To shop and to work: the re-making of Assembly Square

For those of you who are familiar with the Assembly Square Mall located in northeastern Somerville, you may believe that the installation of a proposed Ikea furniture superstore would be a huge improvement on the current and nearly deserted building. However, members of the Somerville community who are a part of the Somerville Living Wage Committee (SLWC) disagree. The SLWC argue that plans to renovate the Assembly Square area should focus on creating good jobs for the residents of Somerville, which is something that an Ikea would not accomplish.

If you have ever seen the Assembly Square Mall it was probably as you drove past it to get to Home Depot, Circuit City, or Loews movie theatre, and like many people, you probably ignored it because the only main stores are a Kmart and a Building 19. Or maybe the boarded up windows of empty stores caught your eye. But Assembly Square, right in Tufts' backyard, was not always this rundown and actually has a long and rich history.

During the 17th century the marsh and wetland area of the Mystic River that Assembly Square lies on was a place for the transport of people and goods. This trading led to the expansion of the region's economy as well as its population. By the early 1800s there were ten shipyards, and development continued when two railroads were installed in the middle of the 19th century. The construction of the McGrath Highway in 1925 marked the beginning of Somerville as an industrial city, which continued when the Ford Motor Company built a plant in Assembly Square in 1926. Over the next thirty years, Assembly Square was one of the largest sources of employment in the region, but this changed soon after when in 1958 the Ford Assembly Plant closed due to a change in Ford's manufacturing strategies, and as a result hundreds of jobs were lost.

Finally, in 1980 the "Assembly Square Urban Revitalization Plan" was able to turn the abandoned site into an area with a retail mall, restaurants, a hotel, and an office building (Office of Housing and Community Development, www.ci.somerville.ma.us). As a lifelong resident of Medford it was after this revitalization that I experienced the Assembly Square Mall, when there was a Jordan Marsh department store there, and many people actually shopped there.

However, over the years the mall has deteriorated as good stores have left and new ones never replaced them. The Office of Housing and Community Development of Somerville makes quite the understatement when they claim that the area has had little development since the early 1990s and that Assembly Square is not living up to its potential.

To remedy this problem former Mayor of Somerville Dorothy Kelly Gay teamed up with the Office of Housing and Community Development and the Somerville Redevelopment Authority in an attempt to revitalize Assembly Square. According to the Somerville Journal (3/4/04), current Mayor Joe Curtatone is continuing with the plans, and is presently close to signing a deal with developers called the Assembly Square Limited Partnership that would lead to the development of 340,000 square feet of residential, retail and office space in Assembly Square over the next six years.

For city officials, this has not been a smooth undertaking, especially due to challenge from some Somerville residents. Mary Jo Connelly of the SLWC said on the group's website "believes that creating good jobs for Somerville residents must be a major goal of the plan for developing the Assembly Square site". The SLWC explains that Somerville does not have enough jobs for its residents in comparison to Boston and Cambridge as Somerville has approximately 22,000 jobs for 45,000 working adult residents. This organization in Somerville realizes the problems that many city residents face concerning income and job availability, and because of this the SLWC wants the city's government to "take up the challenge of creating more of the kind of jobs we desperately need in Somerville: decent paying jobs that are within the reach of most Somerville residents," says Connelly.

This committee provides statistics on its website to explain why Somerville needs good jobs for its people: 31 percent of the households in Somerville earn less than the average of $27,648 that it takes to live in the city without some kind of assistance. Only one-third of the residents of Somerville are working in any kind of professional, managerial or administrative position. And, only one-third of Somerville adults have any kind of college degree and one-quarter do not have a high school diploma, according to Connelly.

With such statistics it is easier to see the necessity for jobs that people can work without having an advanced degree, but that also have benefits and give career opportunities. With jobs like these Somerville residents may support their families and have a chance at creating a better life for themselves. These types of opportunities will not come along with the installation of an Ikea, which will pay the majority of its workers under ten dollars per hour and lack benefits.

Many Somerville residents simply want to see a quick resolution to the Assembly Square problem and fail to understand the long term affects that development of Assembly Square will have on the community. It is important for Somerville and the people of the Somerville community to realize that new development in Assembly Square is a great opportunity to improve the space while simultaneously benefiting the community.

Rachel Sliman is a junior majoring in sociology and women's studies.