Somernova and Fabrication Districts

When the Somerville City Council passed its comprehensive zoning overhaul in 2019, it created a new designation: “Fabrication,” sometimes shortened to “FAB.”

According to the zoning code, fabrication districts are intended to “protect buildings that are key assets to the creative economy of Somerville from residential conversation, to preserve existing work space, and to retain incubator spaces for start-up, entry-, and mid-level business” and to “create, maintain, and enhance areas appropriate for small and moderate scale single and multi-use buildings; activities common to the arts & creative economy and supporting commercial activities; and a variety of employment opportunities in the arts & creative enterprises.”

This comes up because Rafi Properties is seeking approval for a massive overhaul and expansion of its Somernova campus, which stretches along the railroad tracks from Park to Dane Street and a bit beyond. This is the site formerly home to Artisan’s Asylum, and still host to Aeronaut Brewing, the Bouldering Project, A portion of Greentown Labs, MIT’s Engine, and now also the Somerville Media Center and the Somerville Bike Kitchen.

Rafi wants to build up, well beyond the four stories allowed under current zoning. They are seeking permission to demolish the existing buildings and construct four new towers, 9 and 10 stories tall along Park Street and up to 16 stories on the East side of Dane.

The proposed campus includes a two story community center on Dane Street (shown in purple, below), funded for its first ten years of operations. The center would supposedly be constructed first, putting community benefits towards the front of the project timeline in contrast with what we have seen in Union Square. Rafi have also committed to efforts to keep their current tenants operating through construction, though I honestly don’t see how that can be possible. Personally, I’m not convinced that I will be grabbing either a beer or a workout in a hard-hat zone.

The Somernova site is the core of the largest contiguous FAB area in the city, one of only three that could meaningfully be called a “district” (the others are across the tracks from Junction Park and along Joy Street in Brickbottom). Most of the properties zoned FAB were existing manufacturing or arts buildings that the council included piecemeal to protect them — briefly — from being chopped up into condos.

The community is gearing up for a vigorous conversation about traffic and parking (Park Street and Somerville Ave cannot handle their current traffic load, much less thousands more trips per day), displacement (what will happen to those well-loved tenants, and neighbors?), the reality of living through years of high-rise construction (it’s really noisy and dirty down here in the lower numbered wards), and of course housing (the proposal doesn’t include any, honoring that one little bit of the FAB zoning, though it does commit to a $27.9M contribution to the Affordable Housing Trust).

All of those are important topics, and I look forward to engaging with them. At the same time, I think that we should keep the intention of the FAB district front and center: “Supporting activities common to the arts & creative economy … and a variety of employment opportunities in the arts & creative enterprises.”

Artisan’s Asylum was, for me, the very soul of FAB. I took classes in jewelry making from a school board member and was learning how to build my own furniture. The SCUL crew could be found welding together fantastical bicycles just a few stalls over from a friend who builds robots. The story of why the Asylum moved to Allston/Brighton is long and people have a variety of takes, but move they did and I think that Somerville’s creative economy is the worse for the loss.

I think FAB is well named, in the sense that it’s fabulous, or it could be.

If we are to tear down and build up (which seems to be the way of things), we should insist that builders retain and expand space to nurture the funky, artsy, inventive, quirky, brilliant core of Somerville, still hanging on in these few tiny slivers of FAB that the 2019 council was wise enough to protect.