Cambridge Infill and Small Developments

whighlander said:
I weep for what once might and yet again might have occupied that prime location --instead for a generation we've had to endure

FACES

GOOD RiDDANCE!

Almost anything would be an imrprovement!
Click to expand...

The reminiscence articles in the Globe and Boston Magazine were pretty amusing though. Bunch of people remembering the 70's as a more innocent, carefree time than it actually was. I get that it was a well-patronized place, but calling it Studio 54-on-Route 2 is a bit much.


I really hope they can reserve a strip of that land for Route 2 widening and make sure that anything built there gets set back enough. 2 East needs to have an offset collector/distributor lane between the Lake St. entrance and the Alewife exit sort of like the frontage roads further up. Acorn Park needs to be grade-separated into a loop.

I'd extend the deceleration lane for Exit 60 back a little further to the Lake St. bridge and stick behind a jersey barrier. Put 2 lanes on it...right to Lake St., left an Exit 60B to the current Acorn Park access road. Put a traffic light there and make people do a traffic-calmed left turn to get to the businesses on 2. Stick a single-lane collector along 2. Allow an immediate weave entrance onto the mainline highway for accessing the 16 rotary (similar to how the frontage road in Arlington handles entrances), then separate the rest of the distributor road by a jersey barrier to keep it traffic-separated and low-speed. Shoulder turnouts for the curb cuts instead of hard rights. Consolidate the motel and Lanes & Games driveways into one turnout/turn-in. They'd lost their front parking lots for the collector, but there's plenty of parking there and they can get by with only driveways/drop-offs. Do another turnout for Park St. to eliminate the hard right and take that street OFF of the mainline exit to Alewife where the traffic is too high-speed. End the jersey barrier past the Park St. turn-in and widen the Alewife exit approach a little so the jersey barrier ends on a safe 2-lane deceleration. Maybe shave a few degrees off the sharp curve to make the merge/deceleration a little less hair-raising. And get rid of the sidewalk on the ramp now that the path is going in.

At least this way you have some sort of slow-speed roundabout to get around the development instead of mixing it terrifyingly with expressway traffic.
 
F-Line to Dudley said:
The reminiscence articles in the Globe and Boston Magazine were pretty amusing though. Bunch of people remembering the 70's as a more innocent, carefree time than it actually was. I get that it was a well-patronized place, but calling it Studio 54-on-Route 2 is a bit much.


I really hope they can reserve a strip of that land for Route 2 widening and make sure that anything built there gets set back enough. 2 East needs to have an offset collector/distributor lane between the Lake St. entrance and the Alewife exit sort of like the frontage roads further up. Acorn Park needs to be grade-separated into a loop....

.
Click to expand...

F-Line -- as ususual you have a lot of interesting transport / transit ideas

I'd just make all of the development (including the hotel and bowling alley) only accessible from Acorn Park Dr. which would run from Lake St to Cambridge Park Dr at Alewife

1 exit for Acorn Park and Lake St.
1 exit for Alewife T and on to Cambrdge Park Dr.
all the rest either to the Left or over the bridge as currently is the case
 
Nuke that entire inter/rotary and start over.

And for gods sake, add bus lanes.
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
They are selling the Death Star?!
Click to expand...

A classic gov't boondogle -- the building of the courthouse essentially invented the Mega-Cost overrun

i think the price escalated from about $10 M to $70M included screwed-up foundation that had to be rebuilt

and the piece de resistance -- the cost finally had to be contained and so the grand ceremonial stairs from an un-built low-rise to the 2nd floor of the highrise never happened and so -- there was no formal entrance for anyone except prisioners who were provided with a basement loading doc

The question is level the monster or try to repurpose it?

Location is close-enough to the new Lechemere for a lot of possible development
 
It has to be knocked down. This is a perfect example of the folly of modernist architecture. How could this be anything else? A hotel... is probably the only answer (given the precedent).
 
No, it was vacated after prisoners broke a sprinkler main a few years back on level 18. The water ruined everything including the elevators. It was grossly overcapacity too.

Does anyone know who the architect was? I have been researching for years with no luck. Beton???
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
It has to be knocked down. This is a perfect example of the folly of modernist architecture. How could this be anything else? A hotel... is probably the only answer (given the precedent).
Click to expand...

Van an extended stay Hotel with suites -- Marriott, Sheraton or Hilton-style --- would be an ideal re-use:
1) a good location between Northpoint and Kendall Sq. r&d and business centers
2) close to Lechemere and Kendall T
3) Since it was designed mechanically as a relatively modern office building -- it should be relatively easy to convert to hotel use with a new skin and perhaps adding the missing lowrise as a lobby and restaurant
4) might need to build some parking either in a basement under the lowrrise or on a nearby open lot

the other potential re-use of existing structure is to convert the building to lower-priced middleclass housing -- probably appartments sized for families with 2 or 3 bedrooms
 
This could be Cambridge chance to build something tall that will define it's skyline,tear that pos down! what is the height limit in Camb.? I've asked this before but no answer,anyone know?
 
Boston02124 said:
This could be Cambridge chance to build something tall that will define it's skyline,tear that pos down! what is the height limit in Camb.? I've asked this before but no answer,anyone know?
Click to expand...

Not sure of height -- But FAR is about 3+ for commercial buildings

on an acre plot + that translates into maybe 150 to 200,000 sq. ft. and that is not a very large building

I think you need to keep the structure to keep the exemption which was given to Middlesex County

Also -- Cambridge St. near to 3rd is not really cut out for a realy tall building without a major reconstruction
 
The Green Building at MIT is 21 stories at 295 ft tall (tallest in Cambridge).

The Boston Marriott: Cambridge Center is 26 stories at a very close second, 290ft tall. The highest habitable floor is higher than the Green Building's.

Taking a guess, it appears the cap might be 300'?

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Edit: the Eastgate Married Housing tower is much higher, but isn't listed on Emporis' Cambridge list properly. Thanks Whighlander.
 
Last edited:
So all it would take is 2-3 new towers 30-40 stories tall to give Cambridge a real skyline! Was the skyscraper banned in Cambridge also?
 
Ron Newman said:
Isn't part of this building still used as as jail today?
Click to expand...

The jail part is still open, I was in there about two weeks ago (business related visit). The jail staff is not happy to be there because they say the building is environmentally contaminated.
 
datadyne007 said:
The Green Building at MIT is 21 stories at 295 ft tall (tallest in Cambridge).

The Boston Marriott: Cambridge Center is 26 stories at a very close second, 290ft tall. The highest habitable floor is higher than the Green Building's.

Taking a guess, it appears the cap might be 300'?
Click to expand...

How tall are the alweife commie blocks?
 
datadyne007 said:
No, it was vacated after prisoners broke a sprinkler main a few years back on level 18. The water ruined everything including the elevators. It was grossly overcapacity too.

Does anyone know who the architect was? I have been researching for years with no luck. Beton???
Click to expand...

according to http://hul.harvard.edu/huarc/refshelf/cba/t.html#thorndikest

'Tedesco Edward J assocs'

I remember seeing a model of this building in some book that made it look so light an elegant.
 
commuter guy said:
The jail part is still open, I was in there about two weeks ago (business related visit). The jail staff is not happy to be there because they say the building is environmentally contaminated.
Click to expand...
That is horrible. The building was closed for a while and it should not be open after what happened there. Did it still smell like stale sprinkler water that had been sitting there since the 70s? Were the elevators still original? News reports mentioned that they were badly damaged past the point of being repaired.

chowder said:
according to http://hul.harvard.edu/huarc/refshelf/cba/t.html#thorndikest

'Tedesco Edward J assocs'

I remember seeing a model of this building in some book that made it look so light an elegant.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

Pretty much every model of a brutalist building makes the building look light and elegant. Beatty Hall at Wentworth: http://www.wit.edu/library/BuildingsOnline/beatty1.html
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Back
Top