Last week’s announcement that Ikea is walking away from Assembly Square in Somerville caused a jolt, because for the past 15 years, Ikea was Assembly Square. Ikea has been the redevelopment project’s headliner since it came to town in the late 1990s; without the Swedish furniture retailer, the development at Assembly Square wouldn’t resonate as widely as it does, and the news of a retailer pulling out of the project wouldn’t cause nearly the same sort of stir.
Even so, Ikea’s exit is the best thing that could have happened to Assembly Square. Losing Ikea means the 66-acre riverfront development will likely take longer to build out. But when the project is finished, it’ll be a much better product without a giant blue furniture store looming over it.
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It may be true that the IKEA folks should have bailed out on this project a long time ago, at the first mention of the dreaded Mystic View Task Force. If they had picked a location anywhere along rte 128, we'd have an IKEA by now. Some of us like the Big Blue furniture store. What- some people prefer the Big Ugly Walmart? But IKEA stubbornly stuck to their guns and kept trying to build in a site that was, as you point out, not a very good idea. Never mind the right big box stores can act as a magnet for a shopping mall. Oh well- we still have Stoughton, which is way closer than Elizabeth NJ...
Google 'IKEA london strand east' to see what the real estate arm of IKEA is capable of trying to accomplish. It seems that they do have the vision to at least try and create the kind of pedestrian friendly mixed-use development that assembly square aspires to be. This article says it well, in the long term assembly square will be better served without a giant big box store - it would be interesting to see IKEA stay involved in the site and test out some of their housing production ideas.
Now if only the original vision for Somerville put forward and fought for by a great many of its residents and activists over a decade ago had been achieved - we'd already have built out a vibrant mix of housing, office, retail and, perhaps, university housing on that property... Power and money always finds it easier to talk with power and money and our city found it easier to listen to the tassel shod lawyers and the corporate biggies at the time than the people and, sadly, the people are still waiting. The dazzle of the big time always seems to blind politicians even when it's clear that large corporations have a bottom line on which a location like Somerville is a very, very small dot. If things don't work out, they get a tax write off and move on and we get another decade with a vacant plot and the rats get a stay of eviction.