Cambridge Crossing (NorthPoint) | East Cambridge/Charlestown | Cambridge/Boston

Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

That boring one with the pre-cast? Yeah, that one.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

Does anyone know if there is a community group or association going or trying to get going at North Point? Obviously the organized planned development is pretty much dead, but it seems like enough of phase 1 was completed that a neighborhood group could do something to turn it into a real place to live if there were enough people. I mean this still looked like a viable project 3 years ago, then it just died after the legal problems.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

Court Ruling Clears Way For Sale Of Cambridge Development

By Paul McMorrow
Banker & Tradesman

A Delaware court has slapped the majority owner of the Cambridge's NorthPoint development project with several million dollars in damages, in a ruling the site's minority owner said should end years of litigation and clear the way for the sale of the 44-acre site.

A rendering of the NorthPoint development"Clearly, B&M [the Boston & Maine Railroad] has the right to appeal the ruling, but we don't think there's anything to appeal," said Peter McGlynn, a partner with the Boston law firm Bernkopf Goodman. "This is the end of the case."

The ruling caps years of litigation between McGlynn's client, Cambridge North Point LLC, and the B&M Railroad, which effectively owns a 75-percent interest in the 44-acre NorthPoint development site. Cambridge North Point, which owns a 25-percent stake in the project, and which acts as the project's manager, is an LLC controlled by executives from the former Boston development firm Spaulding & Slye.

The Delaware case, which was argued in March, was the third courtroom battle between the railroad and Cambridge North Point (CNP). CNP sought enforcement of the settlement agreement that terminated the parties' second lawsuit. That settlement was crafted to allow the sale of NorthPoint to Archon.

However, it included a $3.5 million breakup fee that B&M would have to pay CNP in the event the sale fell through. After repeated attempts to lower the project's sale price, Archon eventually did back out of the sale, in the spring of 2008.

B&M never paid the $3.5 million fee, resulting in the most recent court action. According to court documents, B&M couldn't pay because it was counting on the Archon sale to provide the funds it needed to pay off CNP.

B&M sued to overturn the $3.5 million settlement, claiming in court that its lawyers didn't understand what they had agreed to. The Delaware court met that argument with a stinging rebuke: "This court's job is not to refashion contracts into the form that parties with the benefit of hindsight wished they had scrivened, or to reward counsel for their own lack of diligence."

The court found that B&M's lawyers hadn't done "the most obvious thing: read the entire agreement and outline what B&M's obligations were under it."

The Delaware judge awarded CNP, and the development LLC CNP manages, the North Point Cambridge Land Co., damages and fees that could top $14 million. They include the $3.5 million Archon breakup fee, $5.9 million in damages for not complying with other requirements under the previous settlement, attorney fees and interest.

The court voided an easement on the property that B&M had established to provide parking for residents of the two condominium buildings that have been constructed on the site, and ordered B&M to fund a $7.2 million escrow account to cover maintenance around the condos.

Under the terms of the Delaware ruling, B&M must convey its fee interest in NorthPoint to the development LLC that CNP controls. CNP is then expected to liquidate the project.

According to industry insiders, the beleaguered $2 billion project, which is permitted for 2.2 million square feet of commercial space, 150,000 square feet of retail, and 2,700 residential units, still faces several hurdles.

Any potential buyer of the project will still have to contend with mammoth infrastructure costs at the site, including a new Lechmere Green Line station, road improvements, and utilities. Banker & Tradesman reported last July that the project's infrastructure tab is a staggering $257 million, according to a memorandum obtained through a state public records request.

And while developers are beginning to tentatively beginning to explore development acquisitions - the former Polaroid campus in Waltham sold for $40 million this month - the price CNP was believed to be seeking last year, in the neighborhood of $100 million, may still be tough for a buyer to swallow. Berkeley Investments walked away from a $106.5 million purchase of the site in late 2008. Cambridge's office and lab markets have improved since that time, but the queue of potential NorthPoint competitors has also grown: More than 2.6 million square feet of commercial space are already permitted for construction around Kendall Square.
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Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

Perhaps this means we can keep an actual rail yard such that Boston could potentially still handle rail freight in the future when the CSX yard closes?
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

Lurker said:
Perhaps this means we can keep an actual rail yard such that Boston could potentially still handle rail freight in the future when the CSX yard closes?
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That isn't going to happen. The land is too valuable to be used for a rail yard again. Unless a new developer partners with the state to build a rail yard AND air rights, but why add a few extra billion dollars when the land is already cleared?
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

Land Swap: Urban Planning Edition

Residential Suburbs switch places with Urban Freight Yards.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

kennedy said:
Land Swap: Urban Planning Edition

Residential Suburbs switch places with Urban Freight Yards.
Click to expand...

Man, you thought there would be NIMBYs before!
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

He might be on to something. Compared to cities the population density is far lower in the burbs. Therefor one can extrapolate that there are fewer NIMBYS per acre than in an urban environment.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

I meant in more in the case of a suburban diaspora. Once all the suburbanites embrace their urban lifestyles, we can take all their (less valuable) land and turn it into industrial uses, etc.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

The MAGIC MAN


L.A. Investor Steps In, Vows To Finish Cambridge?s Troubled NorthPoint Development
By Jim Adams

Banker & Tradesman Staff Writer
Today

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Read More
To read more about the NorthPoint development, click here. A Los Angeles-based real estate trust will partner with The HYM Investment Group LLC of Boston (HYM) and Atlas Capital Group to complete Cambridge's beleaguered NorthPoint development, which has been stalled and plagued by legal battles for much of the past decade.

Late last month, the property's title was transferred to Canyon-Johnson Urban Funds (CJUF) from Boston & Maine Corp. for $10, according to records obtained from the Middlesex County Registry of Deeds.

HYM is the new entity formed by Thomas N. O'Brien, a former head of the Boston Redevelopment, who recently took control of the Government Center Garage redevelopment project.

"We are thrilled to be back in the Boston area, and to breathe new life into a large, strategically located piece of land that has been underutilized for too long," said Canyon Managing Partner Bobby Turner.

"It's time to move this valuable project forward, and we couldn't have a better partner than Canyon-Johnson," O'Brien said. "Bobby and his team have demonstrated time and again their vision and commitment to urban revitalization. We embrace that vision and look forward to completing this great project."

The 44-acre NorthPoint lot, formerly a Boston & Maine rail yard, is across the Charles River from Massachusetts General Hospital. When completed, NorthPoint will feature a mix of residential, commercial office, retail, hospitality and life sciences uses surrounding a 10-acre central park. Basic infrastructure is already built, including interior streets and a central park, as well as utilities. By 2015, the property is scheduled to include a new Green Line MBTA station that will be part of a public transit expansion to Tufts University in Medford.

Pan Am Railways will remain an investment partner in the project.

The partnership will retain existing special permits to build 3 million square feet of space in Cambridge, renew prior permits for 600,000 buildable square feet in Boston, and seek to obtain appropriate permits for the Somerville portion, according to a statement.



http://www.bankerandtradesman.com/news140052.html:
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

Good news if they can get funding.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

Bad news if they don't do a top to bottom redesign.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

I expect to see construction on the new lechmere station begin tomorrow
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

Then you expect wrong. It's several or more years away from starting.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

The contractor for the Green Line extension was rejected apparently simply because I woman was killed by a falling panel and the company was involved in the Big Dig, so there's some more months of bidding ahead. So yeah, no new station any time soon, if ever.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

So annoying. Why prequal an engineering firm for a job if you're just going to reject them after they've done a bunch of design work? Two steps forward, one step back.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

I like this development alot. I hope Magic can make me a believer. Lots of potential for this sight.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

The oddest news article I think I've ever read. It's two-in-one, because it would have taken too much effort to write two stories?

Polaroid, NorthPoint Developers Ready Their Shovels

The developer of the former Polaroid campus in Waltham plans to begin construction on the first phase of a nearly 1.3 million-square-foot mixed-use project in the spring, with no tenants yet on board.

The first phase of Sam Park's project will put 120,000 square feet of office space in an existing building and demolish three buildings to make way for 160,000 square feet of retail.

Park announced the timeline at a NAIOP panel this morning, where the developer of Cambridge's NorthPoint was also on-hand to make known that the next phase of the project is permitted and ready to be built. Thomas O'Brien, managing partner of HYM Investment Group, said after the $15 million in infrastructure improvements, "The site is ready to go."

While there are three types of uses that could work well for the NorthPoint campus, situated between the Lechmere and Sullivan Square MBTA stations, "We could look seriously at residential now in 2011," O'Brien said.

Other NorthPoint options include commercial development with a focus on technology, as well as accommodating a large local company that wants to put all of its employees into one campus like a large financial services company. The other is life sciences laboratory space, given the site's proximity to Kendall Square and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as Massachusetts General Hospital.

In Waltham, Park said he expects the first phase, which will require about a year of utility relocation and re-grading, to be complete in 2013. The second phase, about a million square feet of additional office, retail and other commercial space, will be constructed from 2013 to 2015.

"We have a lot of interest for both the office and the retail," Park said. "We don't think there's any problem with the smaller shops that are being built, but we are discussing possibilities with anchor tenants," who he would not name.

The NorthPoint project will create a new Green Line T stop at the development's doorstep, providing a connection to the MBTA's extension of that rail line. Two condominium buildings have already been built and are in the process of being sold.

"This isn't an academic planning exercise," O'Brien said of the project. "This is permitted and ready to go."

He would not provide a timeline for construction or when a decision would be made about the type of uses that will be included at NorthPoint.
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http://www.bankerandtradesman.com/news142385.html
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

JohnAKeith said:
The NorthPoint project will create a new Green Line T stop at the development's doorstep, providing a connection to the MBTA's extension of that rail line.
Click to expand...

The state is creating the new station unless O'Brien is making and announcement here.

The Polaroid project doesn't surprise me, the nearby Reservoir Place is now 100% leased.
 
Re: NorthPoint Cambridge (The one that was train yards, the big plan.)

Construction has begun on a pedestrian bridge over the commuter rail tracks to cambridge.

IMG_8847.jpg


I reaaaaaally hope they're taking into account the room needed to restore the 3rd commuter rail bridge.


Also, when I was there, 50% of the lights in the park were not working. I emailed cambridge about it, and they said they'd forward it to DCR.

If anyone is there soon, are the lights working again?
 
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