A plan to build a 500-unit, 26-story apartment building in Davis Square had been controversial from the outset, as residents balked at the idea of a high rise emerging in the low-slung area and altering the makeup of an eclectic neighborhood forever.
Now, it’s dead.
Andrew Flynn and his real estate firm Copper Mill said Monday they are no longer pursuing their grand plans for a residential tower, leaving the future of a Somerville crossroads that includes arts, dining, and nightlife stalwarts to be decided another day.
“We will not be proceeding with our housing development in Davis Square,” Flynn said in a letter to a local business association Monday, in which he attributed the project’s implosion to a chilly reception from the city.
Flynn, in a statement, described the project’s failure to get off the ground as a loss for Somerville and blamed local government for not lending it the help it could have used as it pressed its case to Somervillians.
“Because of the City’s failure to act, Copper Mill was forced to step away from its arrangement with the property owners,” he said Monday. “It’s simply not feasible to continue to pour capital into a project, even one that would build 500 new housing units, when the City continues to demonstrate it is not serious about building more housing.”
Somerville Mayor Jake Wilson, meanwhile, dismissed the idea that the city was apathetic to housing projects as “laughable,” saying Monday that the project failed to progress because it never had the backing of its neighbors.
The idea to build so big in the heart of Davis Square had been ambitious, to say the least, and elicited strong feelings far and wide about the impact it would have on its surroundings, were it to be built as Flynn envisioned it.
Critics said the scale of the plan was out of step for a section of the city where buildings are a few stories tall, at most, and is characterized by its eclectic, arty vibe. The site where it would have been built is home to the popular Irish pub and music venue The Burren and the restaurant Dragon Pizza, as well as other small businesses and some vacant spaces.
It also had support, including from advocates in the YIMBY, as in “yes in my backyard,” community. Some saw the tower as a way to make the most of the site’s proximity to an MBTA Red Line stop and described it as the kind of big thinking needed to address a shortage of housing in the region that has fueled sky-high rents and home prices. Where better to build up, they argued, than at a T stop in an in-demand city?
Wilson, inaugurated as mayor this year, had been publicly neutral on the proposal, saying he would back the project if it earned the backing of neighbors. It just never did.
“We were very clear all along with Copper Mill about what it would take to get our strong support, and that was community support,” Wilson said. “We never saw the needle move.”
Wilson also noted that Flynn and Copper Mill hadn’t filed formal paperwork with the city for the tower. The firm had once been hoping to pursue the project by making use of Massachusetts’ 40B program that can fast-track projects with affordable housing, although the firm’s application with the state has been paused for some time.
He said the city had been willing to back other large, popular projects in the city, including a mixed-use housing development being built at the site of a former Star Market grocery store in Winter Hill.
“If you look at who has cranes in the sky at this point, we’re the city where development is actually happening,” he said.
The tower plan had been the latest of several proposals for the site. An early plan called for building student housing, and, later, lab space.
After a pivot to building apartments, Flynn and Copper Mill had made it clear there was not much room for negotiation on how big the project would need to be in order to be profitable, saying it could be no shorter than 24 floors.
The firm had tried to absorb neighborhood feedback on aspects of the plans where they felt they could budge and held multiple in-person meetings for neighbors to attend and offer their thoughts, which could draw sell-out crowds to big Somerville venues.
There were many compromises and gestures of good will to appease critics, some of which were extraordinary. Amid fears that the Burren, a hub for Irish music and a Davis Square mainstay, might be lost forever, Copper Mill hatched a plan to dismantle the bar and rebuild it in the new building.
Still, the core issue for many remained the size of the project, and fears that green-lighting one building at that scale might invite other similar ones in its wake.
Separately, neighbors also viewed with some alarm the news that Flynn was facing a lawsuit filed this year over a business deal in Cape Cod, where the previous owners of a hotel he had bought accused him of missing millions of dollars in payments. Flynn has denied wrongdoing.
Over several years of back and forth, the Davis Square project never overcame skepticism from residents that a tower of this scale was appropriate for the location.
Wilson said that he, personally, had been intrigued by the prospect of having so many new homes built all at once, and was a bit more receptive than some to the grandeur of Copper Mill’s designs.
“I personally am not bothered by density or height, but I’m not here to impose my aesthetic vision on a neighborhood or on the city,” Wilson said. “We were clear all along that if the community supported this, we would support it.”
City officials said the owner of the property, a Newton real estate firm, has extended the leases for its current tenants. The firm has also parted ways with Copper Mill.
For now, the city is continuing work on a broader plan for Davis Square, which seeks to represent what residents want to be built in the neighborhood. Wilson expects it to be released in the spring.
“One upshot of the whole development in Davis Square was that it got people talking about this, and it brought a sense of urgency to it,” Wilson said. “This proposed development may not be happening, but we are pushing full-steam ahead with the Davis Square neighborhood plan.”
Spencer Buell can be reached at spencer.buell@globe.com. Follow him @SpencerBuell.