Watertown's Open: The State of Development in Watertown
This is a recording from a live podcast event in November 2025, hosted at Italian Design Interiors in Watertown Square. Watertown’s Open is a series of live podcast events that bring local businesses and local business advocates together to share their stories and knowledge. The project is a collaboration between the City of Watertown’s Economic Development Planner, the Little Local Conversations podcast, and the Watertown Business Coalition.
The conversation was on the topic of the state of development in Watertown and featured a panel of:
Bob Airasian (Co-President Watertown Business Coalition, Coldwell Banker Broker)
Andrew Copelotti (Principal at Boylston Properties)
John Nealon (WJ Nealon Commercial Realty)
Laura Portney (PCA Design Firm)
Gideon Schreiber (City of Watertown's Director of Planning and Zoning)
They were asked to discuss and reflect on their role in Watertown, what changes they've seen over the years, what they're most worried about and most excited about going forward, and specific thoughts on housing costs for residents and costs for businesses. The discussion was followed by some Q&A with the in-person audience.
Released December 29th, 2025
(Click here to listen on streaming apps) (Full transcript below)
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Thanks to podcast promotional partner the Watertown Business Coalition, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting local businesses and strengthening our community. Check them out at watertownbusinesscoalition.com.
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This program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency.
Transcript
Matt: 0:07
Hi there. Welcome to the Little Local Conversations Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Hanna. Every episode I sit down for a conversation with someone in Watertown to discover the people, places, stories, and ideas of Watertown. This episode is a special recording from a live podcast event, a new series called Watertown's Open, focused on local business. And this is a collaboration with the City of Watertown and the Watertown Business Coalition. This event was in November, 2025, and featured a panel discussion on the state of development in Watertown. It was over at Italian Design Interiors, right near the square, 19 Spring Street. So let's get into the conversation. So, welcome. First of all, I want to thank our hosts here for welcoming us, Yana and Michael. Do you want to say a few words? Welcome everyone to your space.
Yana: 0:50
Yes. Thank you guys so much for coming. We have been here for 30 years. This was my family's business, and my husband and I have just taken over. So we're excited, and we've been part of Watertown, and we're excited to get to know everybody more and have the second generation expand here in Watertown. Thank you for coming.
Matt: 1:10
Thank you. In case you couldn’t tell, they just redid this showroom. It’s really nice.
Yana: 1:17
Yes, we put a lot of work into this section and we're going to start on the next because the store goes all the way to Main Street, goes all the way through to the other side. So feel free to walk when this is done.
Matt: 1:28
So for those of you who don't know me, I am Matt Hanna. I run a podcast called Little Local Conversations that's focused on Watertown. This is a new project called Watertown's Open. Second one. That is in collaboration with the City of Watertown, Erin Rathe, if you don't know her, Economic Development Planner for the City, and obviously Gideon here today. And with the Watertown Business Coalition, who Bob is up here with that.
Bob: 1:49
Hello.
Matt: 1:50
And me. So that's what we do for this podcast. It's just bringing local business people together and residents to talk about things about business, how it's happening in the community. So we have a great panel tonight on the state of development in Watertown, past, current, and future. Do you guys just want to briefly introduce yourself, just say your name, your position, and a short bit about what you do, and then you can get into it more in depth as we go.
Andrew: 2:14
Sure. My name is Andrew Copelotti. I'm with Boylston Properties. We're developers in and around, you know, Metro Boston, but we're sort of most famous for Arsenal Yards here in Watertown. Prior to Arsenal Yards, we did the Residence InN and Linx over on Nichols Ave. So my primary responsibility is to find us new development opportunities. And we're currently working on something, 295 apartments in Newton over off of Washington Street on Craft Street.
Laura: 2:39
Hi, I'm Laura Portney. I'm a senior associate at PCA, a master planning architecture and interiors firm in Inman Square in Cambridge. PCA has been working in Watertown for about 10 years, starting with Arsenal Yards, working with Gideon and Andrew on the development, rezoning, and development of that project. And we have a couple projects that we're collaborating with Gideon's team on now under the new Watertown Square zoning.
Gideon: 3:03
And I'm Gideon Schreiber, Director of Planning and Zoning for the City of Watertown. I used to wear a lot of hats. Now I just wear a couple of hats. We work on affordable housing, transportation, and of course the zoning part of, you know, the most important part of this development process is right, most important part is the zoning. So going from planning through implementation and creating the zoning and development review process for the city of Watertown.
John: 3:31
Yeah. Hi, I'm John Nealon. I am an independent commercial real estate broker. I've been in Watertown for about 37 years. I joined my father, who has been here since the 1960s. We do sales leasing and some management. And I think from my situation, I don't do development myself, but we've seen a lot of stuff go on, and it's maybe more of a historical perspective I might be able to share and what some of my clients are dealing with now as well. So thank you for having me.
Bob: 3:55
Thank you, Matt. My name is Bob Airasian. I am the co-president of the Watertown Business Coalition. I am also a residential real estate broker, although I've done a few smaller commercial deals in the area. I predominantly do most of my work in Watertown, probably 75%. Most of that is residential real estate, but I'm here to wear a couple hats, you know, from a small business standpoint and also from a real estate standpoint. So looking forward to the conversation and thank you all for being here. And I'm not going to move too much because the cost of this chair is worth more than my car. So I'm going to freeze.
Matt: 4:30
Great. Well, then we'll just get right into our conversation here. So I have a few questions to kind of spark the conversation, and I'll go down the line and everyone can give their thoughts on the topic. So the first one was to briefly describe your recent work in Watertown and the biggest change you've seen in your work in the past few years. So do you want to kick us off, Andrew?
Andrew: 4:49
Sure. So we bought Arsenal Yards in 2013, I believe, and took three or four years to kind of get through the rezoning and the permitting effort, and really sort of broke ground, I think, officially in 2018. And in that time period, I think the single biggest change that we saw there was the lab business coming to Watertown. When we permitted Arsenal Yards in 2017, the original master plan special permit, life science was not even contemplated. And now we have 400,000 square feet at Arsenal Yards. So we were able with PCA and the city to sort of adapt that master plan. The life science business today is very challenged. You know, if we were to break ground on Arsenal Yards today, I don't know that we'd have any life science, as sort of an example. So we are in one of those cycles where, you know, life science has, like a lot of other things, gets overdeveloped and there's a lot of absorption that needs to happen. And so in the last sort of six years, that's probably been the single biggest change for us as we look at that project and then new future projects.
Matt: 5:51
Laura?
Laura: 5:52
Yeah. So, you know, as we've mentioned, we started working in Watertown with the Arsenal Yards project. And that started with the rezoning of that area from industrial to what became a regional mixed-use development. And that was actually a really exciting process as we were able to kind of follow along as the city worked on new zoning language and that had been preceded by David Gamble's kind of design guidelines that had been published for the city at large, I believe. And so that was kind of wrapped into the zoning language for that area, which I think did a lot of great things for the development of Arsenal Yards, allowed for a lot of opportunity. And what we're seeing since then is this is happening in a lot of municipalities, I think, partially because of the MBTA communities, that a lot of towns and cities are adopting new zoning codes at a much quicker rate. And we're now working in the Watertown Square rezoning. Cambridge just did a lot of rezoning as well. And so it's exciting. It's unlocking a lot of development opportunities that didn't previously exist. And it's also challenging. It's coming with a lot of new ideas and a lot of thoughts about how to develop and design. And so, you know, I would say that while there are a lot of opportunities, there are a lot of conversations also to be had about how that zoning gets enacted. And so it makes for very interesting design conversations. And I will say that Gideon and his team were instrumental in the conversations on, you know, the regional mixed use, but specifically Arsenal Yards. And as we're developing two sites now in and around Watertown Square and trying to interpret what those new zoning regulations mean for design, they've also been integral in those conversations. So that's kind of where we're at is constantly staying on top of new, ever-changing regulations, what that means for design and development and how to bring actual projects to reality.
Gideon: 7:44
Yeah, and recent versus somewhat recent. I look back 10 or 15 years and I think about Arsenal Street as this very industrial no man's land in the middle. And then you had Arsenal Mall and Watertown Mall. And then on Pleasant Street, we had that same kind of thing. There's these gaps where we have all this industrial spaces. And so it feels like it's taken a long time. We were just talking about working on the Arsenal Yards project for 10 years. So from start to finish, it's been, you know, multiple phases and multiple iterations. So seeing those changes on the ends, but then also all these incremental changes that are taking what was industrial or abandoned buildings and sites and having them start to convert into spaces that people can be and live or work. And also looking to the connections. So I think of the proli industrial yard with all the old railroad tracks that were still underneath all those bricks and cinder blocks. And now we have a 600 residential units, some commercial spaces and path connections, a string of parks along the rear. Those are the types of things that I think we're building off of Arsenal Yards and some other changes that happened on the east end of town, but also have extended through Watertown and also up Pleasant Street and to see our industrial past and those kind of abandoned, wasted, polluted spaces being pivoted to a new use that's really allowed our community to come together and be stronger. It's been interesting.
John: 9:11
Yeah, so I'd just like to say from my end, so I do brokerage work and we see very good demand for people, especially who want to own. Development is really not on the radar of most people right now, although there's a couple of projects I'm involved in. What's interesting is two of them right now that I'm involved, one is public already, and that's one of the housing developments that's up. The other one hasn't come forward yet. But both of them at some point in the process told me that they specifically had targeted Watertown because it was a reliable, they knew they'd done business with the town manager, other projects with some of the people in Watertown knew that they would be able to have some level of reasonableness, I think, in working it through. But what I'd like to say about the changes is really the types of companies that we have here, and it's kind of to Andrew's point, we've really become so stuck on these lab-related and life science companies here and dependent on them. We've lost a lot of, we had such a wide variety if you went back 20 years ago, the types of companies you had. You had advertising, you had Sasaki down the street in Watertown Square, you had that whole Riverbend complex right at the head of Watertown Square, was full of a whole litany of companies. I think it's virtually empty now. That may be a project too coming, right? Oh, Tufts Health Plan, just companies that employed a lot of people.
Gideon: 10:22
Eighteen hundred.
John: 10:23
And provided a lot of just business in the community to restaurants and shops and everything else. So it's I'd say that's the biggest change that I've seen, the nature of the type of companies.
Bob: 10:33
Yeah, from a development standpoint. I mean, when you look back 12, 15 years, you know, it's a cyclical market, right, some of these industries. And you look at what we used to yearn for. And we went through a residential kind of mini boom with Pleasant Street and a few projects on Arsenal Street. And then we were looking for commercial. You know, we wanted commercial and it kind of met with the whole life science boom, right. And then that hit a brick wall going 100 miles an hour, right. So we're now we're back into this like residential piece, but at the same time, it's a little bit more tricky because the affordability is an issue, right. And the cost to build is ridiculous. So and on the residential side, it's been basically a 12, 13 year run-up of appreciation. It's been incredible. And it's been great for some people, but not great for others because they can't afford to live here anymore. So it's been amazing to watch, but the rents and the affordability is an issue, and that's kind of where we are now. But I mean, we'll get into the cost of building, I guess, in a little bit. But you know, that's what I can see from a residential side.
Matt: 11:32
All right, let's move on to our next question then, which is, I'll split this up into two first. So what are you most, I mean, we kind of got into this a lot already, but what are you most worried about with the future of Watertown development? And then secondly, I'll ask you what you're most excited about. So we'll start with a negative, then go to our positive. So.
Andrew: 11:48
Well, it's construction pricing. It's just cost. We are now faced with to build an apartment unit, just the construction dollars that we give to the contractor, it's probably $335,000 an apartment. And so when you add in land and entitlements and design and all of the soft cost and traffic and legal and all the engineering, we are producing apartments on average at about $550,000 a unit. That is completely unsustainable. It just can't continue. And some of it is in construction pricing in a post-COVID world, some of it is in some of the sustainability requirements, some of it is in the 10th edition of the building code, some of it is in the capital markets, but it just it all adds up. And you read the newspaper, I think, on a pretty regular basis, and you hear about things that have been approved but not started, the city of Boston in particular. It's because the deals don't pencil. I can't get to a return on cost, a yield that attracts capital. And that's a very, very bright line. It's either it either works at a six and a half return on cost or it doesn't at a sub-six and a half return on cost. And that is something that should worry all of us.
Laura: 13:01
Yeah, I mean, I would say to build on that a little bit, Andrew and I have this conversation often. And I kind of alluded to it in the challenges, and we're seeing this in all municipalities. This is not unique to Watertown. But the regulations that come down on development, I think there are a lot of issues that we are nobly trying to address, from affordability to sustainability to design to, you know, mixed use and and whatnot. And I think they're all incredibly important. And I wish that we could solve them all on each project. But the fact of the matter is it does impact every single project across the board. And every single project across the board cannot solve for those problems. And I so I think that the amount of factors that are playing into every single design project make it harder to pay for, but also harder to figure out, harder to understand how that site is going to accomplish all the sustainability requirements, because not only do we have an energy code that is changing at a faster rate than it ever has. And I believe it should. I believe there are a lot of very important things that we need to address. But in addition to that, we're adding on resiliency, again, a very important thing. And, you know, municipalities get to opt into passive house, again, a very important thing. I don't think any of these things are not incredibly important, but they hit every single project equally across the board. And every single project is not the same across the board. And so I think that is the thing that worries me and my colleagues the most is how do we address the things that are critical to maintain our world while also providing projects that can actually be built and that can actually, you know, there are design solutions for because you can't design for everything. You know, we were just talking about a 15,000 square foot lot has all of the same requirements as Arsenal Yards if it were to be built today. So trying to find a balance and trying to open up conversations about what is realistic for each individual project would be something that I would hope we could find.
Gideon: 15:03
I'm worried about the developers trying to figure out how to solve for our all of our many rules and ordinances, and state, at the local level, from a development perspective. But I also think there's a lot of very awkward pieces of property in Watertown. And I think that sometimes our rules make it very difficult to work with certain sites.
Laura: 15:26
It's nice to hear you say that. Thank you. I appreciate that.
Gideon: 15:30
So 15,000 square foot lot with a 30-foot drop and on an ancient way that's only 20 feet wide or variable is a difficult type of property. And so I think it's interesting and exciting to see those types of properties being re-envisioned, but I worry about how to make that work. And it always costs more because they're very complex, difficult sites. Core is, I worry about the future of commercial and the future of housing. I think we are doing a good job in our ordinance, although I imagine some people would push back on the 15% affordable, is it's hard. It's a cost, it's one of those rules that is painful for a development process to accommodate. That's affordable housing, but we also need housing for all the workforce in Watertown. And there's not solutions, there's not incentives for it. And so I think it's hard to see those transitions where we have housing that's for a certain income level and a certain income level, but we have this gap in the middle. And I don't know the solution for it, but I do think as we develop more, I hope that there's ways that some of the existing will become also more affordable for that type of more diverse population. And I also think that's true with the commercial side where we I'm worried that we're losing some of those unique or very awkward or very expensive to maintain little spaces as we develop. But I also know that we're creating new ones. So I can't help but look at the positive and the negative. So we've had a lot of like contaminated or very underutilized sites that worked really well for artists or for just one-off cheap rents, and those are going away. And I'm worried about that. And new construction is expensive. So I'm worried about that. I don't know what the solution is.
John: 17:15
I'll just say being around this area for a long time, you've gone through a lot of cycles in the 37 years, roughly, I've been here where back in those early days there was no development whatsoever. It was there was an occasional, you know, was one, I think the base of Galen Street, they built something and they had to build it around the little restaurant there. If you know what I'm talking about.
Gideon: 17:33
Archstone.
John: 17:34
Archstone, yes. Yeah, yeah. Because they wouldn't sell the higher price wasn't high enough. But that was like at the time, a big project. It took a long time to get that through. So I'd say one of the risks is that as we saw at west end of town when they push back on apartments, they changed the zoning there. And now we have these kind of elephants that have been sold. Russo's, for example. I don't know what's ever going to happen there because for the foreseeable future, you can't put housing there, whether you want it or not. The zoning doesn't allow it. It's too expensive. I mean, maybe a bank will let it go and somebody will be able to buy it at lower cost, but it'll never sustain a business like Russo's at the price that that land sold for the last time. You can't build office space anymore. Hopefully that comes around again, because I think we need some diversity of what we have here. It would be great not just to have residential, be great not just to have lab, but some other things, but the market's just not there. And whether it's cost or the work from home, other things. So I think it's a challenging time for people like Andrew that are in that business to find good projects that are going to pay off.
Bob: 18:32
Yeah, I agree. I think it's really difficult. Like I think you're starting to see it, everybody's made this point. It's either not being developed or someone passes on it, or it's developed and then the costs are passed on to the small business that has to rent the space or the person or people that have to rent the unit. And it's just become and we're at a point now where how do you make it work? From the business coalition standpoint, I mean, we've had conversations with many of our members about being pushed out. And you know, I was talking to Andrew, Arsenal Yards is a great example, right? It means a very successful development, mixed use, it's great. But he doesn't have any mom and pop tenants there. And he really couldn't because they're not going to be able to pay the rent because he needs a certain amount in rent. So I think that's another conversation, but I think there's ways to try and incentivize, you know, owners, landlords, try and figure out a way, smaller spaces, whatever it is, to try and figure out a way on how to allow some of these smaller businesses to survive in this environment, number one, and number two, maybe occupy some of this newer space.
Matt: 19:32
Well, let's move on to the more positive side. What are you most excited about for the future of Watertown development?
Laura: 19:38
I'm dying to hear his answer.
Andrew: 19:39
Well, yeah, after all that. I will tell you.
Bob: 19:42
Can you find anything, Andrew?
Andrew: 19:44
We work in a lot of different communities. I give Watertown a tremendous amount of credit for its approach, for example, to the rezoning of Watertown Square, its approach to how it sort of attacked the MBTA communities. I give a tremendous amount of credit. Sam Ghilardi sitting over here, the Housing Watertown for All crowd. You have a very progressive attitude towards, I think, housing creation, density, how you think about parking, some of those things. It's those things that are going to allow Watertown to maybe produce more housing in the very near future, as opposed to, I live in Newton. I just got something permitted in Newton. I only got it permitted because we had to use the 40B law. Because had I tried to change the zoning in Newton, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere. The Wellesleys and Westons and Waylands of the world have taken a very harsh view of people like all of us who sit up here. But Watertown has been, they’re proactive. And I think that that will bode well for it in the future. How far out into the future some of those things happened sort of remain to be seen, back to the cost argument that we all had, but there's a path forward here. So I think that that's, we'd love to, we'd love to do more development in Watertown.
Laura: 20:56
Yeah, I mean, I'll I'll second that. I think Watertown is one of the ones leading the efforts, along with, you know, Cambridge and Boston, who really have identified that the housing crisis gets solved with zoning or gets attempted at a solution with aggressive rezoning. And so the unlocking of the opportunities that are showing up in Watertown is the only way you can move forward. And, you know, I'm one who, even if we don't know where it's going to get us, you got to try. And so it's exciting to see these new opportunities to at least try to get us somewhere better than where we currently are.
Gideon: 21:31
I'm excited about all the different planning efforts that we've been doing and the culmination in the Watertown Square area plan, which, you know, we're in the heart of today, and having the conversations around an area that has been zoned since the 1930s as five-story, very dense housing. But now it's actually like we're looking at it and we're talking about properties that we haven't thought about. So I'm excited about thinking about the properties and how they're interacting with the public realm and creating the vision for Watertown Square area, which is creating a destination in Watertown Square, the way it has been in the past and the way it is now, but it can be better. And so looking at private property and also the public realm and how they all interact. It is the heart of the square, and we've done a lot of work on the two wings, which I think of as Arsenal Street and Pleasant Street. So now we're, you know, bringing it back into the square, which I think is our most difficult area because we have lots and lots of very unique, small, oddly shaped lots, which are all privately owned. And then we also have lots and lots of little lots that are a municipal parking lot. So I'm excited about the future and looking at the square as a place that we as residents and we as people that work in Watertown can come and enjoy and have a destination and a place to be.
John: 22:47
So I'd say maybe instead of excited, maybe optimistic is what I would say. Just really it's if you look where we are geographically here, it's a place people want to be. And whether it's to live, it's always been a great place to do business and just a great spot. And I've been here a long time. I love it. I do business, Watertown, Waltham, Newton, those are my main areas, Brighton, Cambridge as well. And I've done business in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Western Mass on occasion, but they're kind of out of my way. But I will tell you it's great to have people that if you have something, companies interested in moving here, right? We come in and sit down. We've done that with you before. And to know that you're gonna get a fair hearing, it's so that's what I'm optimistic about. I think that we're going through some cycles, but we're gonna come out eventually on the good side of it.
Bob: 23:28
Yeah. Sorry, I'm on the last here. So again, I yeah, I'm excited about the potential of some of the aspects of the Watertown Square area plan for sure. From a business standpoint, you know, we'd love to make it more of a destination. I think that was part of the process to try and do that. You know, I'm excited for the fact that in order to have a successful business district, you have to, in my opinion, have to have that mixed-use element and you have to bring some housing to it. And so I think that there's definitely some excitement there. Yeah. I don't want to keep saying what other people said. So yeah.
Matt: 24:02
Do you want to go first next time, Bob? Should we work the other way?
Bob: 24:04
No, that’s okay. That’s okay. I’m fine.
Matt :24:06
You're okay wrapping up the loose ends.
Bob: 24:07
Yeah, I'm the residential guy, business guy. You can talk development, that's fine.
Matt: 24:11
Well, for our next question, it's kind of trying to tie up any loose ends here, but again, I'm gonna split it up into the two parts here. So given what we've talked about already, do you have any additional thoughts on the impact of cost of living for residents and then the cost of doing business in Watertown? So we'll do the cost of living for residents first. So go ahead. Bob, pass it up so you're up Andrew.
Andrew: 24:31
Housing is expensive. So we really need to, the way that you reduce rents is through supply. Right now we have demand far outstripping supply. There have been good examples in other parts of the country. I think Austin, Texas is probably the most important example. I think in the last 10 years they produced 50,000 apartments. Rents have gone down in Austin, Texas. People continue to move in, rents go down. Miami, Florida, rents go down because they continue to produce supply, and we are really supply constrained. Again, it's difficult to, you know, get things approved and the permitting periods, and we're here to talk about Watertown, but I look at the couple of things in Newton, I look at what they did at Riverside, and they missed two markets. They missed an office market and then a life science market, because I was at Equity Residential in 2012 when I talked about doing housing at that site, and here it is in 2025, and there's nothing there. So if you want to make housing more affordable for people, we need to produce more housing. You know, I can't do anything about the cost of utilities or insurance or anything, but we can reduce rents, which is, you know, 90% of your monthly expense by producing more housing.
Laura: 25:45
So I'm probably the last person who should be speaking about the cost of things, as I'm just a designer. But you know, I was thinking about this and talking to some of my colleagues. And it's interesting, years ago, the BRA, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, so that's a long time ago, that was really an economic redevelopment authority. And so they, in conversations with them, had a general understanding of the cost to build. And so when developing and working with them on projects, there was an understanding of what they were asking and the cost that it had, the impact that it had on projects. And that is, you know, having a number of projects that we have permitted in Boston that are still sitting there unbuilt. That is not as much the case anymore. And so what I would love to see is having more open conversations with planning departments about the numbers and about understanding the implications of each individual site. It would require me being more educated on performers. He talked basis points earlier and my, you know, kind of glazed over, but I tried. But I think it's a really important conversation to have. And I think if everyone came to the table with an understanding and a desire that we're all just trying to build things that are good and beneficial for the community and as beneficial for the planet as we possibly can and have more open dialogue, then we could get to a place where we're enacting the regulations. I do think regulations are important in a way that is cost effective for the developers and for the community so that those costs don't get passed down. So that might be a little idealistic, but there is a model for it in some respect with you know Boston 20 years ago. So who knows?
Gideon: 27:24
Now I forgot the question.
Matt: 27:26
So now it's about any other.
Andrew: 27:28
How are you gonna make it more affordable?
Matt: 27:29
Impact on the cost of living for residents.
Gideon: 27:34
The cost of living, I mean, it's a complex question. There's a lot of things that impact that that are certainly not local. We're part of a regional complex that, you know, the Boston region. So from a housing affordability perspective, we're looking at a study to do just that and see what the incentives are that could be meaningful, that could actually allow us to have more affordable housing and not just the market rate housing. At this time, if we build more just in Watertown, it will still be market rate, which is whatever the region is calling for for rents or for ownership. So I'm excited about looking and thinking about that and trying to make it somehow more affordable. In some ways, through development, we're working on keeping our tax rates lower, which is supporting our residents that live here today and keeping the cost of living down. But a lot of things are really outside of the control of the municipal government when it comes to the costs of various aspects of living. So I'm excited about our team as a city and the things that we're doing to try to help the community and the residents get through some pretty hard times right now.
John: 28:42
Yeah, I don't want to have too much to add. I was just kind of echoing what you're saying. Watertown can't solve the problem. We can't build enough here to solve the housing shortage in the region. And we've got a lot in Brighton, right. There's been a lot in Waltham, and they're still building in those areas, but it's gonna be tough. And they have to make sense for the developer. You can't get to the point, Andrew talked about, I think it was Andrew talked about the cost of per unit of building. Those are not going down. We don't want to be back where we are with the lab situation where we build all these and nobody can afford to actually live in them. I guess it brings the cost down, but if they're going, banks are taking them over and other things, it's probably not gonna be great.
Bob: 29:16
Yeah, and I understand the reasoning, you know, the theory behind more supply and prices will go down, which I totally agree with. But I think at the same time, you know, how much does the needle have to move to make it exponentially better? Meaning if we build another thousand, two thousand units, is that gonna move the needle ten percent? Are the rents gonna drop. You know, the average rental in Watertown is three thousand dollars a month. So ten percent on that is three hundred dollars. Is that gonna move the needle for, okay, now everybody can live here? I don't know. So I'm a little weary of like overbuilding to an extent just to overbuild, and maybe it not having as big of an impact as some people may think. And I don't know the answer to that. I don't know where the lines on the graph meet, but that's a, I think, a good question and something that maybe should be researched a little bit more just to figure out, you know, what would it take, what's going on around us, where we're at regionally. With the Communities Act, I think we needed 200,000 units, right? Is that what it was?
Gideon: 30:20
Oh, you mean in Watertown?
Bob: 30:22
No, no, no, not in Watertown. No, no, I mean, you know, for the state. Yeah. I think it was 200,000 units. Well the shortage was 200,000. No, no, no. No, no, no. Sorry. You know, the Communities Act alone, I think the shortage was 200,000, if I remember reading correctly. So my point is like, how much does it fill the gap? How much does it move the needle? Is it enough, or are we just doing this to get an apartment at $200 less than it currently is?
Andrew: 30:48
Well, but Bob, I think you have to start with a couple of premises, right? The one is that housing costs too much, correct?
Bob: 30:55
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
Andrew: 30:56
In its current form. So there's I guess a couple of there's really only one thing that I know how to do, and maybe it's because I'm not that smart, is to build, is to add to the supply. And if Watertown steps up and adds a thousand units, and you know, that will help. We get accused a lot of, I get asked this question a lot when I'm in front of the public, and they say, Well, how much are you gonna charge for a two-bedroom apartment? I said, Well, we think when our apartment comes online in three years, that the rents that are getting charged at Trio or at Gables or at Boulevard and Bond, those will be the rents. That's too much money. Okay, but if we do nothing, the rents of the existing stuff are gonna go up seven and ten and twelve percent a year. So again, I think the only thing that we can do, whether it's in Watertown or in Metro Boston, you know, Greater Boston, is we've got to build our way out of the problem because if we don't, the 25 to 50 year olds are going to leave and we are gonna have other very fundamental structural problems in regards to tax collection and job creation. You know, and they're already leaving, right? And that's a serious problem.
Bob: 32:04
Yeah, exactly. I totally agree with that. It's just what if they leave anyway? That’s what I was getting at.
Andrew: 32:11
In all of my years, and there's one example, and I don't know what's gonna happen. An apartment building has never gone out of business. You drive around and you say, oh my God, look at all those apartment buildings. Every single one of them is 95 percent occupied. I can always put a head in a bed.
Gideon: 32:34
Which is full. 95 is full.
Andrew: 32:36
95 percent for us is full occupancy. So I have 300 units in at Boulevard and Bond at Arsenal Yards. We have right now we have 12 unleased units. Would I love to lease all 12 of those? Yes. But what happens is that as soon as I kind of lease those 12, somebody else is going to move out. And so it's 95% occupancy is really considered full. Multifamily for-rent buildings do not go out of business. Again, demand continues to outstrip supply. And if we can change the calculus and we can add more housing, then that's I think the number one reason that people are leaving is because of the cost of housing. So, boy, shame on all of us if we don't attack the number one reason why our young people are leaving by producing more housing. Or otherwise, we're in the soup.
Matt: 33:10
Can I ask, so you mentioned Austin and Miami? Do you know in those examples how many of the surrounding communities were involved with that? Was it just like downtown Austin or like?
Andrew: 33:17
It's sort of, you know, again, my Austin, Texas geography is somewhat limited, but they did it with heightened density. And they did it by building 35 and 40 and 50-story high-rise apartment buildings that people wanted to live in. Now, I'm not advocating for 50 stories of Watertown Square.
Bob: 33:37
Gideon just had a heart attack.
Andrew: 33:38
Wherever Charlie is, I don’t want to be quoted. Boylston properties wants 50-story towers.
Gideon: 33:42
I didn't have a heart attack, I just laughed.
Andrew: 33:47
But so they were able to do it in those very urban environments with heightened density. Too often I think we're having discussions when it comes to permitting housing about height, about the number of floors or number of stories, or worse, by setting 45 foot or 55 foot, or there are two numbers that I think we all have to remember: 70 and 85. Those are the two numbers by which, 70 is six stories, five over one, 85 is five over two. Once we get beyond 85 feet, it brings in a whole bunch of other additional costs that just make things much more unaffordable. But if I'm standing on the sidewalk in Watertown Square and I'm next to a brand new apartment building, and I say to you, don't look up, how tall is this building? You cannot answer the question because you don't experience height at the street level. You experience the street level. And it doesn't matter if that building is four stories or six stories. It's about what we have created. And I think it was the Jeff Speck presentation where he talked about not widening, not separating buildings, but bringing them closer together, the more European model where it feels better for you, the pedestrian, the bicyclist, the store owner, where you are creating an environment. It's really about the first 12 feet. And after that, it really doesn't matter. And we permit these things in. Everybody makes us show you these perspectives of what the building looks like from here, looking at, and it looks, it looks huge and it looks out of scale. And everyone says, oh my God, look at that's awful. But that's not how we experience the stuff that's developed. All the stuff in in Watertown Square, the scale, all of that stuff, it's about how you experience it at the street. So very complicated. And Laura and Gideon and others understand some of that planning a lot better than I do, but that's our opportunity. It's not to focus on how tall the building is going to be. It's to focus on how the building is going to meet the sidewalk or the street.
Laura: 35:42
Yeah, and I'll just say I don't know if this relates to the question, but it popped into my head. Talking about the prescribed nature of zoning, I think what we're seeing now and what has come with Watertown Square zoning is it's complicated and it has a lot of design requirements on it, not just height, but building length and insetting upper floors. And, you know, I think that they're good ideas and how it translates is not always understood and is maybe not the best way to achieve the issue at hand, which is more density, more housing. So how do we find a balance between, because obviously, as a designer, I want everything to be beautiful and community-oriented and have a great sidewalk experience and feel good. And I also want it to get built. And it's not just Watertown, it's every new zoning code that we see in every single municipality and every single town has new different requirements that are specific to that town that are very unique, and important, but very constricting on what is making it possible. So, yes, you can develop sites that weren't previously developable, but only in a very specific certain kind of way, which creates more barriers to building and design. So that's just my personal opinion.
Matt: 36:56
Any other thoughts on that before we move on to the next one?
Gideon: 36:59
It is ironic that our old square zoning was a straight five stories, but I think there's a building around the corner that was built in the 90s with it. You could fill up the whole lot with it. So it is interesting sometimes when you change things, it picks people's interest and gets them excited. And so I think in some ways that sometimes happens. I do think that we can't just focus on the new development. I think new development creates new housing, and we also have our housing of every age and every era. And Watertown's especially special about that, where we have multifamily housing that goes back a hundred years. So we have housing, so maybe the new housing is more expensive and also affordable. And some of that middle housing becomes not quite as desirable, so they lower their rents as well. So there is a spectrum, and I think it's important to not just focus on the new development. We have to think about Watertown as a whole, and the region. You know, we're just part of an area that includes all the communities around us. And as they develop new housing where certain people want to be, then sometimes the other housing stock maybe becomes a slightly different price point, unless they then upgrade as well. So it's a never-ending story.
Matt: 38:11
All right. Should we move on to business, cost of doing business to wrap it up here, and then we'll open up to some questions. So let's see. Who wants to, well.
John: 38:19
I was gonna throw something in. It’s kind of counterproductive to the question of cost of living on the housing, but there is an issue in Watertown on the cost of because most of my work is on the commercial side. And you know, I'm selling some properties that become housing. But there is an issue on a lot of properties on just the cost of operating their business in Watertown from really the real estate tax standpoint. You'd be surprised what some of these small buildings, and a lot of them are occupied by small companies, family businesses that have had them for a long time, and it's a challenge. I've got a property I manage over here. I think it's about 18,000 square feet. I just paid the quarterly tax bill, it's $39,000. The rents, that's about 25 percent of the rents, are going to pay the real estate tax. It might lead to development sooner because those owners are gonna get tired of every year, because they can't, the rents are what they are, you can't raise them, but the tax have gone up very significant, I'd say the last five to ten years, as the property values have gone up and some of the shifts have happened. But I think it's a, on the business side, it's a big problem.
Bob: 39:15
Yeah. I would agree. I mean, I see it personally with the building we own. And you know, there's a lot pulling at you, right? There's sustainability that comes into play, there's BERDO that's coming up. So it's a real pull. And again, I think that's where, you know, everyone has to work together. I think someone mentioned it before. The city, we have to figure out how to maybe incentivize, we have to figure out how to help each other in this situation because the costs are too much to bear for most people, even on some of the older inventory. Yeah, I mean it's just it's across the board. It really is, so.
Matt: 39:46
Any special considerations for the cost of doing business versus the cost of living, you know, commercial versus the residential that we haven't touched on already or that you want to add an extra point on?
Andrew: 39:57
No, it's real estate taxes, you know, for all of our commercial tenants, that's their number one concern.
Laura: 40:03
Yeah, I have nothing to add to that one.
Gideon: 40:06
I don't really either.
Matt: 40:08
All right. Have we gotten it all out of our systems then? Are we ready for some questions?
Bob: 40:13
I think so. Unless you want to get into a conversation about taxes, we can do that. I don't know.
Gideon: 40:16
We need different people.
Bob: 40:18
We need another panel.
Matt: 40:20
Well, then thank you for you guys for sharing all that. I do want to open up to some questions from anyone here. The amp isn't up very loud because we have a nice intimate setting, but I will come around with the mic so I can capture it for the podcast. Does anyone have a question to ask of the group as a whole or anyone in particular?
Speaker: 40:35
So I appreciate all the information. A lot of this stuff kind of goes over my head and I don't know a lot when it comes to development, but I guess I was just curious for more of a layman's term in terms of the state of Watertown. It's trying to reduce costs, but develop more. But developing is expensive, and that's where the rubber meets the road. Is that, am I understanding the current state of things correctly?
Andrew: 40:57
Yes. And it's not just Watertown, right? We've talked a lot about housing, and that's kind of what was one of the only things I think right now from a development perspective that sort of pencils, right? We're not doing any more lab buildings anytime soon. Where no one's building any new office space. It's really
Gideon: 41:11
Mixed use?
Andrew: 41:12
Maybe, maybe, but that mixed use is a very small retail component, probably with housing. And the costs are the same in Newton and Watertown and Wellesley, and you know, that's just the cost of doing business. So yes, we need to produce more housing, but it is incredibly challenging right now in the current economic environment to be able to do that.
Gideon: 41:31
One thing we didn't talk about was these small, complex sites where you can get a certain amount of units or a certain amount of square footage versus a larger site where it's easier. That has to have a little bit of a change in the price point per unit for construction, or at least for the permitting side or you know, the architectural design engineering side.
Andrew: 41:52
It could, right? At the end of the day, really what we have to solve for first and foremost, and Laura will tell you this, is it's first and foremost a parking exercise. When I get a piece of land and we have a site, I can produce a six-story apartment building. How are we going to park whatever the requisite number of cars that we think we need, whether that's the need, the actual demand, or the zoning requirement. And those tend to be two very different numbers a lot of the times. So those smaller sites can come with yes, opportunity, but they also then maybe get very challenged from a parking perspective.
Laura: 42:27
Yeah, I mean, I'll say that I we are seeing across the board parking demand coming down. I think there is a general understanding, more reliable public transportation and you know, better bike paths and whatnot is helping the parking ratio. So it is still a factor. I remember when we were doing Arsenal, Andrew told me I only want to go around the building so many times. So it really also comes down to the shape of the building and the shape of the site and how many units does it yield. And so those initial yield plans kill so many deals because the developer has a number. If I can get 50 units, I can make it work. If I can get 48, it doesn't. So yes, parking is definitely a factor. All of the requirements at the ground floor level, I mean, retail with housing is a great idea. And also retail needs more than just housing above it to be successful. So it isn't always a great match to put the two and make a single building mixed use. So there's a couple of different parameters, but the smaller the site, the more complicated it is. And fewer units does not mean less cost necessarily.
Gideon: 43:30
More units, less cost.
Laura: 43:33
More units, less cost, yes.
Andrew: 43:35
Back to 70 and 85.
Laura: 43:37
Squares are good, triangles are bad.
Gideon: 43:41
I do think that that's one exciting thing about the Watertown Square, which I do see a big change in how the development's looking. We dropped the minimum parking to 0.5 spaces, which is not a, you don't have to build 0.5, but you can't build more than one without asking for a special permit. So we're actually putting a restriction on the excess parking rather than no parking. You can also ask for a reduction. So we're trying to speak to some of those things. And I think that's some of the reasons that some of these sites are able to create residential units where you maybe couldn't have gotten them before is we reduced the parking requirements, which is one of your criteria.
Bob: 44:20
Yeah. No, I was just going to say to dovetail off of, well, part of the answer, I guess, to Christian's question. I mean, I don't think it's all doom and gloom, right? I mean, there are some projects that have had community meetings on, and we're at 108 Water Street and 75 Spring and 72 Mount Auburn and 45 to 55 Mount Auburn, maybe, 33, 57, one of them. Yeah.
Gideon 44:42
AKA the Dunkin' Donuts Plaza.
Bob: 44:44
Yeah. I mean, so obviously some people are seeing some opportunity here in this environment, right? And I think collectively, between those, there's maybe over 250 units proposed, if I'm correct. So just wanted to point that out, because we haven't touched on that. I think we've all touched on the fact that it's very expensive to build, but yeah.
Gideon: 45:02
That's a very good point. The future of Watertown Square, we've been seeing proposals for both rental and condo projects, which so the a bright side of the lab projects slowing down or stopping right now is that we're seeing more residential projects. And that is exciting to see any kind of new residential projects. We have one that's built and fully occupied. 104 Main is certainly coming out of the ground substantially. And then we have the developments that are in their community meeting and permitting stage.
Matt: 45:34
More questions. All right.
Speaker: 45:36
Thank you. My name is Marcy Murninghan. What are the pros and cons of Watertown having its own redevelopment authority?
Andrew: 45:45
Gideon?
Gideon: 45:49
I guess first we do have a redevelopment authority, and the redevelopment authority is the city council. So the pros, I think I'll focus on the pros. I'm not sure what the cons would be. It allows a mechanism to have conversations with and allow flexibility with public-private conversations on properties. So where we have slivers of land like a triangle of railroad property adjacent to Taylor Street, or we have the municipal parking lot, which is actually a whole bunch of parcels that the city aggregated over years with parking easements and a bunch of different complexities, with very historic culverts that were once brooks that became stormwater systems that then became something else. Having a redevelopment authority allows you to address those very complex pieces in a way that you couldn't otherwise. And to Laura's point with the city of Boston, it allows you to look at things in a different way. And I think with Watertown's uniqueness of it being the city council, they would be wearing a different hat when they're acting as a redevelopment authority.
Speaker: 46:57
All right. So my name is Christian. And my question, I guess when I sit down and I kind of wrap my head around everything that's going on in around Watertown and around Boston, I think about absorption and all of the supply that's coming to market, especially from the lens of a developer. You know, how do you plan to build in a marketplace that you're trying to simultaneously make more affordable? If you have units that are at, you know, at Arsenal Yards, Boulevard and Bond, and you have a loan, and that loan has a certain amount of payment that needs to be made in order for you to, you know, to meet that debt service, how do you simultaneously contribute to build more supply in Watertown, knowing that that supply may adversely impact some of your other projects?
Andrew: 47:41
In the very short term, and I'll say the short term is 10 years, we can't bring enough supply online to adversely impact rents. Now that might sound like, well, we're never going to be able to build our way out of this problem, but it just we've artificially constrained supply for the last 30 years in this submarket, not Watertown, but Greater Boston. And so back to the 200, I think the number's 225,000 units is sort of the number it kind of is a little bit of a moving target. So Bob just rattled off four or five very significant projects that are gonna create two hundred and fifty units of housing, and that two hundred and fifty units is probably not gonna be online and stabilize and absorbed for another four years. At the end of the day, that's just not enough supply to make any of the current apartment owners in the submarket worried.
Speaker: 48:35
Greg Salvucci. Mentioned a lot of the vacancies with the labs. Any conversation from the property owners or any conversation from the city about fixing that and making it affordable housing or apartments, converting those empty buildings, especially on the river. I mean, someone living there, you know, they might see that as a great place to live. So is there any conversation going back and forth? Those are the things we discuss at home. We see them vacant, what are we gonna do with them?
Gideon: 49:03
There's not a conversation, but I, part of why I think there's not a conversation is if you have a purpose-built lab building, the floor plates and design of it was for a lab. And they're not vacant in Watertown. So that layout doesn't work. And I have an architect next to me who I'm sure can speak much more to that piece of it. But I believe that a lot of our buildings, which are either lab purpose built or actually industrial purpose built, that have been converted. We've had labs in Watertown since the Arsenal was here. A hundred and two hundred years or whatever, hundred and fifty years of labs and industry. And a lot of those buildings don't have the right layout to create viable residential conversion. There are some old mill buildings that people are looking at, and it will require significant alterations and changes, at least to the insides. And perhaps they'll be able to look at the exteriors and preserve those facades, but it's not reusing a building. It's rebuilding a building.
Laura: 50:08
Yeah, I mean, I'll say so Mayor Wu made a big declaration that she wanted to convert office to housing in the city of Boston. And it has not come to fruition as people had hoped. And that is because of the floor plate. Essentially, office is too deep. Residential requires a shallower floor plate, natural lighting is required for residential, not as much for office. So there are some fundamental issues with the floor plate of non-housing, housing is a very specific configuration. That being said, there are a lot of people trying to figure out how to get it to work. And we have this debate in our office. I am of the opinion that if you just study something hard enough, you'll figure out a solution. Other people have written it off, but people are trying. And so I don't think a solution is right around the corner. You know, the sanitation code is honestly the thing that is the hardest to design towards when you're getting into housing. It requires a certain amount of daylighting and a certain amount of square footage per room that office floor plates don't allow for at the moment. But there are very smart people who are trying to figure it out. So maybe give it time because it's a problem that's happening in a lot of areas.
John: 51:20
Yeah, I think the other thing to point out on the lab side of it is, and there are some partially empty lab, and there might be some that are completely empty at some point. But when you build one of those new buildings, the costs are, I don't know, Andrew may know better, double or triple the base building versus what a residential building would be. You might as well give the money, the keys back to the bank before you do it on a building that's already been built with the intention of going lab. There's so much built-in cost. But there are some properties that have been sold on the office side that have sold for enormous discounts because they're vacant and they're not viable as an office building. Up in Waltham, there's been a couple that really reasonable prices that do allow you then to go in and maybe do something like a residential where you take out some of the interior or whatever it takes, even level them in some cases.
Gideon: 52:03
If you have like a very old mill, brick and beam, you may have the depths that would pencil out for a conversion. And Watertown actually has very little of that. And the few that we have are not zoned for residential. So along the river, river works.
Andrew: 52:18
There’s that zoning code again.
Laura: 52:21
You know who can change that?
Gideon: 52:22
Sometimes it's about the industrial pasts of the sites and what's underneath the ground.
Laura: 52:28
Soils. Yeah.
Gideon: 52:30
It’s a whole issue.
Speaker: 52:33
Thank you. First of all, as far as conversions, it was amazing to me that they shoehorned so many apartment buildings into churches, which were completely crazy shaped. And the apartments they ended up with were crazy shaped. So I just would say that's an example of people thinking creatively. And those spaces weren't all spaces that I thought I might like to live in. I also wanted to come on Austin, where I happen to have spent a great deal of time in the last couple of years. And it's true they built a lot of sixteen and fourteen story towers downtown. But outside of downtown, there's no zoning. This is Texas. There is no zoning. There is no minimum lot size. You just squeeze something in. You can squeeze something else in. And also there's outskirts where there's a lot of empty land that we don't have. So there's a lot of things that have led to it. And my daughter's rent went down after the first year, and she's negotiating another decrease for the following year.
Laura: 53:36
Just one note on the churches. Smaller is actually easier.
Bob: 53:39
Easier.
Laura: 53:40
So it's the big deep floor plates that you have an issue with. So if you have small, unusable buildings, those are actually much easier. Or vacant buildings, those are much easier to shoehorn, and you can do crazy things to make residential work as long as you have access to an exterior wall.
Gideon: 53:55
Unless you ask those developers of those churches as they were trying to sell the property. These guys might have some stories about that.
Bob: 54:04
Well, you also have the architecture of a church versus, you know, so there's that piece. But some people don't want to live in a religious building.
Speaker: 54:10
It just wasn’t normal.
Bob: 54:13
No, no, no, it's not.
Laura: 54:15
Some people like not normal.
Bob: 54:16
Exactly. It's unique.
Speaker: 54:20
Hi. Couple of comments and then a question. I know people experiencing very high, unusually high rent increases because of the new development, because they're putting in all kinds of amenities into the old buildings to compete. And when they try to negotiate, they said go somewhere else, you know? See if you can get a better rate than what we have. So that's a problem. When we're building the lower-income housing, they tend to have more than one job because they need to have more than one job to make ends meet. They can't necessarily count on commuting to get to those jobs. They need to get wherever they need to get, wherever the job is. So putting 0.5 restrictions on something like Willow Park, whatever that restriction is, I believe will make it a little harder for people with lower incomes to make ends meet. And then finally, I heard someone at the Affordable Housing Trust muse about wouldn't it be nice if we could zone all the neighborhoods in Watertown just like the square. Is that even a possibility? Thank you.
Andrew: 55:22
You're the zoning guy. Don’t look at me.
Gideon: 55:29
The city of Watertown has a city council, and we have zoning because the city council adopted zoning. So every year or every couple of years there's minor or major zoning amendments. I don't think that the city council, who's an elected body, would choose to completely rezone the entire city, but they are an elected body, and so you can change zoning.
Andrew: 56:03
But even if it did, the ownership is so fractured, right. For me to build, let's say I wanted to go up the top of the hill and try to buy twenty-six single-family homes to aggregate, it would be impossible. It would be cost prohibitive. It just, which is one of the problems I think you're going to have in the very short term in Watertown Square, is that you have very fractured ownership. And for a developer to come along. And it's what they're doing on Main Street, you know, they put together four or five parcels, the Salusti building.
Gideon: 56:31
Might have been six.
Andrew: 56:32
Six parcels. That is very difficult to do. Takes a tremendous amount of time. You know, and then you have existing tenants with leases, and you know, those people have just maybe opened a new store and had spent some money, and it would be, I think it would be impossible. It would never happen because I don't think.
Gideon: 56:49
It's a good point, too. And on top of that, a lot of two families are condoed. So you have a parcel, it's like, oh yeah, we have 14,000 parcels in Watertown in four square miles. But once they're condoed, you have more than one owner for each of those parcels. So this block here has something like 12 parcels. You know, some of them are only 20 feet wide.
Bob: 57:09
And I don't think you'll see some of the amenities that, you know, you had referenced some of the amenities that these buildings are built with. You know, they're just smaller parcels here. So a lot of the ones that I mentioned earlier, they're not going to have the same amenities that some of the, you know, some of the yeah, exactly. Pool, fitness center, all, you know. So it might be a different price point, is what I'm getting at. You won't have that.
Speaker: 57:30
These people I’m talking about are in a larger facility that would compete with larger facilities.
Bob: 57:35
Exactly. Yeah, okay.
Matt: 57:38
All right, I'll take two more questions here before we wrap up.
Speaker: 57:41
The Russo's lot came up. You know, everybody I know was devastated when Russo's closed. And given that the lot is just sitting there with the original building, as far as I know, last I saw the building is still there. Is there any possibility that could revert to a food store? I mean, I realize that somebody would have to take a loss on that, but they're taking a loss by just having it sit there. Is there anything that the town could do to encourage that to happen?
Gideon: 58:15
That's definitely a question for Andrew.
Andrew: 58:18
Oh well. I think the Russo site is a wonderful multifamily development opportunity. That's gonna require a rezoning effort with the city. I believe that the developer there paid Tony Russo $43 million, I believe, for that parcel. So it did work out for one individual. I think it worked out for Tony quite well. Unfortunately, you know, at those price points, it's never ever gonna be just a Russo's, a market. It would have to be some sort of mixed-use development where maybe you could, again, you could work with the city and figure out how you're gonna get a combination of housing and some additional retail in there. But I think that there's a somebody trying to figure that out right now. It's not us. But the property owner is probably doing that, you know.
John: 59:01
And their bank.
Andrew: 59:03
And their bank.
John: 59:04
Whoever the lender is.
Gideon: 59:06
And I wanted him to respond to that question first because I do think, you know, it is private property. The person who owns it, the entity, the bank, they're the ones that have to decide what they can and can't do, or they need to sell it to someone else who might be interested in doing something. The building itself may look sort of like Russo's, but it's been substantially dismantled on the inside. It is not a heated building. It's been sitting there vacant. So it's not a viable building as is. And, you know, to other people's points, at this point, that portion of the Pleasant Street corridor district is not zoned to allow for any type of housing. And it was a specific response by the city council something like 10 years ago, in order to ensure that our commercial and industrial tax base was preserved. And so if they wanted to look at a rezone of that area, they would have to consider that through another zoning amendment process to allow housing. And you're right, if you had a housing development like one of our other Pleasant Street sub-districts, you could have a requirement where a portion of it is commercial, and that commercial could perhaps be some type of store. I think a misnomer, the city can't say we want a grocery store and it's going to be there. We can use our plans to identify what we're hoping we want for the future as a community. And then we create zoning, which is a tool to implement our future vision. And so when that was created with the amendment to the zoning, the vision was we want to preserve some of our commercial base. It was before this substantial housing demand. And that site is not on, but very adjacent to some has a long history of industrial use that has some issues. But that site, I don't believe, has any. It's a clean site. It could allow housing from an environmental perspective, but like the property behind it couldn't. So sometimes zoning is because it can't happen anyways. And other times it could happen, but it does take a process and it's a political process and a planning process.
Bob: 1:01:03
Yeah, I think Russo's is a great example of what I had mentioned earlier, how I mean they sold out and made money, but that type of business has gone by the wayside at this point, right? So how do we work together to encourage that? To Gideon's, you know, I think you touched on it. But I've never seen a community more in a business like Russo's. It's unbelievable. But how do we encourage that type of development? At some point there's a void and there's demand and it will be filled, but we have to encourage the type of space and help promote where it should be. And I think that's where we need to work with the city on that.
Matt: 1:01:34
All right, last question. Any last questions here, or are we good to wrap?
Speaker: 1:01:39
What would be your one thing personally you would like and selfishly one thing each of you would like to see in Watertown?
Gideon: 1:01:49
I’ll start.
Speaker: 1:01:50
To improve affordability.
Gideon: 1:01:52
Oh wait, don't add the. I would love to see the, I would love to see the Watertown community path connected east to west. Which will help with affordability because you don't need to have a car. You can get all the way to Cambridge. I don't know.
John: 1:02:08
How about drones for getting us around?
Gideon: 1:02:10
Like drones that can pick you up?
John: 1:02:11
Yeah, so we can get the roads cleared, we can, yeah.
Bob: 1:02:15
So I would say with all that's supposed to happen in Watertown Square with the new zoning and the fact that we're trying to encourage business and obviously the housing piece, but the zoning now calls for any development can, you know, it's a half of space per, so I'd like to see improvements on parking. Like how are we going to encourage people from outside of Watertown to come here and land so that they can walk the newly widened sidewalks and visit all these businesses. That's one thing I would love to see is some sort of improvement on the parking, some sort of plan there. And we need the red line, Susan says. So we can do that. But that’s a good point. You know, I don't know what's going to happen up in Newton Corner, but that's something we should keep an ear on in terms of MBTA.
Andrew: 1:03:02
Yeah, well, I'm old enough to remember the trolley that ran down Galen Street, so I think I'd like to see them. From a public transportation perspective, I think Watertown is a little bit of a desert, public transportation desert, unfortunately. But in the very near term, I think the proposal that Jeff Speck did several years ago regarding the fixing of Watertown Square, and I think the removal of those lights and that I think would make a tremendous difference to how people traveled in, you know, through and around Watertown.
Laura: 1:03:30
This one's hard for me, but you know, I think as we see the Watertown Square zoning come to fruition, I'd spoken about this earlier, but I would like to really see if we can have more dynamic economic conversations about the individual projects to see if there are ways that we can keep the intentions for each site while also, you know, identifying the unique qualities of each site and making these projects truly affordable to build and affordable to live in. And I think that starts with more open conversation about cost across all parties participating in the design development.
Matt: 1:04:05
All right. Well, I think we covered a lot of ground tonight. Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts and for your questions. Bob, do you want to wrap up from the WBC perspective on this at all?
Bob: 1:04:17
Sure. Yeah. No, this was great. Thank you, Matt. Obviously, great collaboration with Matt. And it's great to see everybody here. One person I want to point out is Erin Rathe, who's been added to the team here in Watertown and who's been so great with our organization. And if there are any businesses out there that need something or want something, you come to us. We can talk to Erin. We've been great in collaborating, so that's been fantastic. But no, this is great. It's great content. We're happy to answer more questions. We're here, we're easy to reach. We're heading into the holiday season. Please try and keep your money in Watertown. It helps for sure.
Speaker: 1:04:51
Buy some furniture, right?
Bob: 1:04:52
Buy some, I was just gonna say that.
Matt: 1:04:54
Thank you to our gracious hosts.
Bob: 1:04:56
Yes, thank you very much. Thank you.
Matt: 1:05:03
So that's it for the panel discussion with Bob, Andrew, John, Laura, and Gideon. There'll be more of these type of events for Watertown's Open coming up in 2026, so keep an eye out for those. You can sign up for my email newsletter that I send out once a week. So head on over to LittleLocalConversations.com. And also at the website you can find all the regular interviews that I do with people around Watertown and other recordings from live podcast events and other special episodes. And if you like these conversations, you can help support the podcast and become a little local friend. Again, at Little Local Conversations.com, click on the support local conversation button in the menu. Any help is greatly appreciated.
Matt: 1:05:39
Alright, and I want to give a few shout-outs here to wrap things up. First one goes to podcast sponsor, Arsenal Financial. It's a financial planning business here in Watertown. It's owned by Doug Orifice, who's a very committed community member, and his business helps busy families, small businesses, and people close to retirement. So if you need help in any of those areas, reach out to Doug and his team at arsenalfinancial.com. I also want to give a thank you to the Watertown Cultural Council, who have given me a grant this year to help support the podcast. So I want to give them the appropriate credit, which is, this program is supported in part by a grant from the Watertown Cultural Council, a local agency, which is supported by the Mass Cultural Council, a state agency. You can find out more about them at Watertown Cultural Council.org and Mass Cultural Council.org. And a couple more shout outs to promotional partners. First one goes to the Watertown Business Coalition, which is a nonprofit organization here in Watertown, and their motto is Community is Our Business. Find out more about them at Watertown Business Coalition.com. And lastly, Watertown News, which is a Watertown focused online newspaper. It's a great place to keep up to date with everything going on in the city. Check that out at WatertownMANews.com. So that's it. Until next time, take care.
