Watertown Square Revitalization Efforts Spark Development Interest

Watertown's identity has shifted rapidly in the last couple of decades. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the city's center.

Residents and business owners who live near Watertown Square say its identity has eroded with the constant flow of traffic squeezing through every day.

More than a year since Watertown officials approved a major zoning overhaul and public redesign of Watertown Square, the city is now moving forward with several major parts of the plan to revitalize the downtown area.

Watertown Director of Community Design Erika Oliver Jerram said the plan is a multipronged approach to fix the square's roadways and identify new redevelopment opportunities.

"It's more than the roads," Jerram said. "It's a comprehensive redesign of the square."

The city, along with a consultant team led by Utile, Stantec and Speck Dempsey, worked to design the Watertown Square Area Plan to meet the demands of the state and the long-unmet needs of the community.

The plan was approved in 2024, tied to the MBTA Communities Law, a statewide zoning overhaul. It includes by right zoning for more than 4,400 housing units, the addition of more than 3 acres of public open space, and a reimagined roadway that will make the community more easily accessible to pedestrians. 

"The assignment was so interesting to us because almost every planner and urban designer in metro Boston probably thinks that Watertown Square is currently the most screwed-up intersection in the entire metro area," Utile founding partner Tim Love said.

In February, the city brought on Bowman Consulting Group to help design the new Watertown Square intersection, which would decrease the number of lanes of traffic and create an easier-to-follow four-way intersection. It would also widen sidewalks and introduce street parking.

Developers, by and large, are excited to see the plan implemented, Jerram said. That is because the plan's zoning goes above and beyond its MBTA Communities Law requirements and creates space for future public-private partnerships.

"I think most of them found the zoning to be fundamentally something they can work with and that there's an opportunity here to really do some interesting projects," Jerram said.

Plans for a couple of projects have already been filed under the new zoning guidelines.

Torrington Properties proposed a five-story, 40-unit project on a vacant commercial lot at 33 Mount Auburn St. In December 2025, the development was approved by the Watertown Planning Board.

In September, WSQ Development and Eaglebrook Capital filed plans for a four-story, 52-unit apartment building at 108 Water St. The project was approved in November. 

Utile senior urban designer Lauren Rapport said the Watertown Square redevelopment team worked to make sure the plan was attractive and financially feasible for developers. It includes no parking minimums, which has been a pain point for development teams building in denser urban neighborhoods.

"That was a huge part of our process, making sure every step of the way that what we were proposing was something that could be actionable, that would be desirable to build, not only from an aesthetic point of view but from a financial point of view," Rapport said. 

Love said it was a fairly quick process from the initial request for proposals to the approval of the plan. It was faster than other larger-scale planning guides he has worked on for other public entities.

He said Watertown officials' know-how and drive to get the plan up and running was a major factor in the speed of getting to a shovel-ready status. Watertown City Manager George Proakis, for example, has decades of experience in city planning, previously heading Somerville's planning department, where he oversaw much of the revitalization of Assembly Row.

"There's no better-prepared person on the administrative side in a city who's been through it twice before," Love said. "If you don't move fast enough, the citizens get planning fatigue, people move on to other priorities."

Over the last several decades, Watertown Square has been impacted by the state's transportation priorities, including a major Massachusetts Pike extension into Newton in 1965.

The heavy traffic led to a shift in the square's roadways, creating a design that saddles the square with some 20 lanes entering and exiting, a lack of on-street parking, and confusing street signs and signaling.

The city and the businesses that reside in the square are bracing for the short-term pain they expect to accompany new construction and changes to the intersection.

Planners hope the square can come out of the other side and still be somewhere local businesses can call home. 

Watertown Business Coalition co-founder Doug Orifice said his organization has been advocating to ensure rents stay affordable for a diversity of small businesses in the community as new development enters the area. 

The community has benefited from the boom of life sciences space, like The Davis Cos.' 225K SF 66 Galen lab building within the square, but they hope the new development will bring more diversity of businesses.

"For small businesses, they're going through an affordability crisis," Orifice said. "I think we're a little bit nervous about seeing some of these first-floor retail spaces that may not accommodate those types of businesses."