Porter Square Infill and Small Developments

Yes. This. I'd like to see the parking halved (0.5 spaces/unit would be plenty here), but in all, this is a great development. Replacing a single-story taxpayer with ground floor retail and residential above! Contextual, urban, transit-oriented (minus the superfluous parking).

This is the exact type of development that should be replacing every single-story taxpayer between here and Arlington Center!

On a similar note, does anyone know what's happening with the old Cambridge Car Wash site?
 
A tad too Alewife-y for my tastes, but certainly a good infill development. Looks like it will do a lot to mitigate the jarring visual impact of the apartments on the corner at Mass Ave and Beech St which will be very welcome.

I second the note about the parking, and would add that building a single-family home and garage on the back side of this lot is also a shortsighted waste of buildable space this close to the T.

As for the car wash, as of May neighbors were waiting to hear a pre-trail decision from a suit against the City of Cambridge, though I'm not sure if any conclusion has been reached yet. It's an inevitability, of course, but those neighbors opposed to the project have been especially determined to exhaust every legal option available to them.

Between this project, the Miso Market development, the Porter and Beacon Hotels, the development at the old Gourmet Express, and a few other recent projects (including on White St and the Lunder Center), Porter Square has really seen a flurry of activity in the past couple of years. I have also heard that a new building is also being proposed for 1718 Mass Ave (the single-story retail block including Cambridge Trust and Boca Grande), but haven't yet seen any renderings.

Personally, I hope the trend of expanding single-story retail expands to Davis Square.
 
GDX163 said:
I have also heard that a new building is also being proposed for 1718 Mass Ave (the single-story retail block including Cambridge Trust and Boca Grande), but haven't yet seen any renderings.
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That's one of the nicer looking one story retail buildings on Mass Ave, surrounded by two of the worst - the horrid aluminum siding thing with Rite Aid/Hwd Express/Simons and the Changsho mostly for the surface lot. Hwd Express is going out of business and there doesn't seem to be many other uses for that kinda space, so maybe that building can go sometime soon - as long as Simon's can find a new location in the area.
 
Another one: the one-story retail stretch on Mass Ave between Shepard St and Hudson St (where BerryLine is) would be great to be developed into a four-to-five story residential development with ground floor retail and 0.6 parking spots/units. Same with Cambridge Common.
 
There are tons of these one story buildings along Mass Ave that can use improvement, but I hate the idea of displacing a bunch of functioning businesses that currently occupy the space ala Miso.
 
^Agreed. Are there any solutions that aren't prohibitively costly?
 
What's up with the Gourmet Express project? It seemed stalled a few weeks ago, is it going again?
 
Still stalled. The development site at Mass Ave and Upland was sold off to the developer of the Porter Hotel project shortly after Gourmet was demolished by the previous developer, and the new owner won't be starting the project there until the hotel is done (currently projected for the end of the summer, which seems optimistic to me). The same owner also recently purchased the Beacon St hotel development site and won't be starting that project until Mass & Upland is done (I believe summer/fall of 2016).
 
GDX163 said:
Still stalled. The development site at Mass Ave and Upland was sold off to the developer of the Porter Hotel project shortly after Gourmet was demolished by the previous developer, and the new owner won't be starting the project there until the hotel is done (currently projected for the end of the summer, which seems optimistic to me). The same owner also recently purchased the Beacon St hotel development site and won't be starting that project until Mass & Upland is done (I believe summer/fall of 2016).
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Thanks for the info. Annoying that they demo'd it just to sell it to sit for months. At least there's something of a schedule though.
 
That hotel has some of the strangest construction techniques I've seen.
 
Blackdog said:
Does anyone know why 1971 Mass Ave is taking so long?
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Any small job is suffering by lack of labor. We just renovated our office and there were no drywallers to work on the job. They were pulling artifacts out of retirement to tape and float.

I hear glazers and carpenters are in the same boat.

cca
 
1971's modules just started showing up. It appears about 50% complete now. That was why it seemed slow.

cca
 
The various projects run by Young Construction are another matter. I swear they have one person spread amongst at least 4 projects.
 
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