Stars Diaz, Cruise coming to Somerville
Tom Cruise
Cameron Diaz
You learn the most interesting things from the Board of Aldermen meeting. Like the fact that the Cameron Diaz/Tom Cruise movie tentatively called "Wichita" will be filming in Somerville, as the Somerville News floated on Aug. 26.
Item No. 44 at the Sept. 10 meeting was an event permit request for "Untitled Wichita Project Film Shoot," to take place on Windsor Street on Sept. 21. That’s the industrial section adjoining East Cambridge - an area city planners recently approved for intensive, mixed-use redevelopment.
The two stars are also filming elsewhere around the region. Diaz appeared at a Sept. 11 event on Friday with Celtics guard J.R. Giddens and forward Bill Walker, elementary school students and volunteers to build flower beds around a Boston elementary school, the AP reported.
The aldermen approved the permit. Less headline-grabbing but still surprising was the discovery that triple-decker Somerville has carriage houses - and underused ones at that. With options for renovation and reuse unclear, East Somerville alderman Bill Roche said, many of the structures are falling into disrepair.
The aldermen also addressed some familiar scourges. They asked the mayor to create a task force to deal with absentee landlords who don’t clean up the loads of trash their young tenants leave outside on move-out day.
Alderman Maryann Heuston thought the overload of garages on Somerville Avenue could threaten the area’s economic hopes. All voiced frustration with utility company NStar. If you want to stay up-to-date, the city airs the aldermen meetings on cable stations 16 (Comcast) and 13 (RCN).
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