MIT Expansion Plans | MIT/Kendall Square | Cambridge

^ You know, I thought of swinging by the Media Lab site to see if anything was happening, but it had been so long since they announced the project without any earth getting broken that I skipped over. Figures..
 
Re: Cambridge versus Palo Alto and the Valley

I was out there in November for 3 days and 2 nights and I couldn't wait to leave via the SFO to Boston Redeye

Stayed in Santa Clara, met with folks in Foster City {1 hour from Santa Clara all on Freeways with giant traffic jam next to Stanford on 101}

The main "paying event" for me was my poorly attended tutorial at the San Jose Airport Marriot {jammed in next to the 101 Freeway}?the main other event was my Friday trip home that involved a bus from the airport to the Commuter Rail station in Santa Clara -then a train and then BART to the SFO

At a 3 total travel time hours for the distance equivalent to Framingham from Logan ? not all that pleasant or efficient

Couple that with my Thursday afternoon drive from my hotel to the Marriot for my Tutorial {left at 3:20 arrived at 4:00} total distance was 4.5 miles on the odometer -- mostly on Freeways {er crawlways}

You can have the over-hyped Valley, the "City by the Bay" -- and even Palo Alto -- I'll stick with Lexington, Cambridge and Boston -- even with the occasional snow that needs shoveling

Westy
 
Getting from Cambridge to Lexington can be equally unfun at certain times of day. Things would probably worse if 128 had the same concentration of tech firms that Silicon Valley does.
 
To right of Main Street: relative order and efficient land use without benefit of master plan. To left of Main Street: chaos, parking lots and dishevelment. Not even the semblance of order. Why?

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Right side of Main Street is actually intensively master-planned. It is the Cambridge Center development, all by a single developer.

Left side of Main Street is MIT, possibly interleaved with a few remaining privately-held parcels. MIT's expansion into the area between Ames Street and the Sloan School has been rather haphazard.
 
You'd think MIT would have the master plan.

You'd think MIT would have the order.

You'd think MIT would have the efficient land use.

You'd think MIT would have the good-looking buildings.

If you thought all that you'd be wrong.



(Well, maybe they have a master plan, but it has to be a turkey.)
 
Ron Newman said:
Right side of Main Street is actually intensively master-planned. It is the Cambridge Center development, all by a single developer.

Left side of Main Street is MIT, possibly interleaved with a few remaining privately-held parcels. MIT's expansion into the area between Ames Street and the Sloan School has been rather haphazard.
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Ron, in the MIT property map in the 2007 Town and Gown Report, MIT owns all the land to the left of Main except for two small parcels. Some of the land & buildings are characterized as investment property. MIT's landholdings include everything along the left side of Main from Kendall all the way to Mass Ave., except for five smallish parcels nearer Mass Ave. MIT owns 160 acres of tax exempt land in Cambridge, and 85 acres of taxable land.
 
MIT has had a host of master plans ? they tend to last about 20 years

The first and only really successful one was by Wells Bosworth who designed the original buildings and landscaping for the MIT move to Cambridge in 1916 -- the "New" Technology

Complete with an yet un-built giant statue of the goddess Athena with the milk of knowledge flowing from her left breast down a narrow rivulet into the Charles

That Master Plan lasted until the WWII temporaries and then the new Master Plan Post WWII in the Federal investment in R&D facilities era {1950's and early 1960's} that created the West Campus with Baker House and Kressge Auditorium

All of the building that followed was supposed to fit into that plan -- but in the later 1970's and 1980's there was a bunch of new stuff on the other edge {E} and beyond the N and NW edge of the traditional campus

Now there is a new Master Plan that is supposed to guide academic, research and residences over the next twenty years. All the parking lots are eventually spoken-for

The first to go was the Sloan lot on Main and the next is the lot next to the Stata for the new Cancer Center

In about 10 years things will be once again more orderly

Westy
 
The Cancer Research Facility is to be built to the ESE of Stata, across the street from the Broad Institute.

The Town and Gown report sketches the outline of two new academic buildings in the parking lots that Westy mentions: the larger of the two will stretch from the tree line on the left in the photo to the edge of the two buildings on Main, and the second will fill the lot, largely hidden in the picture, to the Boston-side of the larger parcel.

In the picture, the crane and dirt mark the construction site for the expansion of the Media Lab.

I think, one of the two parcels that MIT does not own (left of Main) in this picture is the building surrounded by trees near the Media Lab.
 
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Complete with an yet un-built giant statue of the goddess Athena with the milk of knowledge flowing from her left breast down a narrow rivulet into the Charles
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This needs to happen tout suite.
 
Northwest Residence Hall for Grad Students (March 30)


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back facade:

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MIT looks to be continuing its march into Cambridgeport. In the Harvard Allston thread, I foresaw Harvard & MIT & BU eventually creating a new life sciences and engineering neighborhood bridging the Charles between Allston Landing and Cambridgeport. Throw in a little Urban Ring too.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has purchased four life sciences buildings in Cambridge for $90.5 million, broker Colliers Meredith & Grew said. The seller was a private family trust. The buildings at 185 Albany St., 195 Albany St., 148 Sidney St., and 149 Sidney St. have just under 150,000 square feet of space. The properties are 100 percent leased to four tenants: MIT, Cubist Pharmaceuticals Inc., Shire Pharmaceuticals, and Acceleron Pharma Inc. the broker said
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http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2008/05/30/mit_purchases_4_buildings_in_cambridge_for_905m/
 
Thats Cambridge,The most un interesting bland skyline!
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There's an exception to every generalization. Hitchcock made great thrillers. The Birds sucks.
 
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