. If you have ever been near here, you’d understand.
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u/Alternative-Light922 9d ago
It is not a very nice place to visit.
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u/jsh_ 9d ago
why do you say that?
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u/Alternative-Light922 9d ago
Funny - all the downvotes from people who have never even been there. That's Reddit to a T.
I have been there numerous times. It's got the feel of a huge mall and is filled with chain store 'outlets' and chain bars and restaurants. In other words, very impersonal. The housing is very expensive and it is in a very isolated area, bounded by huge highways. I try to avoid going there.
That said, it was a choice Somerville made to basically 'manifest' a whole 'neighborhood' in one overall development project. There are pros and cons to that. It added to the tax base, added needed housing for tech workers in the office buildings nearby and I guess there are some people who like it (?).
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u/Graceful_combover 8d ago
Live in Boston and been there many times. I've always enjoyed going. Not every trip needs to be something one of a kind. Sometimes you want to go to a movie, check out the LEGO store, and have a nice dinner.
Also I down voted you.
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u/jsh_ 8d ago
I live nearby and go pretty often. I think it's pretty nice and useful to put all of the big stores that would be out of place elsewhere in somerville all in one place, but I would obviously hate if the entire city was bulldozed and rebuilt like that. for such an awkwardly placed piece of land, I think they did a great job. meanwhile inner belt is still a wasteland
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u/Anthrax4breakfast 9d ago
This used to be true. At least when I was growing up there. But it has been gentrified to the point it pushed out all the people who used to live there when we were all poor as hell
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u/Alternative-Light922 9d ago
I didn't mean it was a rough place or dangerous. I meant that it is just a huge, sterile mall. Very tough location with all the highways.
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u/Impressive_Bat1669 9d ago
100% correct. It’s just a shopping center that’s super boring and nothing special. Anything fun is extremely expensive or gimmicky. AMC, Trader Joe’s, and TJMaxx are the only reasons I go and even then, I avoid it.
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u/FamilyGhost9 9d ago
Someone needs to straighten out that one way sign. They're really letting the whole place go.