Kendall/MIT Infill and Small Developments

Equilibria said:
Update on the Hampshire/Portland hotel:

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It's fine. Certainly better than what's currently there.

One thing I find odd is that it's about 2 floors shorter than a building that envelops it on both Hampshire and Portland. Why not try to go for that, adding 28 additional rooms to the building? This is surely welcoming guests post-pandemic and I would think with all of the development still to come in the area, they could fill this?
 
cburns said:
It's fine. Certainly better than what's currently there.

One thing I find odd is that it's about 2 floors shorter than a building that envelops it on both Hampshire and Portland. Why not try to go for that, adding 28 additional rooms to the building? This is surely welcoming guests post-pandemic and I would think with all of the development still to come in the area, they could fill this?
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Sheet AO6 indicates that two more floors are allowed by ordinance, but adding floors would result in a skinnier building as the current proposal is at the max floor area allowed by Cambridge ordinance.
 
What is the rationale for the max floor area? I never understood that.

Anyway, it's an improvement on what's there, I just wish they picked a color scheme that matched the brick a bit better.
 
Gameguy326 said:
What is the rationale for the max floor area? I never understood that.

Anyway, it's an improvement on what's there, I just wish they picked a color scheme that matched the brick a bit better.
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Cambridge thinks it is too dense -- and one way to measure / control density is to tell the developer how much floor area can be put on a given plot of land:
the developer either covers a lot of the plot with a low building with a large footprint -- appropriate for some lab type projects -- Alexandria is a specialist at these​
or the developer covers a much smaller amount of the plot with a taller building with the same amount of square footage -- that leads to a plaza surrounding a "tower-ish" typically residential building --although there are a few signature office towers which can be developed such as Google and Akamai​

voila KSq in Cambridge reduced to a simple algorithm with one parameter FAR [floor area ratio]
 
vanshnookenraggen said:
Lets put a sun shade in which no one will be a ble to clean!
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van, I nearly always agree with your critiques. But, c'mon, someone can climb into the head of that chicken and hose it off from up there. Meanwhile, the City avoids getting sued by parents because the sun-baked metal slide burned their kid (btw, call me old, but getting burned by a metal slide used to be part of growing up). Kidding aside, this looks like a great park.
 
It was probably a late addition after someone remembered searing hot metal slides from their childhood.
 
bigpicture7 said:
Apparently MIT has purchased the Sunoco gas station at 266 Mass Ave (according to Cambridge Day, citing BldUp)
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But for the fact that the piece repeatedly cites "North Point" and not "Cambridge Crossing", this is a nice summary from Cambridge Day and I don't remember them doing development summaries before. Hope they keep it up!
 
Gameguy326 said:
Finally. Though, Sunoco literally just repaired that station. Will they keep it as a gas station or redevelop it?
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I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the gas station's days are numbered... and also probably the abutting row houses.
 
393b40 said:
I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that the gas station's days are numbered... and also probably the abutting row houses.
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The row houses are already MIT dorms (Random Hall)
 
bigpicture7 said:
When I heard about the gas station acquisition, my first thought was perhaps an expansion of Random Hall?
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That's my initial thinking too. It could likely be a very low profile project (and hopefully a good one)
 
stefal said:
The row houses are already MIT dorms (Random Hall)
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That doesn't really change anything about what I said.

Land is too valuable over there for any of those structures to survive.
 
393b40 said:
That doesn't really change anything about what I said.

Land is too valuable over there for any of those structures to survive.
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I wasn't saying it changed anything. If anything, it's more promising something's coming sooner considering they already own and actively use adjacent parcels and didn't have to put additional millions down for land and acquisition.
 
393b40 said:
That doesn't really change anything about what I said.

Land is too valuable over there for any of those structures to survive.
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They're also historic though, meaning Random will probably survive.

The Sunoco, meanwhile, will go eventually, but I could also see it lasting for a good several years before MIT decides to redevelop it.
 
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