Community’s suburban feel slowly shifting to urban energy
WATERTOWN – There’s a spot on Coolidge Avenue in Watertown’s East End where you can see what this community has long been, and what it is rapidly becoming. An asphalt plant sits across the street from a UPS depot, around the corner from a wholesale tile and countertop store. Next door, where the bubbled-over tennis courts of the Mount Auburn Club once were, construction crews are erecting the frames of a lab building — nearly a quarter-million square feet — that will boast solar panels and views of the Charles River.
Things are changing fast these days in Watertown, a solidly middle-class community of 35,000 tucked among its fancier neighbors Cambridge, Newton, and Belmont. At just four square miles, it’s a tight-knit community where families put down roots and have stayed for generations, where small businesses become institutions, and ethnic enclaves — like its sizable Armenian community — have carved their own niches.
“It has to do with the size of the town, the diversity of people here — culturally and financially — the strong small business community,” said Bob Airasian, a lifelong resident and cofounder of the Watertown Business Coalition. “You don’t find that in all these other cities and towns, even the ones we border, it’s just a different feel.”
And while it’s technically been a city for 40 years, it long leaned into its less urbane name, going instead by “The City Known as the Town of Watertown.”
But last year, Watertown residents voted to update their municipal charter and lose the confusing moniker. It’s just the City of Watertown now. It hired a new city manager, from Somerville, and has been switching over the signage in City Hall. Locals say it’s all part of a larger shift in the community’s collective mindset.
“It’s a semantic change, but it’s a significant change,” said Mark Sideris, Watertown’s City Council president. “We’ve grown immensely over the last 10 to 12
pointed city manager, gesturing toward the intersection at Galen Street, Mt. Auburn Street, and Charles River Road as dozens of cars sped past. “You want to create a destination in the midst of all those people passing through.”
The thing is, Watertown has already created a destination — it just happens to be in its East
End.
The Arsenal Yards development is a mixed-use playground with a slate of new retail on the way. Similar lab/housing/retail projects are mushrooming all along Arsenal Street. But given its current collection of empty storefronts, it feels to some like Watertown’s downtown got passed by.
“I think there’s potential for Watertown Square, but it’s going to be a different kind of node. There are a lot of underutilized things there,” said Roberta Miller, who chairs the newly formed Watertown Public Arts and Culture Committee. ”The commercial sector is a little bit weak.”
That could soon change. Earlier this year, a four-story, 146-unit mixed-use building was proposed for Main Street by O’Connor Capital Partners, a New York-based development firm with local ties. The developer, which plans to spread office and retail across three parcels in the square, promised to keep existing leases and add more. But those plans were initially met with resistance from locals, some of whom petitioned to make Main Street a historic district in an effort to preserve the status quo.
The idea was ultimately rejected by the City Council this summer. (It turns out, many of the buildings weren’t actually historic.) But it’s prompted a conversation about what the square could become.
“It was just a matter of time until developers realized how underutilized Main Street was,” said Anthony Donato, a lifelong resident and former city councilor. He said he looks to nearby Belmont Center as an example of what’s possible. “Adding housing could help revitalize businesses in Watertown Square, it’s close to so many modes of transportation.”
But with housing comes the perennial question about traffic and parking, and that complicates the already busy streetscape. The city has been working to reimagine traffic patterns and alleviate congestion and has created the Resilient Watertown climate and energy plan to rethink transportation modes. They’ll all feed into a larger comprehensive plan already underway, Proakis said. At just a few weeks into his new role, he’s on a listening tour to learn more about what people want.
“There is no reason in the world why we can’t have a vibrant Arsenal Yards and a vibrant Watertown Square. We’re a big enough place and there’s enough activity going on that we should be able to make both work,” he said. “As much as building new, substantial destinations is an important part of what a community does... community is really defined by what’s going on and its downtown. And I don’t want our town center to be thought of only as a place for lots of traffic.”