Cambridge Infill and Small Developments

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Two things i've noticed recently (I shoudl take pictures of them...)

- New housing on Charles St. between Sciarappa and Third
- Life Sciences Square apparently disappeared (bunch of old warehouses on Third st. next to American Twine).
 
Noticed today that the new Memorial Drive pedestrian overpass at Magazine Street is finally complete and open. (Not sure since when.) And the traffic light is gone, with little evidence that it ever was there. Seems it was only meant to be temporary pedestrian crossing?

Not much of a "development" but I think it's been mentioned before in this thread.
 
Been a while, yeah. I preferred the traffic light crossing. They never should have rebuilt that bridge. It's obnoxiously long with the doubling back.

Sometimes I really wonder about Cambridge and their supposedly pedestrian-friendly urban planners.
 
Matthew said:
Been a while, yeah. I preferred the traffic light crossing. They never should have rebuilt that bridge. It's obnoxiously long with the doubling back.

Sometimes I really wonder about Cambridge and their supposedly pedestrian-friendly urban planners.
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I'm not sure about this specific bridge but ped bridges are usually long because AAB/ADA requirements set a maximum slope for handicap ramps.
But you're right. Obviously could have avoided this with sidewalk ramps and a signal.
 
I agree. I don't understand why they rebuilt the bridge (which got battered by overheight trucks) when the signalized crosswalk worked perfectly well.

However, this was and is a state DCR bridge, not Cambridge's.
 
I understand the need for the long ramps...they have to accommodate the handicapped and bike riders. However, for those of us who walk, why couldn't they have built stairs to shorten trip?
 
bolehboleh said:
I understand the need for the long ramps...they have to accommodate the handicapped and bike riders. However, for those of us who walk, why couldn't they have built stairs to shorten trip?
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Because then certain posters on this board would have claimed the repetitive ramps / stairs were "stupid Menino and his union hacks wasting TAXPAYER money for CORRUPTION ..... football stadium .... seaport.... Silver Line sucks..."
 
AmericanFolkLegend said:
Because then certain posters on this board would have claimed the repetitive ramps / stairs were "stupid Menino and his union hacks wasting TAXPAYER money for CORRUPTION ..... football stadium .... seaport.... Silver Line sucks..."
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It's Cambridge, so wouldn't it be "Stupid Henrietta Davis"?
 
Ramps are easier to maintain than stairs and less of a liability nightmare. A bobcat, salt, and gravity can take care of them for the most part in the winter time. Stairs on the other hand require constant shoveling and the construction is far more vulnerable to cracking and users falling to significant injury.
 
Good points, Lurker.

Why not put a gate on the stairs and close them in the winter months?
 
This is a new development right off of Brookline St 5 blocks off of Mass Ave, right next to a Sound Museum I used to practice at.

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By gw1980 at 2012-08-25
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By gw1980 at 2012-08-25

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By gw1980 at 2012-08-25

This is also in the same area, might just be gutting the building, but maybe more.
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By gw1980 at 2012-08-25
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By gw1980 at 2012-08-25

Finally, this little park area is nice, but that one building should eventually give way to a building that greats the openness now there.

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By gw1980 at 2012-08-25
 
‘No’ is a bad strategy for Cambridge

Residents of the city can’t just wish the real estate market away

By Paul McMorrow | AUGUST 28, 2012
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Some residents near Central Square are trying to down-zone the area, and have already succeeded in putting a pair of planned construction projects on the shelf.
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Saying no and sticking to it used to serve Cambridge well. A righteous devotion to “no’’ in the late 1960s and early 1970s blocked a monstrous highway that would have plowed through the middle of Central Square. Absolutism saved the city once. But it won’t work twice.

A group of residents is currently pushing measures to stymie new real estate development around Central Square. The residents are trying to down-zone the area, and have already succeeded in putting a pair of planned construction projects on the shelf. They’re doing all this in the name of preserving Central Square. That’s a problem, because Cambridge residents can’t just wish the real estate market away. They can stand by and get steamrolled, or they can harness development as a tool for creating broad public goods. “No’’ isn’t an option.

Down-zoning — shrinking the size of a building a developer has the right to build — is an extreme proposition anywhere. It’s doubly radical in a place like Cambridge, a city of 100,000 and one of the densest municipalities in the state. Artificially low zoning is normally a suburban tool for keeping growth out; in Cambridge, it’s a bid to freeze things in place, to draw a line around Central Square’s neighborhoods and use that line as a shield against gentrifying forces.

The city unleashed this movement on itself. In December 2010, the commercial developer Forest City Enterprises submitted plans to build a large laboratory and office complex on Massachusetts Avenue, above the shuttered Cambridgeport Saloon. The city encouraged Forest City, the builder of a number of commercial properties between Central and Kendall squares, to pair its Massachusetts Avenue lab project with housing. The developer obliged, unveiling plans for a 14-story residential building that would rise a block away from its new lab. The housing tower aroused intense opposition from some Central Square residents, so Forest City backed away from it; a second group then criticized the lab plan for lacking a housing component. Paralyzed by the back-and-forth, the City Council opted to sit on its hands and let the zoning application on Forest City’s commercial project expire.

Related
8/25: Tech, bio firms feel a chill in Cambridge

Opposition to the Forest City housing tower has mushroomed into a wider movement to curtail development across the city. Antipathy toward a single residential project became a petition to lower zoning across Central Square, and a bid to freeze any up-zoning efforts for a year. Both of these efforts stand in opposition to a city-funded planning process that is considering ways to add thousands of new housing units around Central Square to Cambridge’s development pipeline. Goody Clancy, the city’s planning consultant, is talking about auctioning off publicly owned parking lots around Central Square to kick-start a new wave of residential development. These parking-to-housing developments would need flexible height allowances to succeed.

Residents of the city can’t just wish the real estate market away.


The Goody Clancy planning study and the new anti-development faction both speak in the same language. They both talk about wanting to keep Central Square lively, diverse, and independent. The anti-development effort tries to take a stick to gentrification — the hope is that, by stalling development, they can freeze change out of the square. But the market doesn’t work that way. There’s already intense upward pressure on Central Square’s real estate values. The demand for living in urban neighborhoods like Central Square is rising exponentially, so zeroing out new development and putting a lock on the supply of apartments, condos, and storefronts will only drive prices higher and price out the very people the anti-development effort says it wants to retain.

The safety valve lies not in opposing development, but encouraging it, and then socializing it. The city can take advantage of high real estate values and harness them for community benefits. It can trade extra height in new developments for more aggressive affordable housing programs and subsidized rent for independent retailers. Builders are willing to make those trades, because they sustain the sort of vibrant urban neighborhoods that their developments are predicated on in the first place.

Kendall Square is a far livelier place to live now than it was a decade ago because its neighbors learned to encourage the sorts of development that benefit them. The residents around Central Square are in an even stronger position, since the lots that will fuel the neighborhood’s next building wave are publicly owned. But first, they have to learn how to put conditions on their yeses, instead of starting and ending with no.
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great editorial in the Globe about the recent stall on the labs and housing in Central Sq. Excellent outline of the economic and development principles I think many on this board grasp, but the general public, and many NIMBYs may not think about as much. I won't go into it any further, but this is the mentality Cambridge has to have to grow, and somewhat paradoxically, maintain its diversity of people, retailers, and classes. By resisting change, you almost ensure that rich will move in and entirely displace the poor/middle class and independent retailers as no new supply is added.
 
I can't wait to see all these parking lots auctioned off. Let's hope the NIMBYs roll over before then and the city doesn't have to fight a war over how many of them become underutilized pocket parks.
 
While this is renovation of existing buildings, I thought I'd post it here if anyone comes across it in their travels.

From MIT's website:
130 Brookline Street and 17 Tudor Street Project
MIT is rehabilitating the historic building at 130 Brookline Street and an adjacent Institute-owned property, 17 Tudor Street. 130 Brookline Street is being converted into a laboratory building, while 17 Tudor Street will become an office building. These improvements will accommodate partners in the life-sciences, high-tech, and energy fields, as well as physically enhance the area. The building at 27-29 Tudor Street has been demolished for future parking lot use. [Looked to be a deep one story garage / repair shop.]

Below is a list of anticipated construction activities for the two structures in August and September:

17 Tudor Street:
August: Exterior masonry repair and roofing; drywall installation; drilling piles and slab infills; structural steel installation; utility installation.
September: Interior framing, window installation, and mechanical, electrical, and plumbing work; site work and landscaping.

130 Brookline Street:
August: Exterior and interior concrete and masonry repair; exterior framing and sheathing.
September: Removal of the first floor slab; exterior and interior concrete column, beam, and slab repair; exterior framing and sheathing; removal of staging; site work and landscaping.
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the proposal for the 15-units at the taco bell site was withdrawn. I believe it was scaled back to 11 or 12 units which required no planning board approval
 
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