Cambridge Crossing (NorthPoint) | East Cambridge/Charlestown | Cambridge/Boston
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IMG_0748Cambridge Crossing, site progress April
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Charlie_mta
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Great photo. Too bad though how, in every photo posted by anyone, Rutherford Ave always looks desolate and dystopian.
Really gotta love Cambridge building windswept, pollution choked fields, I mean green spaces, in these triangular parcels instead of cool flatiron buildings. Same thing happened at 1st, Binney, and Edwin Land. Let people go to the good parks!
Charlie_mta
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They could easily fit in a good-sized building on this parcel if the piece of Cambridge Street from First Street to O'Brien Hwy were eliminated
Dr. Rosen Rosen
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Nice write-up! (And I happen to agree with the praise). Great interviews with some of the architects and planners…
www.bostonglobe.com
Cambridge Crossing arrives after two decades. It was worth the wait. - The Boston Globe
Located in an abandoned rail yard at the far eastern reaches of Cambridge, with some acreage in Somerville and Boston, CX, as it is also known, is a win both for Cambridge and Greater Boston.
www.bostonglobe.com
Equilibria
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Who is the audience for this sort of thing? Like, who goes to the Boston Globe to hear one random guy's aesthetic opinion (one clearly influenced heavily by talking to the developer and architect)? This reads like something from an 1820s "Guidebook to Traveling Through Olde Newe Englande"...Nice write-up! (And I happen to agree with the praise). Great interviews with some of the architects and planners…
Cambridge Crossing arrives after two decades. It was worth the wait. - The Boston Globe
Located in an abandoned rail yard at the far eastern reaches of Cambridge, with some acreage in Somerville and Boston, CX, as it is also known, is a win both for Cambridge and Greater Boston.
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stick n move
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Nice write-up! (And I happen to agree with the praise). Great interviews with some of the architects and planners…
Cambridge Crossing arrives after two decades. It was worth the wait. - The Boston Globe
Located in an abandoned rail yard at the far eastern reaches of Cambridge, with some acreage in Somerville and Boston, CX, as it is also known, is a win both for Cambridge and Greater Boston.
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The elevation in this park really adds a lot towards creating a little more feeling of seclusion from the built environment than an otherwise similarly sized flat park.
BeyondRevenue
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CX is the West End with newer boxes. It’s carchitecture trying to act like the idealized ‘park city’. Both are wrong. Though the buildings may be pretty, they do not create a cohesive, pedestrian friendly streetscape. Might as well be in Waltham.Nice write-up! (And I happen to agree with the praise). Great interviews with some of the architects and planners…
Cambridge Crossing arrives after two decades. It was worth the wait. - The Boston Globe
Located in an abandoned rail yard at the far eastern reaches of Cambridge, with some acreage in Somerville and Boston, CX, as it is also known, is a win both for Cambridge and Greater Boston.
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Also, that REI is an urban density crime scene.
Blackbird
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I don't think this is fair. The park in CX is clearly built and oriented in such a way where it wants people to come from outside the immediate couple of blocks to shop, eat and enjoy. Thoreau Path in the West End is the OPPOSITE. There's no retail that borders the park and it's hard/convoluted to get there. It's clearly only built for West End residents and maybe Mass General nurses out on smoke break or catching a quick breather. No one else is welcome or would have any reason/desire to be there.
bigpicture7
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This is really off base. CX is lazy urbanism. West End is anti-urbanism. The two are categorically different.
BeyondRevenue
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Excellent. I stand corrected. Same genus, different specie. Your nuanced observation embraces a taxonomic truth.
This is a great way to describe it. I happen to really like CX because it is urban and connected to the city around it. Lazy is fair, and praising the architecture is borderline silly. But there's ground level retail, a street wall that hugs the sidewalk and creates a decent pedestrian experience, connectivity to a transit station, etc. The West End is similarly lazy and architecturally deficient, but it also was designed in a way to wall itself off from the world. It's decidedly anti-urban (quite literally towers in the park) and is a different breed from CX.
Dr. Rosen Rosen
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Ever walked this yourself?? It’s kind of actually the opposite of your description! It’s so darn pedestrian friendly. The reason I know this is because I walk like 6 miles a day. So like… don’t compare this to Waltham.
#bancars
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I am pro-CX! I think it could use more housing, but the park is spectacular, and there's a decent amount of foot traffic most times of day despite the fact that it's not a place people really can walk through to go N-S or E-W.
Honestly I prefer CX to Assembly or Seaport--sure it's a lot quieter, less retail, etc. But it's a more relaxing place to be and I think a nice change of pace. The bike and transit connections are solid, and it's a mostly-inviting place to be a pedestrian.
The Lamplighter-Beatrice complex is really spectacular--was at Lamplighter tonight and took these three successive photos.
Honestly I prefer CX to Assembly or Seaport--sure it's a lot quieter, less retail, etc. But it's a more relaxing place to be and I think a nice change of pace. The bike and transit connections are solid, and it's a mostly-inviting place to be a pedestrian.
The Lamplighter-Beatrice complex is really spectacular--was at Lamplighter tonight and took these three successive photos.
goldenretrievers
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my guess in order of likelihood: Parcel R, Parcel Q2, Parcel V
BeyondRevenue
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What? Are you the developer’s lobbyist? In the sales office? Don’t answer. It’s none of my business. Personalizing your disagreement instead of addressing the statement’s validity is lazy.
Yes. I have walked it... Before when it was an open lot of weeds and trash, while under construction, and at various stages up until now. I’m really happy something is there. Not happy with the obligatory 20’ setbacks, the number of parking garages, the high-maintenance bush-berms, inactive street walls, and all of the legally public but semiotically private ways.
My urbanism bar is Hanover St, Boylston St, Charles St. and the like. This is more like an office park with an admittedly gorgeous walkable water feature … and some nearby apartments to remove the office park stamp. It’s like the extended stay hotel blocks of I-95 Exit 43A and the West End had a baby and decided to raise the kid in the city… At least until after pre-school. If it had the site plan and street access of Waltham’s Moody Street (urban lite) and this density, it would be much better.
The CX streets do not lend themselves to a vibrant urban culture. It’s good if you like walking your dog and driving for nearly everything else. My measure of success is how long you go without thinking about getting into a car., for what should be a hyper-local 5-minute errand. CX encourages backsliding into car dependency. And sadly, CX is about as good as we can do since we allowed post-war anti-urban zoning, making human scale density illegal. More succinctly…
It’s an enclave, not a destination. The streets should have been a continuation of the neighboring grid, not an assertion of defiant self-identity. They did include N/S connecting bike routes, so I’ll take the win there. I will use them.
And I will not bend on this: that suburban REI has to be ripped down and replaced with a dense housing block. There’s plenty of commercial real estate out there, but nowhere near enough housing, especially near the T.
bigpicture7
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BR, I appreciate you detailing out your reasoning, some of which I agree with, but I am going to push back here too. I think a lot of what you are saying is exaggerated or inaccurate. I definitely am not a CX apologist and have no ties to the developer. I am am, however, a community stakeholder who walks through here constantly.
1) Mere yards away is historic street-gridded East Cambridge. There are multiple access points from there to CX, and this developer is paying to extend First Street to reconnect CX to this dense neighborhood that abuts it. Some effort, yes. Enough effort, no: there should have been better pedestrian connections including ones that allow peds to completely avoid the McGrath/O'Brien
2) These developers participated in the land swap deal that plunks a transit station directly into their neighborhood. You can get downtown in minutes from trains that actually have decent headways now that the two GLX branches are both open. Should the developer get a ton of credit here, No. But WTF suburban office park has a multi-branch transit station in it with a direct connection to the urban core? Reality: this spot is well connected by bike, bus, and rail transit. It is flat out not true that everyone gets here by car. You can literally watch a stream of people walk from the GLX station to the lab buildings in the morning.
3) There is a TON of papered-over ground level retail that retail brokers are trying to lease. Should it be leased by now and could they be trying harder, maybe. But the retail presently activated is like 15% of what it is designed to be. I am 100% with you that all typical errands should be able to be reached by CX's residents within 5 minutes. There should be a grocery store, pharmacy, several other reasonably priced meal options, maybe even a library branch some day. So, yes, it's not acceptably built out yet. But show me an office park anywhere that has as many retail stalls as CX. I am not going to go count now, but I would be shocked if there were fewer than 25 retail storefronts within these buildings, nearly all of which are papered-over. There is a problem here, but it is not specifically the one you are calling out.
4) The park is supposed to be fully lined with buildings. Some of them are not built yet. They need to be, IMO, for the park to be properly hemmed in and with a fully active streetwall. The developer has clearly established plans with (mostly) prepared lots expecting to be built upon. So give them a bit more time. There was a pandemic that disrupted things, the interest rates are through the roof, etc.
5) Big floor plates and big fat lab buildings: A) I hate lab buildings, B) the life sciences industry is world class in Cambridge and is our golden goose. It is only natural that a live/work/play neighboorhood is going to have to deal with/accommodate the life sciences industry. Charles Street is wonderful, but labs don't fit in narrow 19th century brick buildings. The problem needs to be framed differently: HOW can we come up with lab building designs that are multi-use and don't suck nearly as much as the ones we're building. NOT, how can we tell Sanofi, Bristol Myers Squibb, Philips, etc, to get the F out. It does not make sense to kick them out - they actually have people in the office, unlike other types of businesses these days. Let's give those people a place to live, places to have recreation, and shops to patronize.
6) People: if you look at the CX master plan, you will see that there are roughly half a dozen additional residential buildings. They are not built yet. When they are, there will literally be thousands more people here. That is a game-changer. The retail slots will fill out.
So, I go back to my original point. What we see from CX has elements of laziness in design, implementation, and neighborhood innovation. It is not sufficiently "there yet" in my mind, but I am rooting for it to get better. But I refuse to accept arguments that it is suburban or anti-urban. It is not those things.