Mount Auburn Cemetery is seeking a buyer for several acres of land in Watertown which it owns.
According to a Boston Globe article, the historic cemetery located in Watertown and Cambridge plans to sell six acres of land. See the story here.
The land, located on Grove Street, currently has a parking lot and used to be a cement plant. It is located across the street from the main part of the cemetery.
The property also sits next to Watertown’s Filippello Park, and the Town has been in search of land that could be acquired for open space or other reasons. However, Assistant Town Manager Steve Magoon said the price tag may be beyond the Town’s budget.
“I think $25 million is a high price for the Town to consider, but we will always look for any opportunities,” Magoon said.
Mount Auburn President David Barnett told the Globe that the money from the sale would go toward building up the cemetery’s endowment and help with projects on site.
Good for Mt. Auburn cemetery, but it leaves me wondering about the adverse effects
it will have on East Watertown. The last thing we need right now is even more condo developments and/or yet another bio tech company.
Where are the Mt. Auburn Hospital employees going to park? The current lot can accommodate at least 200+ vehicles. Are they going to end up parking on residential streets, then take the bus to work (they currently have their own shuttle bus that runs from the hospital to the parking lot). Recall the parking disaster around the AthenaHealth campus before they constructed a garage? Employees were crowding North Beacon St., Charles River Rd, and residential side streets.
Lease/rent space from Tufts Health Care garage (assuming they would even be remotely interested in allowing that)?
If things continue at this rate, the developers and tech companies are going be the downfall of our town
Good questions. One would hope the hospital would find another lot for its employees. Maybe someone knows their plan.
I think the town should purchase it as an investment in the future of our town. We sold off properties like the Lincoln school to the detriment of the town and now we have not enough open space. A new school could be built there, near Fillipello fields. There could be many uses that would benefit Watertown’s citizens and town ownership would mean no developer could build more expensive rentals or more biotech space. This is what the town should do with some of our money: invest in property for the future of our town. We need more public land on which to build a school, a senior and community center, a place to plant trees, and invest in our future. I hope the town will purchase it, maybe CPA money could help with the purchase?
Since Strawberry Child Care left the old Parker School, the building may be useful. What’s in there now? A drug clinic? We see them selling and getting high in the parking lot. Why not buy that school back and use it?
As an East End resident, I’m really hoping this parcel of land turns into luxury apartments and/or tech/lab space. This stretch of Grove Street looks pretty grim and could use some love. Anyone who thinks Watertown is becoming overdeveloped should visit these cities called Boston, Cambridge and Somerville to put things into perspective.
I’ve lived in Boston and Cambridge. I’ve seen how neighborhoods become flooded with tech space and luxury condos. I work in a neighborhood that has become brimming with these. But it’s also concerning to me. Since moving to Watertown in 2011, what I pay in rent has pretty much doubled. I love Watertown, and would like to stay here, but even as a DINK couple with good jobs, we would not buy a home in Watertown right now. I agree that there are lots of areas that could use some love…but I don’t think the answer is more duplicate luxury homes with zero personality. It makes me sad to see so many beautiful houses in Watertown that could be fixed up; instead developers are tearing them down and turning them into these luxury condo monstrosities. Are we saying that Watertown is now only for those who were lucky enough to have inherited these homes, bought in the past, or wealthy? And, again, our combined income is over the average in Watertown. There still needs to be diversity and common sense to keep Watertown from becoming a place just for investment houses and wealthy tech bros. I also look at what’s happening in Harvard Sq. Many cafes and stores that were seemingly doing well have been forced out due to pricing. One reason I heard was because the property owners figured they can get more money out of chains.
Part of what I love about living in a city is getting diversity in neighbors and services/offerings. If I wanted to live in a cookie cutter community with strip malls full of the same old stores, I would move further out by choice.
Watertown is becoming overdeveloped and in some areas very dangerous due to the increased traffic and individual operator’s failure to observe the rules of the road. It’s really quite astonishing the amount of growth within the last 15 years after decades of more or less stability in building. And, when that one unit too many is built it’ll get ugly fast. Everything, EVERYTHING, is cyclical.