How much delivery traffic does 500 housing units generate?

[Christopher Beland]

Short answer: At peak times, about 1 every 5 minutes (12 per hour).

Methodology: I spent an hour this evening during the dinner delivery peak (according to Door Dash and Uber) in the lobby of the Market Central Watermark tower. I observed:

• Deliveries: 6 (5 food, 1 Amazon)
• Pickups: 1 (sports gear)
• Residents in: 41 (many with their own meal bags or groceries)
• Residents out: 37
• Dogs being walked: 2

Scaling up from 285 units to 502, 7 deliveries and pickups per hour for Watermark is the equivalent of 12 per hour for Copper Mill.

I'd estimate most deliveries took 30-60 seconds - just long enough to enter, attempt to open the inner door, put the bag down, take a photo, and leave. Some went to the rear entrance, where there is a surface parking lot; some went to the front entrance and stopped with hazards on in the travel lane on Mass Ave. One delivery came via scooter, and the delivery person then picked up cookies at Crumbl next door and got back on their scooter to deliver that elsewhere.

Packages are held for residents in a locked room between the rear loading dock and the lobby, and fetched by a concierge. There is only a small table for food deliveries, though when the concierge is not present, they were left in the vestibule. I infer that large trucks with lots of packages (which tend to arrive during business hours, not dinner time) use the loading dock. The Market Central Link building has a separate loading dock which says a reservation is required. (There are also restaurants which need to get deliveries in both buildings.)

Upshot for Copper Mill:

There will be demand for quick delivery parking immediately next to the residential entrance on Grove Street. This could be accommodated by indenting a wide sidewalk to make a pull-off. Some single-parcel drivers might also be willing to pull their personal cars into the loading dock if it does not involve opening a door.

Grove Street is a 40-foot right-of-way, and is designated as a Neighborway by the Bike Network Plan - shared travel lane with cars, with traffic calming. On this type of road, 974 CMR 2.07 calls for 9-foot travel lanes and 1-foot shoulders. Given Grove Street is two-way, this leaves 10 feet on each side for sidewalks (and trees and driveway aprons) on each side. So to make a 9-foot-wide pull-off, either Grove Street would need to be made one-way, or the Copper Mill building couldn't go all the way up to the property line.

On page 56 of the 40B application, Copper Mill proposes putting the edge of the building at least 11 feet back from the property line, leaving enough room for on-street parking (or loading zone) for the entire frontage on Grove Street, except where the loading dock is. It looks like there's enough room there for 4 parallel parking spaces, each about 22 feet in length.

If I've done my Poisson distribution math right, assuming 12 randomly-distributed, 60-second deliveries per hour, the chances of getting through a peak hour without having more cars than spaces at the same time are:

• 1 space - 37%
• 2 spaces - 94%
• 3 spaces - 99.67%

So having 3 spaces would probably be fine except maybe once or twice a year, and most days the third space wouldn't be needed. Even during peak eats, all of the spaces would be empty 80% of the time. It's possible if they are not blocking a travel lane, drivers would linger a bit longer to figure out where to pick up next. From what I see, they do tend to double-park longer in front of restaurants, presumably because they actually need to wait for staff help, or sometimes for food to be ready.

When there are not simultaneous deliveries happening, loading zone spaces would be available for ridehailing passengers, though these could also be directed to a nearby passenger pickup/dropoff zone. (Quantifying demand for ridehailing would require more research - peak travel and eating times are different, I couldn't watch both curbs at the same time, and Watermark has underground parking.)

-B.

[hu...@comcast.net]

Hello Chris,

 

This is truly impressive work. However, it is a single sample, on a particular evening. Do you think it’s worth commissioning a professional analysis that would widen the scope to capture cases you may have overlooked?

 

For example, this was school vacation week. Does that affect the results?

 

Are Fridays typical of other days? Maybe people go out more Friday, order in more Tuesday. I don’t know.

 

What happens if it rains/snows? Maybe a significant portion of the 40 residents with meals or groceries would order in on those occasions.

 

What happens on moving day, supposing something like 15% yearly turnover? ~50 – 100 novices trying to navigate U-Hauls and overpacked cars, Ikea vans, etc.?

 

What you have shown is very much in the vein of what I believe the DSNC needs to understand to develop an informed opinion on the impact of the proposed tower, and what mitigations might be necessary. Do you agree it’s important to broaden your analysis to be confident of covering a comprehensive set of scenarios?

 

-Hume

 

(And, no, we don’t have to consider the case where parent’s weekend coincides with the World Series coming to Fenway Park, the Beanpot, and, I don’t know, the kickoff of the Boston Early Music Festival. Oh, and Honk!)

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[Mieke Citroen]

This is phenomenal. Thank you for doing that.

 Even though one sample hour is not enough data for big decisions, it absolutely shows that it could work and we should look at it. I'd be happy to do data gathering for an hour or two, just observing and recording.

--Mieke

--

[jlau...@comcast.net]

Chris,

Your careful work prompted me to check the rents for a one-bedroom at Market Central Apartments.  Giving a March occupancy date I found that a rental is available from March 7 at $3296/month, including gas and trash but not other utilities.  Copper Mill, by contrast, is projecting $4250/month for its one-bedrooms not including utilities at around $5000/yr.

You might consider whether renters paying  $51K/yr plus utilities have a higher propensity to order food deliveries, taxis, cleaners, etc. and adjust accordingly.

Lee

PS  Yesterday's Wall Street Journal included a 144-page "premier issue" of "Coldwell 100" a glossy luxury-goods magazine featuring a real estate portfolio of multi-million-dollar properties in 17 states plus international locations.  Four properties were singled out for "Spotlight" treatment (pp 108-109)-- in Paris, France; Florida Keys; Oahu, Hawaii; and (sic!) Somerville, MA.  The Somerville penthouse property "floats above Davis Square like a modern treehouse.....a treasure of  a find amid the urban bustle below."     lee

_________________
Josiah Lee Auspitz
17 Chapel Street 

Somerville, MA 02144 

Landline phone: 617-628-6228 fax: 617-628-9441

Phones do not receive text messages

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From: humev via Davis Square Neighborhood Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, February 21, 2026 11:25 AM
To: 'Christopher Beland' <bel...@alum.mit.edu>; daviss...@googlegroups.com <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: [DSNC] How much delivery traffic does 500 housing units generate?

 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/davissquarenc/03db01dca34e%24bb7202a0%24325607e0%24%40comcast.net.

[Ashish Shrestha]

The rents on these luxury units is highly flexible.  They change almost daily as a function of various proprietary algorithms, accounting for time of year, number of vacancies, etc.  I wouldn't be focused on a specific rental price so carefully.  For reference, my girlfriend was paying $3700 last year for a luxury unit closer to Kendall because she signed on short notice and on a summer lease cycle.  It's also worth remembering that Copper Mill's rental price is a projection for when they complete construction, so they've included probably 3-4 years of inflation into their rental price.  That 3300/mo will quickly become 4k+/mo by the time CM would finish their construction.

There's also pretty obviously a diminishing returns on wealth and services.  I doubt someone who pays 40k/yr in rent sees $20 in delivery very differently than someone who pays 50k/yr.

Chris, thank you for your research into this.  If people have more data they'd like to see, I encourage them to take the initiative like Chris has here and gather some data themselves.

[Jim Gallagher]

Hi Chris et al

The Instutute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) produces a report Trip Generation (it looks like their in at least their 11th ed) that used to be the industry standard used for most environmental and planning documents. I haven't looked at it since I retired a while ago, but they have studies for how many trips to/from many types of uses, for different times of day, and all around the country. I expect there would be numbers for situations comparable to here, and I would expect Cooper Mills to use them for any transportation analysis they provide.

Jim Gallagher

--

[Michael Chiu]

Thanks Lee

Just for fun, here's a link to the Coldwell 100: https://issuu.com/cbgloballuxury/docs/coldwell_magazine_winter_2026/46?fr=sZDk2Yjg2NTcwNjU

Page 109 shows the Somerville property (Penthouse at the Pillow Factory/Blair Ditch Project)

Link to listing: https://ricardoboston.com/properties/50-howard-street-5-somerville-ma-us-02144-73469363

Surprisingly affordable at $1.55M. /s  Alas it is under agreement.

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[Christopher Beland]

Thanks for the ITE pointer; I found an electronic demo at: https://itetripgen.net/

Unfortunately, it looks like the data is for commuting and assumes 100% automobile mode share. That's not all that useful in a situation where the question is e.g. how many people will take the Red Line to work or weekend parties vs. ride hailing.

-B.

[Christopher Beland]

Yeah, I agree with Mieke that having like 3 delivery demand samples instead of one would be more reliable (ironing out fluctuations from things like school vacation week). I like your enthusiasm for data gathering, and hope you find the time to watch a building or two.

On Sat, 2026-02-21 at 11:25 -0500, hu...@comcast.net wrote:

Are Fridays typical of other days? Maybe people go out more Friday, order in more Tuesday. I don’t know.

According to DoorDash and Uber Eats, Fridays and Saturdays are the busiest days for takeout deliveries.

What happens if it rains/snows? Maybe a significant portion of the 40 residents with meals or groceries would order in on those occasions.

It was in fact both raining and snowing while I was taking data, so if bad weather means more food deliveries, my numbers would be on the higher end.

What happens on moving day, supposing something like 15% yearly turnover? ~50 – 100 novices trying to navigate U-Hauls and overpacked cars, Ikea vans, etc.?

For similar buildings like BU and Emerson dorms, the curbside lane on the frontage street and possibly an abutting side street becomes a loading zone on moving day. I don't know if for a private no-parking building that would happen by individual households getting "no parking zone - moving" placards and staking out a specific spot 48 hours in advance, or the city and the building cooperating to designate a temporary loading zone. Maybe permanent loading zones would suffice if they are bigger than what we have today. If the building is suitably designed, it's also possible that residents could sign up for a timeslot to use the loading dock, just as some dorms have staggered move-in times.

Because the Copper Mill site is on a corner, it actually has an unusually large number of abutting curbside parking spaces. Given that not everyone moves on the same day, not everyone moves all their stuff on moving day (yay, pods!), and that this is not a dorm where 25%-100% of the population has to move in the same 1-3 day period, I think the street parking on Grove and Elm would be plenty to handle September 1 moving traffic.

If we're assuming the Grove Street frontage would be a permanent loading zone to accommodate dinner peak food deliveries, that would probably handle 90% of moving trucks who would mostly not be there at weekend dinner time. There is also a metered parking lot on the other side of Grove Street where moving trucks who don't know about parking permits could get a spot, or displaced food delivery and ridehailing cars could pull out of traffic.

Do you think it’s worth commissioning a professional analysis that would widen the scope to capture cases you may have overlooked?

Do you agree it’s important to broaden your analysis to be confident of covering a comprehensive set of scenarios?

No, for several reasons.

Plenty of us live or have lived in apartment buildings; we don't need to hire someone to tell us how they work, and I don't think we have time to go through a procurement process. Copper Mill and the City of Somerville have engineers who can answer questions that actually require technical expertise, and various city agencies will actually be analyzing the project and recommending conditions.

My main purpose was to fact-check my intuition that the loading dock and a small loading zone on existing streets would be adequate to handle everyday deliveries. Deb had expressed concerns about "hundreds of cars" visiting the building, and Elizabeth about "vehicle log jams". I am now confident that these concerns are out of scale with how many cars will actually be there in any given hour or minute. If anyone doesn't share that confidence, I'd want to know what the most important unknowns are that could resolve this concern. (Rideshare demand?)

Having a hundred different highly detailed questions that MUST be answered before any design decisions can be accepted seems like a recipe for analysis paralysis. I think to have a meaningful impact on the Copper Mill design, we need to decide what we want to see rather quickly, perhaps March or April. I would recommend picking some bottom-line questions and gathering enough information to estimate upper and lower bounds.

In terms of neighborhood traffic congestion mitigation, Copper Mill is already doing exactly what I would want: big bike room, zero new parking, wide sidewalks, high density close to rapid transit. The city could impose additional requirements in a Mobility Management Plan. The Scape Special Permit had a bunch of transportation requirements, including rebuilding curb ramps on both sides of the street, building a raised intersection at Elm and Grove, improving the MBTA bus stop on Elm, and pay into an Elm Street Reconstruction Stabilization Fund. (I think that would have funded the traffic study needed to make Highland two-way and Elm pedestrian-priority.) The Scape MMP had more requirements on top of that, like actively providing information to employees about carpooling and real-time transit, subsidizing T passes, sponsoring a BlueBikes station, having a bike repair station and showers, belonging to a TMA if one is created locally, trying to hire people who live in Somerville, and reducing auto mode share for the building to 25% by 2040.

You can see all the Scape documents not included with the 40B application if you go to https://www.somervillema.gov/departments/ospcd/planning-and-zoning/reports-and-decisions and enter "Elm" for Street and "Scape" for Applicant.

The Scape building would have had a parking garage, so the MMP had a bunch of requirements that wouldn't apply to a no-parking Copper Mill building, including priority for carsharing (like Zipcars) and carpoolers, pricing rules, EV chargers, etc. Copper Mill is requesting a waiver in their 40B so they wouldn't have a MMP. Maybe that's OK given the huge benefits of not supplying parking. Or maybe we need MMPs or some more generally applicable regulation because operational pressure seems to be how Kendall Square has increase the number of trips while reducing the number of cars.

In terms of parking congestion, I've already covered loading zones; I think the remaining big question is whether there should be a parking garage. Copper Mill has said they are open to doing that if there's a public support, though for geotechnical reasons perhaps limited to 100 spaces.

I like what Evan Cohen said at our last Elmway meeting (roughly paraphrasing): Somerville is transitioning to depend less on car travel (though not give it up completely) and more on transit and especially bike. A Davis Square with less parking is where we want to live in the future, because it will be nicer. This is backed up by Somervision 2040, which sets a goal of reducing car mode share to 25% by 2040. So it makes sense that new buildings near rapid transit would not have parking.

I also think that putting a parking garage in the Copper Mill building is an opportunity to make the local cityscape more people-friendly without removing parking and maybe without adding any or much. It could also resolve some logistical concerns created by the Copper Mill project itself. I'm a bit worried the added expense would sink the project or come at the cost of something else, but here's what I'm thinking a 100-space garage could do:

• Replace the private and metered spaces currently behind Dragon Pizza that would be lost due to bigger building footprint.
• Replace metered parking spaces on Elm Street that could be converted to loading zone or accessible-only. I like PJ's suggestion of parking enforcement sticks for loading zones.
• Replace the Grove Street, Herbert Street, and/or Cutter Plaza surface lots, allowing these to be redeveloped into retail, permanent farmer's market, community space, housing, and green space. When Copper Mill parking opens, immediately convert obsolete lot(s) to green space, to avoid people getting used to an excessive amount of parking.
• Add 2 spaces for a car sharing service like Zipcar, that would allow residents to comfortably live car-free. (This was required by the Scape MMP, and according to my market research, 2 is the right number for 500 units.)
• Add spaces reserved for carpooling (required by the Scape MMP).
• Put lots of slow and a few fast EV chargers to encourage EV drivers to patronize Davis Square businesses, encourage commuters to use EVs, and serve residents with no home charger. The Scape MMP required 25% of spaces have Level 2 (slow) chargers and the remaining spaces to be designed to have chargers added in the future.
• Out-of-towners and contractors who can't travel by other modes can use the garage when visiting residents, either by paying for extended-stay metered parking or using one of the many types of parking permit Somerville issues for residential streets.
• Residents entitled to a residential parking spot due to disability or income-restricted housing could be allocated spots in the garage by the city, instead of having to be allocated a spot in the Grove Street lot.
• The Scape MMP requires demand pricing, which is useful and easier to do with a garage than street or surface parking.
• Monthly or annual parking passes would not be available; residents are not supposed to own cars, and employees would need to get a commercial parking permit. (The Scape MMP - designed for a commuters to a commercial building and general public parking - allowed monthly parking leases as long as the price was high enough to make them uneconomical except for high-frequency users. It required unbundling of employee parking, but allowed up to 5% reserved spots if a 200% price premium was charged.)

I think I'm sold on the usefulness of a Copper Mill parking garage, if only because seeing surface parking lots makes me sad, and there are few opportunities to displace them. I don't think I need more data about the different types of demand if we're not adding new parking, since I'm comfortable with the price of parking going up to resolve a supply-demand mismatch. But if there's a proposal to add more than say 10 spots, I'd want to see the need for that justified by quantitative data.

Zev and Alan and maybe others were asking for Davis Square parking utilization data. That could inform the question of whether we have headroom to reduce parking overall, or absorb Copper Mill demand into existing empty spaces. There is some very detailed data collected by the city, though unfortunately it is from 2013, before the bike lane overhaul and before COVID:

https://www.somervillebydesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Davis-Square-Parking-Data.pdf

There is more recent city-wide aggregate data here:

https://voice.somervillema.gov/parking-study

I think our own Joel Paul may also have collected some useful data more recently?

-B.

[Marilyn Altbush]

Have we taken into account the number of parking permits which could be granted to future residents of this development? There potentially could be quite a large number of city wide parking permits purchased by the residents of this development. 

Here is the language from the Somerville Parking department:

‘Residents of new developments in Transit Areas that may be "choice limited" can apply for a waiver of the restriction on receiving a resident parking permit. Waivers are available for persons with disabilities, occupants of affordable dwelling units, and residents with extenuating circumstances’

-m

Sent from my iPad

On Feb 23, 2026, at 7:25 AM, 'Christopher Beland' via Davis Square Neighborhood Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



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[Christopher Beland]

That's a good question. Apparently after 11 years of trying to get the info, the Boston Globe won a lawsuit against the City of Somerville in September 2025, and got a database of the names and addresses of everyone issued a residential parking permit. We can find out how many people get exception permits in no-permit buildings by comparing that database to the list of no-permit addresses. I'll see if I can get an answer on that.

-B.

[Jim Gallagher]

Hi Christopher

When I heard the disappointing news that ITE's Trip Generation I contacted the Metropolitan Area:Planning Council (I used to work there). MAPC is the regional planning agency for 101 communities in eastern MA, including Somerville. I asked if they knew of any studies the measured trips generated by a proposal like Cooper Mills. Their response is below.

Felix, Alison	Wed, Feb 25, 10:58 AM (1 day ago)
to Eric, me

Hello Jim, 

I hope you are doing well!

Below are resources that may be helpful. However, please note that these are national estimates of deliveries and do not represent trip generation estimates. I am not aware of any study or resource that has estimated trip generation specifically for e-commerce or food deliveries for a specific location. 

E-commerce Deliveries

According to the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Summary of Travel Trends – 2022 National Household Travel Survey, residents aged 16 years and over ordered goods for delivery (e.g., Amazon, Walmart, etc.) an average of 6.37 times per person over the past 30 days. This equates to 76.44 deliveries in a year (6.37 x 12).  https://nhts.ornl.gov/assets/2022/pub/2022_NHTS_Summary_Travel_Trends.pdf

According to Capital One Shopping Research, U.S. parcels shipped at a rate of 66 packages per person in 2025.  https://capitaloneshopping.com/research/package-delivery-statistics

Food Deliveries 

A recent NYT article "Freedom with a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery is Reshaping Mealtime" (1/30/26), states: "In 2024, almost three of every four restaurant orders were not eaten in a restaurant, according to data from the National Restaurant Association. The number of households using delivery had roughly doubled from 2019, just before the pandemic, the group said. And in a survey last year, about one-third of American adults told the association that they ordered food for delivery at least once a week." This information came from the National Restaurant Association’s 2025 Off-Premises Restaurant Trends report. The report is $99, but here is a more detailed article: https://www.bluebookservices.com/nra-off-premises-dining-more-popular-than-ever/ Here's a PDF of the NYT article. How DoorDash and Other Food Delivery Apps Are Reshaping Mealtime in the U.S. - The New York Times 1.pdf

This MAPC report, Considerations for Retail Delivery Assessments (August 2024) may also be useful.

https://www.mapc.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/MAPCPolicyBrief_RetailDeliveryAssessments-final.pdf

There will certainly be trips to pick up and drop off people and packages at the proposed building. These references may be helpful in estimating how many short term off street parking spaces are needed to keep these delivery vehicles from blocking Grove Street.

Earlier trends here have expressed a desire for objective experts to help the community evaluate this proposal. MAPC could help with many of the issues. Somerville would just need to ask.

Jim Gallagher

[Christopher Beland]

On Thu, 2026-02-26 at 22:23 -0500, Rachel Rosenberg wrote:

Shouldn’t the Copper Mill be paying for professionals to do evidence-based studies to convince us whether its proposal is feasible?

Why are volunteers from the DSNC attempting unscientific studies?  Why is volunteer labor being used to relieve a developer of his own burden of proof?  Is this being done by DSNC board members for Copper Mill pro bono? Or am I missing something about the relationships that exist between such DSNC board members and Copper Mill?  If so, please disclose. 

I don't see what's unscientific or not-evidence-based about me going out and collecting data.

I took observations because I believed some of the concerns about traffic flow were unrealistically exaggerated, and it seems more useful to reply with actual information than just asserting that in my imagination things go differently.

I have no particular relationship with Copper Mill other than that I've attended some of their public meetings and been on phone calls with the rest of the DSNC Board. I do support their current design, because it responds to the concerns that I and other neighbors have expressed in those public meetings about not having sheer walls at the street, while still providing lots of desperately needed housing. It's a good implementation of the transit-oriented, human-scale urban design philosophy I've held for decades. It's also visually attractive, the covered retail arcade looks like a fun place to go and sit outside next to, the views from the tower will be spectacularly nice, it'll help clear the unconscionable backlog of people needing subsidized housing, and no-parking housing next to the Red Line will be good for regional traffic congestion.

Personally, I don't support demanding that developers burn huge amounts of money doing lots of studies. We need a lot more market-rate housing to bring down rents and home prices, and adding a lot of up-front costs before planning approval is even granted scares away a lot of potential developers because it puts more capital at risk of being completely wasted. It's particularly galling for people to come up with wildly unrealistic concerns and then demand that developers burn money proving them wrong. I'm not saying that's what is happening in this case, but sometimes people demand study after study or keep moving the project completion goalposts on purpose, as a way to try to kill a project that serves an important need but which they don't happen to like. That's part of the reason the 40B process has time limits, so that neighbors can't demand an infinite number of studies and effectively veto the creation of affordable housing. Those limits also mean there might not be time for the developer to commission a number of professional studies one after the other. All of our factual questions need to be put on the table now, and if there's a way for us to quickly get answers on our own, we should do that. Otherwise, we risk the project being approved or disapproved without the benefit of those answers.

Part of the problem in Davis is that the government hasn't come up with a set of reasonable parameters for what the community actually needs and wants. If that were the case, developers wouldn't need to do any studies; the city will have already sorted out questions about shadows and traffic and parking and apartment size mix and subsidized housing and community amenities. If we do our planning properly, developers should be able to look at our requirements, design something that fits them, and go to the city and get a building permit within 30 days. Instead, we have zoning regulations which it seems hardly anyone thinks match our actual needs, and we are telling developers they need to convince us to grant them an exception to build what market research shows is actually needed. I don't want our lack of neighborhood planning to derail or delay the construction of desperately needed housing, nor to result in a poorly designed building, so doing some independent research seems like a good use of my time.

-B.

[Christopher Beland]

While I appreciate MAPC's efforts to help, I did not see any useful numbers in those references; do you?

National numbers are poorly calibrated, given that most of America does not live in a tower in a walkable, restaurant-rich neighborhood within a block or two of a subway station. Camberville's age and home-owner/renter demographics are also pretty different from the rest of the country. Using a similarly situated building I think gives a much more accurate picture than studying how often Door Dash delivers to a country of suburban single-family homes.

I do find it interesting that one of the "development without displacement" strategies on MAPC's web site is transit-oriented development. The building proposed by Copper Mill (not Cooper Mills) is an excellent example of this: it doesn't displace any existing residents, but prevents the future displacement of people from lots of 1-, 2-, and 3-family buildings. It does this by giving higher-income people an alternative to bidding up rents in small buildings, and obviates the need to demolish those small buildings and replace them with 4-6 story apartment blocks to serve the same demand.

-B.

[Michael Chiu]

Chris,

You stated: "I don't see what's unscientific or not-evidence-based about me going out and collecting data"

Your very next sentence was "...because I believed some of the concerns about traffic flow were unrealistically exaggerated"

This is exactly the definition of bad, biased science and why engaging neutral experts with training, experience, data and models is needed.

You had a 'theory' and you collected a single data point, immediately stopped collecting data as soon as your belief was confirmed, then declared that you are correct.  This is not how it works.

At face value, the concern that adding a 26-storey, 500 unit building to a single block of Davis Square where all other buildings are < 4 stores appears valid to me.  This is a major development for the community and we will have to live with whatever gets built for the next 100 years.  Let's not take shortcuts or give the developer a break in the name of expediency, just because it appears to align with your objectives.

Michael

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[Ashish Shrestha]

Michael, this feels overly hostile and aggressive.  Chris heard a potential issue being raised and sought to do some analysis, which I (and everyone) should commend him for taking the initiative and doing.  We now have a single data point - which, yes, is small but more than we had before.  I'm sorry that this data point does not align with your pre-concieved notions.  If you, or anyone else, would like to gather or research data to counter the data provided by Chris, you are welcome to.  At the end of the day, this is a volunteer organization and we all encourage you to volunteer and find more information.

Ashish

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[Michael Chiu]

Jeff, all,

I responded to Chris and Ashish offline to avoid expanding the thread.

I agree that Chris' approach and intent were good, but feel that presenting preliminary, confirmatory results to the full list ultimately damages the overall conversation.  

In science, we require some level of peer review before presenting results.  

Michael

On Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 8:42 AM Jeff Kaufman <jeff.t....@gmail.com> wrote:

Michael,

I hear you saying it's unscientific for Chris to respond to hearing claims that sounded unlikely to him by going out and collecting data.  This is actually a completely scientific thing to do, and is how much science operates, now and historically.  There is definitely risk of bias, as there is in all science, and you're right to have some skepticism, but overall I think what Chris did was very helpful and moves our discussion closer to anticipating the likely real effects.

Jeff

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[Colin McMillen]

Nobody on this list is Doing A Full Scientific Review before replying. That's an unreasonable standard to apply.

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[ebm...@comcast.net]

I feel anyone is of course free to observe anything public, and then share what they saw. This may provide some kind of insight, depending.  But I agree with the general point that relevant analyses must be done in a systematic and objective way, and that would strongly suggest the onus not fall on a volunteer neighborhood organization.

So much of what is being discussed/disputed just keeps highlighting the crucial need for comprehensive Davis Square planning to be completed with very broad community input, before a drastic step such as approving anything like the proposed tower can go forward.  I'm glad that our current mayor is supporting this direction if I have (hopefully) understood correctly.

Elizabeth Merrick

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From: daviss...@googlegroups.com <daviss...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Ashish Shrestha <ashres...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2026 8:34 AM
To: Michael Chiu <michael...@gmail.com>
Cc: Christopher Beland <bel...@alum.mit.edu>; Rachel Rosenberg <rachelro...@gmail.com>; Davis Square Neighborhood Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [DSNC] How much delivery traffic does 500 housing units generate?

 

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[Rachel Rosenberg]

Shouldn’t the Copper Mill be paying for *professionals* to do *evidence-based* studies to convince us whether its proposal is feasible?

Why are volunteers from the DSNC attempting unscientific studies?  Why is volunteer labor being used to relieve a developer of his own burden of proof?  Is this being done by DSNC board members for Copper Mill pro bono? Or am I missing something about the relationships that exist between such DSNC board members and Copper Mill?  If so, please disclose. 

Best,

Rachel 

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[Jeff Kaufman]

Michael,

I hear you saying it's unscientific for Chris to respond to hearing claims that sounded unlikely to him by going out and collecting data.  This is actually a completely scientific thing to do, and is how much science operates, now and historically.  There is definitely risk of bias, as there is in all science, and you're right to have some skepticism, but overall I think what Chris did was very helpful and moves our discussion closer to anticipating the likely real effects.

Jeff

On Fri, Feb 27, 2026 at 8:35 AM Ashish Shrestha <ashres...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Zach Meyer]

Chiming in here

Chris, thanks for taking initiative - it’s frustrating that none of these critical studies have been administered professionally so I understand why you sat outside that apartment building and observed your findings. Thanks for getting the process started. 

Ironically, the only hostile tone I perceived here is from Ashish. Ashish, I appreciate that you have a viewpoint on the matter, but a single un-scientific anecdotal data point should not prove your belief of tower feasibility, just because that aligns with your stated desire. And more importantly, let’s not put down folks like Michael, who are simply advocating for a calm, measured, scientific-based approach.

To bring it all back to the topic of the tower itself, we all know that a huge-scale development such as this shouldn’t be done without professional un-biased scientific studies, just like any other development like this would require. 

The developer is supposed to commission these studies themselves to prove that their designs work, and also to show the public that this development will improve the well-being of the neighborhood - also doubles as sign of good faith... You can’t have public meetings to discuss a project of this magnitude without any data from said studies…

As a professional engineer here, I would never determine a product’s feasibility without running reliability tests, and you can’t do those until studies have been completed and variables have been defined. You’d have product recalls if you acted this cavalier - no one here want the equivalent of a “tower recall”. Currently we have far too many unknowns to discuss tower feasibility at the level these discussions often reach.

Rushing the process that will alter our Square for 100 years seems foolish and short-sighted. Let’s do it right instead!

Let’s support development that supports our community. But let’s not believe that us volunteers are a substitute for professional, unbiased studies. Let’s use science instead of our gut. And with those results in hand, it’ll then be easy to make a final decision on tower feasibility.

Thanks

Zach

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[Christopher Beland]

On Fri, 2026-02-27 at 09:24 -0500, Zach Meyer wrote:

But let’s not believe that us volunteers are a substitute for professional, unbiased studies.

Do you believe that a company hired by the developer would produce an unbiased result?

Currently we have far too many unknowns to discuss tower feasibility at the level these discussions often reach.

If we're going to ask Copper Mill to fund studies, plural, we need to know what variables we would like pinned down. Can you start us off with a list of what you want to know?

-B.

[hu...@comcast.net]

Chris,

 

I hope you’re not taking comments the wrong way from people looking for a professional study. Your work is admirable—I particularly appreciate your application of the Poisson distribution to demand for drop-off parking.

 

Nonetheless, I, and it appears others, need to see a study executed by people who do this for a living, who may think of aspects that none of us have considered. For example, planners may take a more integrated view of possible future development beyond the Copper Mill proposal (as suggested by Lee, I believe).

 

You’re right that a study funded by Copper Mill would necessarily face skepticism. I believe the City should commission the work, as part of its own due diligence. This could be funded by an appropriate permitting fee.

 

It may be that such a study would confirm your own assessment. But, given the stakes—the long term impacts on everyone living here now and for the foreseeable future--I would argue to take advantage of respected professional planners to assure us we understand the full implications of the Copper Mill proposal.

 

-Hume

 

From: 'Christopher Beland' via Davis Square Neighborhood Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, February 27, 2026 2:22 PM
To: Zach Meyer <zfm...@gmail.com>
Cc: Davis Square Neighborhood Council <daviss...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [DSNC] How much delivery traffic does 500 housing units generate?

 

On Fri, 2026-02-27 at 09:24 -0500, Zach Meyer wrote:

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[Christopher Beland]

On Fri, 2026-02-27 at 18:57 -0500, hu...@comcast.net wrote:

For example, planners may take a more integrated view of possible future development beyond the Copper Mill proposal (as suggested by Lee, I believe).
You’re right that a study funded by Copper Mill would necessarily face skepticism. I believe the City should commission the work, as part of its own due diligence. This could be funded by an appropriate permitting fee.

The 40B handbook says "The ZBA cannot require the developer to pay for new studies. For example, it is not appropriate to require the developer to pay for a fiscal impact study or for a consultant whose task will be to redesign the developer’s project."

The handbook also says that traffic impacts are usually one of the first things discussed at a public hearing. The Mobility Division will have the opportunity to study the proposal and ask the ZBA to impose conditions; Copper Mill has already formally requested a waiver from any mobility conditions. I'm not sure that can include requiring on-site parking, as the Somerville zoning specifically removed the parking minimum and set a maximum for buildings near rapid transit, including high-rises. I don't think the question of how many parking spaces should be built is entirely a question of assembling facts; it's partly a policy question about how strongly to facilitate or encourage people shifting to more efficient transportation modes that don't burden the city streets as much. The city council seems to have taken a clear direction on that question, though councilors will remind you that zero minimum does not mean zero new parking, just deferring to the free market to decide how much is the right amount. I did recently hear the Planning Board complain about a building that included parking, but they didn't make the developer (who feared 3-bedroom condos would be hard to sell without any) remove it.

The idea that the city should do a traffic and parking plan that takes into account the fact that the zoning of other parcels needs to be changed...that sounds like the sort of question the Davis Square Neighborhood Plan is supposed to answer. That's happening anyway, and it's not something a specific developer can be asked to pay for.

I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where doing a no-parking Copper Mill locks Davis Square into a disastrous parking shortage for 100 years, even if we don't know what's going to happen with redevelopment of the Asana site and other nearby 1- and 2-story blocks. The Copper Mill design can accommodate loading zones on pretty much all of the abutting streetfront, plus it has a loading dock; I don't know of any large retail+residential building that really needs more short-term parking than that. I think we could get by with no additional daily or overnight parking by absorbing displaced and the minor new demand with existing empty spaces, or at worst raising the price of parking a little. But if we don't want to do that and later decide we actually do want 100 non-surface parking spaces to replace our surface lots and cope with a small amount of Copper-Mill-related demand, we could build underground or rooftop garages as we redevelop the Grove Street and Herbert Street surface lots or other low buildings around the square. We could also enlarge the Buena Vista garage. I actually think putting a garage in the Copper Mill basement makes sense and would speed up redevelopment of under-used city land, but I'm not as anxious about parking there as I would be if Davis Square were already mostly fully developed. Given that 1. our local thru streets can't accommodate many more automobiles, and 2. we're rapidly developing our bike lane network and successfully shifting a lot of people to that mode...we might not actually need multiple new garages over the next 100 years.

-B.

[Christopher Beland]

Ah, looking back at page 21 of the 40B handbook, it looks like under non-safe-harbor 40Bs, ZBAs are allowed to peer review studies on traffic, site civil engineering, environmental impact (specifically water and wetlands?), and architecture, but not additional topics? It says "the procurement process for technical (peer) review consultants should proceed unless in-house staff can provide support to the board", so maybe that would be the Mobility Division? If so, it sounds like it would bee free of charge to the developer?

-B.

[Edward Woll]

Hi Chris,

I am not sure that this is true, especially where there is a safe harbor :“The 40B handbook says "The ZBA cannot require the developer to pay for new studies. For example, it is not appropriate to require the developer to pay for a fiscal impact study or for a consultant whose task will be to redesign the developer’s project.”

The 40B handbook provides on page 22 for a 40B developer to pay peer review costs as follows:

The developer is responsible for the reasonable cost of peer reviews necessary to evaluate matters that are properly before the ZBA. To comply with G.L. c. 44, § 53G, the ZBA’s regulations should include basic procurement and contracting procedures, provide for a (limited) appeal process if the developer disputes the selection of a particular consultant, explain when the escrow account will need to be replenished, and provide for return of unused escrow funds to the developer. Each peer review consultant should have a written contract with a scope of work and prescribed deliverables. The ZBA should not ask the consultant to commence work until the developer has provided the necessary funds. Furthermore, the developer should be told that a delay in funding will mean a delay in peer review services and potentially a delay in completing the public hearing process. This protects the ZBA chair from having to assume the role of a collection agent. The ZBA chair should review a draft of the consultant’s report or ask municipal staff to read the draft and work with the consultant to complete the review. Whenever possible, the peer reviewer should incorporate staff comments or work with staff to resolve differences of opinion. 

If there is a safe harbor, the 40B applicant should be treated just like another ZBA applicant as provided for in Chapter 44, Section 53G (bolding added):

Section 53G: Employment of outside consultants

Section 53G. Notwithstanding section 53, any city or town that provides by rules promulgated under section 9 or 12 of chapter 40A, section 21 of chapter 40B, section 81Q of chapter 41 or section 31 of chapter 111, or by rules promulgated by a conservation commission established by a city or town under section 8C of chapter 40 when implementing the authority conferred under said section 8C of said chapter 40, section 40 of chapter 131, or under any local wetlands ordinance or by-law, or by rules promulgated by any municipal permit or license granting officer or board when implementing authority conferred under any statute, ordinance or by-law, for the imposition of reasonable fees for the employment of outside consultants may deposit such fees in a special account. Such rules shall provide for an administrative appeal from the selection of the outside consultant to the city council or town board of selectmen. The grounds for such an appeal shall be limited to claims that the consultant selected has a conflict of interest or does not possess the minimum, required qualifications. The minimum qualifications shall consist either of an educational degree in or related to the field at issue or three or more years of practice in the field at issue or a related field. The required time limits for action upon an application by a municipal permit granting board shall be extended by the duration of the administrative appeal. In the event that no decision is made by the city council or the town board of selectmen within one month following the filing of the appeal, the selection made by the municipal permit granting authority shall stand. Such an administrative appeal shall not preclude further judicial review, if otherwise permitted by law, on the grounds provided for in this section. Any such account shall be established by the municipal treasurer in the municipal treasury and shall be kept separate and apart from other monies. The special account, including accrued interest, if any, shall be expended at the direction of the authorized board or authority without further appropriation; provided, however, that such funds are to be expended by it only in connection with carrying out its responsibilities under the law. Any excess amount in the account attributable to a specific project, including any accrued interest, at the completion of said project shall be repaid to the applicant or to the applicant's successor in interest and a final report of said account shall be made available to the applicant or to the applicant's successor in interest. The municipal accountant shall submit annually a report of said special account to the chief elected body and chief administrative official of the municipality for their review. Said report shall be published in the city or town annual report. The municipal accountant shall submit annually a copy of said report to the director of the bureau of accounts.

Ed

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