West Cambridge / Alewife Area Infill & Small Developments

stick n move said:
I wonder if its even legal to build something equally as tall in its place?
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NIMBYism and city review of taller buildings and shadows is way tougher now than it was back in the 1970s when this was built. It depends on a neighborhood's particular physical and political dynamics. This site being on the edge of the neighborhood and near the river might help get some height permitted. But ever since the Inner Belt and NW Expressways proposal and also Harvard's attempt to expand itself into residential Cambridge neighborhoods in the 50s and 60s, NIMBYism in Cambridge has been legendary and ferocious.
 
Slow and steady. Funny to see the ice building up from the sprayers.
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I was also there Friday but a few hours earlier -- these were around 11 am.

It was quite the active scene, especially compared to when I was there on Monday, MLK Day, when there was zero activity, so please pardon the excessive amount of shots but this was a really unique sight.

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JeffDowntown said:
It just seems odd to me that you can have a building that is an imminent threat for structural failure, but it stand up to the demolition activity without just collapsing?
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The weight load was what put the building at risk of collapse, with the cantilevered balconies posing the most immediate risk of falling down. Evacuating the building of all its people and their belongings helped reduce the overall weight load to a metastable level, and the balconies were the first thing demoed to limit the risk to the rest of the structure. With those tasks more or less done, the superstructure doesn't pose any great threat anymore so long as the demo is piecemeal.
 
RandomWalk said:
Seeing the curtains, cabinetry, and appliances still there makes it weirdly dystopian.
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Makes it feel very personal and lived-in. I'm sure these would be difficult to see for anyone able to recognize half of their kitchen dangling up there. Sad, but very well captured photos, @kz1000ps.
 
It speaks a lot to the times I grew up in that these photos remind me of the Murrah Building.
 
This is massive, and I am sure we've discussed it in bits and pieces here or there, but I couldn't tell if anyone started a dedicated thread for it?

As of today, Cambridge just created a 'Special Permits' page for it.

PB-410 - Alewife Quadrangle
www.cambridgema.gov

PB-410

special permit application
www.cambridgema.gov www.cambridgema.gov

And the first presentation was just posted:

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^From posted presentation @ https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media...isory/sp410/sp410_preapplication_20260224.pdf

If anyone is sure we don't already have a page for this, please feel free to create one! Or, if we do have one, please re-post this there.
 
bigpicture7 said:
This is massive, and I am sure we've discussed it in bits and pieces here or there, but I couldn't tell if anyone started a dedicated thread for it?

As of today, Cambridge just created a 'Special Permits' page for it.

PB-410 - Alewife Quadrangle
www.cambridgema.gov

PB-410

special permit application
www.cambridgema.gov www.cambridgema.gov

And the first presentation was just posted:

View attachment 70685
^From posted presentation @ https://www.cambridgema.gov/-/media...isory/sp410/sp410_preapplication_20260224.pdf

If anyone is sure we don't already have a page for this, please feel free to create one! Or, if we do have one, please re-post this there.
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This is gonna be a decent little neighborhood with good transit access once its built out.

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Charlie_mta said:
Looks good. The only fly in the ointment is that the layout (plan view) graphics don't show the proposed footbridge over the Fitchburg Division RR.
Gotta keep pushing the city and the developer for that to happen, apparently.
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yeah - my remark was going to be that they don't seem to be doing anything for transit based on the plan images. Is there a secret tunnel that's not being shown there?
 
as02155 said:
yeah - my remark was going to be that they don't seem to be doing anything for transit based on the plan images. Is there a secret tunnel that's not being shown there?
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They're planning a bike/pedestrian bridge over the commuter rail tracks, so people can more easily get to Alewife Station. There's a thread for this project, and you can see some renders of the bridge there

Healthpeak Cambridge Point | Alewife Quadrangle | West Cambridge

Developer proposes 46-acre project in Cambridge that would include 2,076 apartments and millions of square feet of new lab and office space “Healthpeak, a Denver company that normally focuses on healthcare development(link is external), has filed plans with the state for a $4.5-billion...
archboston.com

They've got plans for the bridge; my impression is they're taking it seriously; I think they call that transit access "fundamental" to the whole project (I forget their exact phrasing). All of that looks very promising, IMO. But its good to be maybe just cautiously optimistic because developers often don't follow through on this kind of stuff. Like @Charlie_mta says, we've still got to make sure it actually gets built
 
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