Porter Square Infill and Small Developments

stick n move said:
The architecture of the porter exchange building is pretty cool and definitely worth saving in my opinion and cafe mami has the best japanese curry in massachusetts imo. It would be cool if they could do an adaptive reuse of the building landmark center style, and then add a large residential building behind it in the parking lot. Then add some ground floor retail back and hopefully the same restaurants. Those empty lots directly across the street should obviously be developed as well, its nuts that they havent yet.
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I imagine the exchange building is probably safe, pending the fiscal state of Lesley itself - the bonus height for retaining historic buildings would come in very handy.

Lesley sold the lots across the street in November to Just A Start, the affordable housing folks behind the under construction development at 52 New St and the new Rindge low-rise building, amongst others. I imagine their pipeline is a little full at the moment, but they're planned for 15 stories as part of Cambridge Affordable Housing Overlay zoning, not even including this latest zoning effort.
 
stick n move said:
The architecture of the porter exchange building is pretty cool and definitely worth saving in my opinion and cafe mami has the best japanese curry in massachusetts imo. It would be cool if they could do an adaptive reuse of the building landmark center style, and then add a large residential building behind it in the parking lot. Then add some ground floor retail back and hopefully the same restaurants. Those empty lots directly across the street should obviously be developed as well, its nuts that they havent yet.
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Yep, it's the old Sears and Roebucks building, which I think the facade of should be preserved with any new building put up there. We lived not far away, and my mom would take me there when I was a little kid, and I called it "Stairs and Robots" because of all the people going up and down the escalators. Aaah, fond memories.
 
stick n move said:
Those empty lots directly across the street should obviously be developed as well, its nuts that they havent yet.
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Lesley just sold them recently to an affordable housing developer. By-right height of buildings with 100 percent affordable units is 15-stories in this location. (12 stories along roads like Mass Ave, 15 in squares).
 
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The hotel at the intersection of Beacon and Somerville Avenue is still under construction. This has been slowly assembling (evolving?) itself since ~2018.
 
Glacial progress. I have seen small changes over the past few months, but I haven’t seen workers crawling over the site.
 
Stlin said:
I mean... The city of Cambridge is very actively working on that, at least from a planning and zoning side. It's a little funky - the left (West) side of white is Cambridge and the other side north of White St Pl is Somerville.

At least on the Cambridge side, their final Mass Ave Planning study is scheduled to present it's final recommendations literally next week, but the draft proposals indicate substantial planned density on this and neighboring sites. That currently appears to likely be comprised of 2 parts. Firstly they propose relaxing zoning along the length of Mass Ave from Alewife Brook to Harvard Square to allow for 8 story residential by right, and up to 11 stories with mixed use incentive bonuses. Secondly, they appear set to set up a PUD in Porter Square that would allow up to 18 stories. That would be... Rather transformative.
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www.cambridgema.gov

Mass Ave Planning Study - Cambridge Common to Alewife Brook Parkway

A planning study for Massachusetts Avenue from Cambridge Common to Alewife Brook Parkway.
www.cambridgema.gov www.cambridgema.gov
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Always nice to see when a city looks at areas such as Porter from a holistic approach. IMHO, for the zoning diagrams I prefer Option 3, 2, 1 in that order with Option 1 being removed entirely. Build up at Mass Ave then transition down into the existing urban environment. 6-8 stories (6 stories when directly abutting less than 4 stories) is a great stair step for building up this node while working to minimize the impact on the urban fabric a couple blocks off Mass Ave. The planning documents made me think of the Van Ness strip of Boylston Street in terms of redevelopment and how the city was able to get developers to build big on the corridors while working against a developed neighborhood (Fens).
 
RandomWalk said:
Glacial progress. I have seen small changes over the past few months, but I haven’t seen workers crawling over the site.
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I think the graffiti artists have done more work on this than the workers the past year or so.. (on the back/rail side)
 
RandomWalk said:
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The hotel at the intersection of Beacon and Somerville Avenue is still under construction. This has been slowly assembling (evolving?) itself since ~2018.
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actually seems like way longer than 2018. According to google maps, ground work was underway in Sep '16.
I think they've been building this for 10 years :)
(and by the looks of it, the design is 30 years old)
 
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