Cambridge Infill and Small Developments

Not to bring up an old topic or anything but last month kz1000ps posted some pictures of the new park at the intersection of Main St. and Mass Ave. It turns out they did fill in the dead area of the former roadway with tables and some checker board tables. Judging by brackets on the granite planters I think the city may be installing benches.

Here is a crappy cell phone picture of it:

2776149750_c7604d3031.jpg


http://flickr.com/photos/crash575/
2776149750
 
Perhaps skateboard stops and barriers to letting anyone sleep there (read, homeless)
 
Hey, whaddya know! Thanks for the picture, crash; that's a welcome sight.
 
The tables really make the park more of destination compared to what I thought it was going to be.

A few weeks ago I walked by the dedication and they had the entire park filled with chairs and a podium. The guests were overflowing into the road. It looked really nice. From what I overheard the park is dedicated in honor of a female police office who passed away.
 
Not bad. The Boston area - Cambridge, Somerville, Brookline, the city itself - excels at public spaces (with notable exceptions, like City Hall Plaza and the tragic Greenway). If only it excelled just as well at creating active private spaces to frame and fill them. Too many local squares have fine clusters of seating arrangements and public art, but are surrounded by such aesthetic maladies as one-story taxpayer buildings with ground-floor offices.
 
Cambridge lab plan may be retooled

Housing possibly on tap

By Scott Van Voorhis
Wednesday, August 27, 2008 - Updated 35m ago

The developer behind the largest biotech complex ever proposed in the Boston area is heading back to the lab for more research.

Alexandria Real Estate Equities is reviewing concerns raised by neighborhood activists and city officials over its proposed $1 billion lab and research complex in East Cambridge.

The California company is now considering a number of changes to its proposal that would rewrite the zoning rules for a swath of East Cambridge. The rule changes would make way for a 15-acre lab compound off Binney Street, about a 10-minute walk from Kendall Square.

The shift comes after two public hearings in Cambridge in which neighbors of the project site complained about the building heights and noise potential.

?We have received a number of ideas and inputs about our proposed amendment,? said Tom Andrews, senior vice president and regional market director for Alexandria. ?We are sitting down in a group right now to work on some changes . . . to address the concerns raised at the public hearings.?

Andrews declined to talk in detail about the changes Alexandria is considering and plans to present at a Sept. 17 public hearing.

But he indicated adding housing to the mix is one possibility. The area that Alexandria has targeted for lab development had been eyed for potential housing development to bring a more lively, neighborhood-like feel to lab-heavy East Cambridge.

?This is a big economic component of the city, but we have got to be very careful about losing out on the quality of life for fellow residents,? said Cambridge City Councilor Sam Seidel.
Click to expand...

LINK
 
What quality of life issues are there surrounding a bio tech lab? And who are the people that live near it. I worked over there all of last year. With the exception of the apts that have been built in the last 3 years I can't think of any that would neighbor this.
 
The area in question is closer to Cambridgeside Galleria which is a residential neighborhood so size and use concerns are more plausible than if this was more south in that no mans land.
 
Ok, I wont go into a Nimby rant. But what is bad about have a lot of smart white collar workers with a few bucks, in an area that has the infastructure to handle that kind of density. It would boost local economy, create many jobs, and increase the city's tax base. Also it would help secure, firmly, one of the few industries left in America into the local Boston economy. Seems like a win win, oh wait there are back yards to consider.
 
I wonder if these are the same neighborhood activists/groups that tried their best to sabotage the NorthPoint development?
 
Re: New Mormon church @ 50 Rogers St.

From the Cambridge Chronicle:

Mormon church expanding in East Cambridge
By Jillian Fennimore/Chronicle staff
Thu Sep 25, 2008, 03:13 PM EDT

Shovels are in the ground for the construction start of a $20 million Mormon meetinghouse in East Cambridge.

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are anxiously awaiting the completion of the Cambridge stake center ? a term comparable to a diocese in the Catholic Church ? by February 2010.

The 35,892-square-foot structure, to face Binney Street, will house four congregations, in addition to an underground parking lot, office space, a cultural hall, sanctuary and Sunday school classrooms.

Ruby Von Dwornick, a spokeswoman for the church and an 18-year member of a Mormon congregation in Cambridge, said what was once a vacant lot at 50 Rogers St. will now be a place for up to 300 people to worship.

For the past five years, congregation members like Von Dwornick currently meet one block away in leased space at the Kendall Boiler and Tank building. Two other congregations ? Spanish and Portuguese ? currently meet in Somerville.

?The church is really growing fast,? she said. ?We don?t have enough room.?

In total, the Cambridge stake includes 4,000 members in 14 area congregations.

The new Cambridge stake worship center will welcome two congregations that worship in English, one in Portuguese and one in Spanish, along with room for larger regional meetings held twice a year.

Von Dwornick said she usually drives to Weston for stake meetings.

On Sept. 14, a group of church dignitaries, local officials, members and friends gathered at the site for the project?s groundbreaking.

?It?s important to feel welcomed when starting something new,? said City Councilor Sam Seidel. ?That whole corridor [including biotech and multi-use projects along Binney Street] is going to help build a new urban environment.?

The new church-funded brick building will have two floors with two levels of parking.

In a press release, Cambridge Stake president Gordon Low said he feels comfortable making a new future in Cambridge.

?We appreciate the warm welcome the city of Cambridge, our neighbors and other churches in the area have extended to us over many years.?
g2582580dc064c3ff2e5b797887b5bba7cbf4fa98801a40.jpg


http://www.wickedlocal.com/cambridge/news/x247289240/Mormon-church-expanding
Click to expand...
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=...441,-71.080556&spn=0.003591,0.010986&t=h&z=17

Looks pretty big. I didn't think anyone built churches anymore (half kidding).
 
Sure: Y-U-C-K!

If I were God, and if they errected that in my honor, I wouldn't wait till they died to cast them into hell, no teleporting to heaven allowed.

justin
 
Do they need the tree,s in the front to hide it ? No bad, at least it's not a box and will add a spire to the skyline.
 
... don't the mormons tend to do pretty high quality construction?

... or am i wrong?
 
Okay, it looks like a 1950's public housing project that somehow acquired a misplaced steeple. AND, what are those barricades doing front and center?
 
I am simultaneously browsing a southeastern US forum as well, and I thought I had accidentally clicked on Greeville, SC when I saw this rendering, until I hit "back" and saw that I was on archBoston and this is Cambridge.....hmmm...that's not a compliment to this design.
 
Looks like a fairly generic general services administration building, public school, or library from the 1960s, only with a steeple. It honestly doesn't scream "I am a religious building" with its treatment of tectonics and massing.
 
True, but Mormon local churches in general don't stand out as religious buildings. Their temples do (see Belmont Hill) but those are very different.
 
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