From the Globe: Junkyard turns to gold in Somerville development boom
The family has agreed to sell their parcel off Columbia and Windsor streets for approximately $150 million to a developer.
SOMERVILLE — It’s been more than a century since Jacob Nissenbaum, a Jewish immigrant who fled the repressions of czarist Russia, drove a horse and buggy as he collected rags and paper in Somerville and Cambridge, the Globe’s Brian MacQuarrie reports.
The family name still adorns the business he started, which has morphed into a 4-acre graveyard for hundreds of used and abandoned cars near Union Square, a place where Jacob’s two great-grandsons and a great-great-grandson have stripped and sold any part that a cost-conscious customer needs.
Suspensions, cylinder heads, mirrors, fenders, steering columns — they’re all here, stacked row upon row in dim storage rooms. But they’re about to vanish along with this unvarnished slice of Somerville that’s being transformed by the Green Line Extension and a boom in biotech development.
The Nissenbaums are calling it quits, and how could they not? The family has agreed to sell their parcel off Columbia and Windsor streets for approximately $150 million to a group that plans to bring biotech labs, residential units, and green space here, according to development sources with knowledge of the deal.
“The stars have aligned,” said Neil Nissenbaum, 57. “It’s great that we’re in the spot we’re in now, but it’s sad, too.”
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