Cambridge Infill and Small Developments

225 Prospect

img4391gb5.jpg
 
What's going on here? This is on Cambridge St. in East Cambridge, just east of the Middlesex South courthouse and west of that big project that was completed a year ago (its name escapes me).

img5054yk8.jpg
 
It's actually the same development. If you look at the renderings posted at the site, the new buildings extend all the way to 2nd St. They just are building it in two phases. This corner of the site had a late-60s or (more probably) early 70s bank-building-turned-sheriffs-office on it that they were using as a sales office until the fall.
 
Yes, as well as some adjacent buildings and new construction. The development takes up the whole block defined by 1st, Cambridge, 2nd, and Otis Streets.
 
Sorry, I should have said "nearly the whole block." Three small buildings at the corner of 2nd and Otis are not part of the project.
 
^ Its official name is "One First."

Library addition on Broadway
img5655jh7.jpg


img5656qo6.jpg
 
224 Prospect.. taken 4/25

482370600_2169683f34_b.jpg


482370608_ba6b71ce9f_b.jpg


this is just north of Broadway and Columbia St.. 4/26

482370612_7d76a46c3c_b.jpg


And the project at roughly 480 Mass Ave

482374874_b14786d148_b.jpg
 
kz1000ps said:
this is just north of Broadway and Columbia St.. 4/26

482370612_7d76a46c3c_b.jpg
If zoning accomplished what it should be intended to do, it would forbid that convenience store's relationship to its property, to its neighbors, and to the corner --along with its parking lot.

As it is, it promotes fringe city. Too much of Cambridge is like this.
 
I agree -- but that is primarily a gas station, not a convenience store. I don't know of any good way to make a gas station friendly to its neighbors or to pedestrians. (The one at Prospect and Hampshire is even worse, since it is much higher volume.)
 
Ron Newman said:
I agree -- but that is primarily a gas station, not a convenience store. I don't know of any good way to make a gas station friendly to its neighbors or to pedestrians.
^ Then you need to go to Italy for a little instruction. Or google up some city gas stations in Italy. Hint: that hotel or apartment building on Memorial Drive has (or used to have) a step in the right direction.

Manhattan has quite a few: curbside gas pumps outside an old multi-story parking garage.
 
What's this site's story (just west of Genzyme)? That water looks nasty!

485452072_947dbd2bf7_b.jpg


485452088_ff41903c1f_b.jpg
 
I work diagonally across from that site, and nothing has happened there in the almost 2 1/2 years I have been near there. Looked then the same way it does now. I don't know the site's story.
 
Is the water clean enough to breed mosquitos?
 
is this where the Constellation Center is supposed to be built?
 
No, that's two blocks to the west. Speaking of Constellation Center, I believe the Cambridge zoning board will be reviewing a change in land use for this project (commercial to cultural) some time this month. But shouldn't this have been done back in 2002 or 2003, when it was originally proposed?
 
lndscpr said:
ablarc said:
Is the water clean enough to breed mosquitos?

i am sure that the nimby's have addressed that already

I hope not. If its breeding mosquitos then it becomes a wetland and may now be protected. Then the only way they could build there would be to replicate the wetland on another nearby lot. :)
 
kz1000ps said:
I believe the Cambridge zoning board will be reviewing a change in land use for this project (commercial to cultural) some time this month. But shouldn't this have been done back in 2002 or 2003, when it was originally proposed?
Hope that's not how long it takes for something to get to the top of the board's agenda.

But the real question is: why does this require a rezoning? At one time zoning was graduated from least noxious to most noxious --residential, institutional, office, commercial, industrial-- and you could build less noxious uses in zones that also allowed more noxious uses --but not the reverse.

Thus you could build residences, churches, stores, or offices in a zone that also allowed factories, while you could build anything at all but a factory in a commercial zone; you could build an institution in institutional, commercial or office zones ...

You get the idea: zoning merely prohibited the plainly undesirable in an area, instead of dictating the use.

Truth is, no one really has the wisdom to mandate the use --not planners, not citizens, not zoning boards. To do so requires second-guessing the market, seeing far into the future, having an all-encompassing and devastatingly brilliant artistic vision, and being free of corruption.

When the time comes that humans are so perfected that they can function at such a level, there will be no further use for zoning.





(Maybe they're afraid someone will propose a museum of eroticism or a burlesque theatre... But if the zoning's changed, won't they have carte blanche to do that anyway?)
 

Back
Top