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SURVIVOR CAMBRIDGE PART 2: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast

Episode Two: Sugar-Coated Gentrification

Hello, and welcome back to Survivor Cambridge, the TV show that chronicles the downfall and banana-slip slide of “Life As We Know It” on the island of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both our competing tribes live, work, and fight for survival daily on the streets of Cambridge.

Last week, as you recall, Tribe #2, with its rock-grip hold on the Cambridge City Council, pushed through a mega gift, worth skillions of bucks for the greedy, graspy real estate division of MIT, protestwhich is quickly becoming the Kingpin of Cambridge Real Estate. Theirs is the power to squeeze out everyday homeowners and families by unleashing thousands of graduate students to suck up available local housing; theirs is now the authority to build a tower reaching 25 stories or more, and 2 million square feet of offices, homes and labs, or whatever MIT wants to build.

Just to review, Tribe #1 is made up of the city’s diverse population, with a heavy emphasis on those living near or below poverty levels. Given the quickly rising rents resulting from the area’s rapid gentrification, oddsmakers give Tribe #1 little chance for survival.

Not unless they can Outwit, Outplay and Outlast Tribe #2!

Tribe #2, the odds-on favorite, whose motto is “Build, Baby, Build!” is made up of pro-business folks, some of whom actually live in Cambridge, who are the engines of all this development activity in the city. Tribe #2 wants to continue building housing, office and lab facilities for the engineers and technicians drawn into the city by all the new commercial development; engineers and technicians who will eventually outbid families and poor people for the city’s limited housing.

Tribe #2 is clearly the most dangerous and least likable tribe in today’s show. Its members have grown rich and, what’s worse, increasingly entitled as the value of Cambridge real estate continues to climb. It’s a sad irony that Tribe #2 is attempting to remove zoning restrictions at the same time their real estate holdings have become so valuable the tribe no longer needs up-zoning to access reasonable profits.

Want to see something tragic? Look at things from Tribe #1’s point of view. They’ve arrived at a critical juncture; a moment when their salaries no longer keep pace with inflation, when the cost of college is priced beyond their children’s reach, when assisted housing appears to be a distant memory, and section 8 vouchers are no longer large enough to cover the gap in their monthly rent check. And now, just at this critical moment, along comes a once-in-a-lifetime overheating of the Cambridge real estate market.

This Week’s Tribal Challenge: Race For The Future

As you’ll recall from last week’s show, the City Council voted prudence and good stewardship off the island, voting 7-1 to approve a massive up-zoning package for MIT in exchange for some $14 million in cash and a significant commitment to creating low-cost incubator office space for new business development. This was counted as a victory for Tribe #2 and a loss for Tribe #1, who will never see a penny of the swag paid by MIT.

The rapid succession of Tribe #2 victories as evidenced by city council votes on up-zoning petitions, has put Tribe #1’s back against the wall. As more developments are approved, more of the tribe’s families are squeezed out of Cambridge and sent into that dark unfriendly night.

Note the irony in Tribe #2 trumpeting this ongoing gentrification as their attempt to create affordable housing, while Tribe #1 has seen for itself that gentrification, no matter how you sugar-coat it with modest set-asides for affordable units, pushes the lower and middle economic stratas out of their homes and into someone else’s city.

So, this is basically a fight for survival, in the meanest sense, for Tribe #1. And this week on Survivor Cambridge we’ve got a challenge that reflects how desperate the situation has become.

Tribe #1 and Tribe #2, are you ready to race each other for the Survivor’s Crown?

Excellent! You realize the losing tribe will need to find somewhere else to live, or somewhere else to build 16- and 18-story residential towers? Tribe #1 and Tribe #2, you will race against each other, but each with a different challenge. Tribe #1, your challenge is simply to drive your cars from Central Square to Memorial Drive via Western Avenue. The only catch: Western Avenue will be a virtual parking lot, because we’ve simulated the expected auto impact from all of Tribe #2’s towers and up-zoned buildings, which will bring a minimum of 50,000 additional car trips onto Cambridge roadways.

Tribe #2, given your lock-hold on both the Planning Board and the City Council, you are being asked to get the entire Central Square Up-Zoning package approved and legislated before the first car from Tribe #1 reaches Memorial Drive.

The winning tribe of this challenge will be crowned Survivor and be allowed to live (or develop towers) in peace on the island.

Update: Clearly Tribe #1 had the more difficult task. In a move hailed as “Unexpectedly mischievous and tactically brilliant!” Tribe #1’s competitors quickly abandoned their vehicles for wheelchairs, which should have cut their time in half and given them a victory, had it not been for all the angry motorists who objected to anyone—even someone in a wheelchair!—cutting in front of them. We were still totaling up Tribe #1 casualties as Tribe #2 not only won approval of their Central Square up-zoning petition, but also laid down the cornerstone for their first 18-story residential tower.

Join us for the next episode of Survivor Cambridge.

• Watch as waves of low-income residents get stuck once again on Western Avenue, attempting to make their final Exodus from Cambridge.

• See members of Cambridge’s Community Development Department turn their attention to up-zoning Porter Square and North Cambridge. You’ll want to see just how high these folks can build towers on that side of town.

• Watch the Cambridge School System begin dismantling all the schools that become superfluous once most of Cambridge’s families are chased out of the city.

• Watch current residents vote the entire City Council off the island. Except Minka (of the unpronounceable name) who is elected Mayor for her courage in standing up to her colleagues and MIT.

• And please, remember to watch your back. If it can happen to Tribe #1 today, can your tribe be far behind?

Survivor Cambridge is a production of Blind Elephant Press.

SURVIVOR CAMBRIDGE: Outwit, Outplay, Outlast!

Episode 1: Tribal Adversaries

Hello, and welcome to Survivor Cambridge, the TV show that chronicles the downfall and banana-slip slide of “Life As We Know It” on the island of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Both of our competing tribes, as you’ll see, are drawn from the streets and neighborhoods of the city;catapult living, working, and fighting for their survival in Cambridge’s breakneck economy and rapidly changing population profile.

As the competition in this arena seems a bit complicated, here’s a brief profile of the two tribes who will be fighting and scrapping to survive on the island—all for your viewing pleasure.

First tribe, and probably the least favored by the Vegas morning line, Tribe #1 is made up of the city’s diverse population, with a heavy emphasis on the middle class and those living on or near poverty levels. With upscale development (smelling a lot like gentrification) proceeding at a dramatic pace in the city, with the prohibitive rise in housing costs that usually accompanies such development—not to mention federal housing assistance funds drying up—is it any wonder these folks are not expected to survive very long on the island?

Not unless they can somehow Outwit, Outplay and Outlast Tribe #2!

Tribe #2 is the morning line favorite; their motto being “Build, Baby, Build!” Made up of a variety of interests and business types, its tribal members wish to benefit handsomely from all the opportunities that come to a city whose real estate market is blisteringly hot.

Tribe #2 believes A Bigger Cambridge is A Better Cambridge. They believe you can bring massive change to a city without harming those aspects that make Cambridge special. They see nothing wrong in 16- and 18-story towers dotting the Cambridge landscape where before there were only modest storefronts and triple deckers. They pooh-pooh any concerns about the Red Line, Cambridge’s most critical subway line, being already maxed out.

Confidentially, they would also wish to be the ones to develop and feed off all the new housing, office and lab facilities being built for affluent engineers and technicians who will easily outbid families and poor people for the city’s limited housing.

Key strategic relationships with the City Council, the City Manager and the Community Development Department have emboldened Tribe #2 to make a staggering grab this season for increased power and profits through massive up-zoning of Kendall and Central Squares, in a city-sponsored study process commonly known as K2C2.

Three major strategic initiatives in the last 20 years have put Tribe #2 steadily on the offensive and Tribe #1 with its back against a wall.

We’ll have more on those initiatives, and Tribe #1’s subsequent fight for survival, but first a word from today’s show’s sponsor, The Cambridge Residents Alliance.

 ANNOUNCER: The Cambridge Residents Alliance is an organization made up of your neighbors and friends: people who can see what is happening in Cambridge today and are rightfully concerned.

Concerned about flagrant disregard of the city’s zoning code, with spot-zoning the norm rather than the exception, and Cambridge clearly for sale if the sweetener is right. Concerned about a City Council so quick to say “Yes!” it voted to move MIT’s petition along before comments were taken from the public.

Mostly, of course, we are concerned about the future. About what kind of Cambridge we will leave behind for those who follow. Will it be a Cambridge of diverse ethnicities, ages and economic levels? Will it be a Cambridge where we still have neighborhood communities, still have room to breathe? Will we have traded away the essence of who we are for another great year of keeping taxes low and streets clean?

Yes, as you might have heard, we are concerned about the proposed rezoning of Central Square that could bring 16- or 18-story towers and their shadows, plus more cars and congestion, more people and traffic, more bio labs sited next to apartments, more apartments built without parking spaces. More noise, chaos, confusion. And we are concerned that we appear to be moving in no particular direction, with no particular plan in mind.

If that sounds familiar, you might want to lift your voice or lend a hand .To help play a role in deciding Cambridge’s future, click onto CambridgeResidentsAlliance.org.

If you can donate to help get our message out, so much the better!

Now back to Survivor Cambridge.

Three Strategic Blows Hit Tribe #1

It’s been a rough 20 years for the tribe. The end of Rent Control in 1994 seriously upset the ability of many low income people and middle class families to safely remain in their Cambridge homes. Owing to its proximity to Boston and a unique combination of academic and urban influences, Cambridge’s strong residential appeal and concomitant high property values have remained consistent even in the worst of real estate markets.

In 2005, the tribe was struck again, when a city-wide reassessment of property values disproportionately affected the valuation of houses owned by low-income residents, so that hundreds of economically disadvantaged homeowners had their property taxes increased by over 100%. Resulting in another tidal wave exodus of the poor and disadvantaged from Cambridge.

Okay, fast forward to today, where the poorer members of Tribe #1 are in danger of being replaced wholesale by newcomers who can better afford Cambridge’s pricey real estate. Both tribes have taken their best shots to halt or assist this rapid development, making hundreds of presentations (or so it seems) to the Planning Board, the Ordinance Committee, the City Council, and to anyone else who’ll listen. The word “Housing” gets repeated so often in these public ventings its very vibration has become almost hypnotic. As an ironic side note to these ongoing tribal skirmishes both sides repeatedly lay claim to the overriding goal of protecting Cambridge’s diverse, impoverished and family-based population.

Tribe #2 is clearly the most dangerous and least likable tribe on today’s show. Its members have grown fat, rich and increasingly self-important as the value of Cambridge real estate has rocketed. Living off the highest of economic tides a city might ever see, these build-baby-build fanatics are staunch enemies of Tribe #1, whom they see as hindering “progress” and “growth” for the city. Of course, they’re also hindering countless money-making ventures for Tribe #2, thus threatening tribe members’ profits and thwarting their long term agenda to become Multi-Millionaires.

So, at the critical moment when assisted housing appears an ever more distant memory, and section 8 vouchers are no longer large enough to cover the gap in a monthly rent check, along comes this once in a lifetime overheating of the Cambridge real estate market.

With a city government in place that seems a pushover for Tribe #2’s arguments. And, in some cases, an actual advocate of those very same arguments.

This Week’s Tribal Challenge

Okay,  you’ve met our two teams of contestants, and realize what a crucial juncture we’ve reached here on the island.  So here’s this week’s tribal challenge… With the recent explosion of residential complexes nearing completion in the Alewife area, rush hour driving, already difficult for those living in the vicinity, is expected to become a monumental disaster.

Tribe #1, your task is quite simply to bring traffic relief to the trapped residents of Alewife by delivering an auto catapult—a Supremo Auto Catapult—to Alewife during the very next rush hour! As you no doubt already know, a Supremo Auto Catapult can airlift approximately 15 cars an hour out of a gridlocked neighborhood.Your team will be given two hours, from 8am to 10am, to pick up the Supremo Auto Catapult parked at the Science Museum and deliver it to Alewife Station…Ordinarily, such a simple delivery would only take 15 minutes.

Tribe #2, your challenge is to stop Tribe #1 from making that simple delivery.

The Winning Tribe will be given extra time to make its case at the next city council meeting. Tribe #1, you will get 5 extra minutes if you win; Tribe #2, you will be given 30 extra minutes. (And, yes, we do realize those are different time allotments. Just goes to show why Tribe #2 is such a smart money favorite.)

Join us for the next episode of Survivor Cambridge. Where you can…

 • Watch as the Planning Board wastes precious minutes searching for their rubber stamp!

 • See undercover footage of members of Cambridge’s Community Development Department enjoying secret meetings with developers.

 • Watch Central Square start it’s journey to become a tower-studded affair, with far fewer parking lots and thousands more people.

 • See our next Tribal Challenge, when Tribe #2 is asked to prove, using real live T passengers, its claim that Red Line subway cars have room for 40% additional capacity during rush hour.

Last Minute Challenge Update: This just in…I’m told that Tribe #1 successfully picked up the Supremo catapult at the Science Museum but was unable to deliver it to Alewife in the allotted time. In a move hailed as “brilliant! Illustrative of the best military minds” Tribe #2 used its city hall connections to have Cambridge’s chief contractor and traffic inhibitor, the D’Allessandro company, start tearing up streets everywhere in Cambridge, thus knotting up the city in a giant gridlock and keeping the catapult far from Alewife territory.

I know, it sounds like a normal rush hour to me, too.

THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE AND THEY’RE STILL SETTING THE TABLE FOR DINNER!

Think your opinion matters? Apparently not to our City Council. A majority of council members voted at an Ordinance Committee meeting to move along MIT’s upzoning petition before the public had a chance to speak its mind. Arguably, it was to allow our mayor, who had another engagement, to record her vote in favor of the petition. But in reality, you couldn’t fabricate a better example to illustrate what the council feels about your opinion or how they’re responding to the over-heating pressures for development in our city.Cambridge-CityCouncil2012-2013

Put simply, they appear eager to ride the rising tide of development with little concern for those of us who may get flooded out. With little concern for the diversity we’ll lose as they vote to bring in wave after wave of affluent renters. Or for families that get squeezed out by the higher neighborhood rents that accompany new market-rate housing. Or for neighborhoods that will suddenly have 14 or 16 story towers reaching into their sky, and thousands more cars clogging their streets.

The sellers of “progress” tell us this is the price we have to pay to get more housing and create a better Cambridge. Housing has become the shield behind which developers and business interests now hide their self-enrichment and self-interest. If you could prove what I postulated in the previous paragraph, that new market-rate housing chases out more families than it makes room for, and erodes diversity, they would still argue that inclusionary housing forgives all sins. And that providing 11-15% low or mid-level affordable housing in a housing development makes up for whatever loss of low- or middle-income residents it eventually chases out of the city.

Now, as the City Council pretends to effectively review a proposal that will add 2.1 million square feet of office, lab and residential space to a city already densely populated and excessively traveled by car, someone needs to shout “STOP!” Someone needs to exhort them, “Don’t agree to anything until you understand we’re facing a tsunami of development over the course of the next 20 years. Don’t agree to anything until you learn and study the consequences we face from projections that predict over 18 million square feet of new offices, labs and residences in the city. Which, according to Cambridge’s own published numbers, breaks down to over 50,000 new car trips daily, plus a similar number of additional commuter trips.

Forget the fact that MIT wants to build a skyscraper in our city, a 300 foot demonstration of their importance. Perhaps an easy way for pro-development votes on the Council to create a precedent for buildings significantly higher than our zoning has allowed to date. Forget the fact that MIT fails to address the problem of its grad student housing shortages, which seriously impacts the availability of affordable housing in Cambridge. Forget the fact that MIT operates like it can get what it wants just because it wants it.

Why would our City Council agree to such massive upzoning when they cannot imagine the consequences of such a decision? Nor can they understand the context of over-development in which they’ll be making their decision. Denise Simmons has commented on the fact that listening to presentations, citizen opinions and opposing viewpoints in a single evening doesn’t lend itself well to making informed decisions.

With the massive impacts that come with massive upzoning petitions, the City Council, as the stewards charged with protecting and guiding our city, need to do their homework. They need to find out how many thousands of car trips and transit trips this level of development would bring? They need to know how many millions of square feet of development the City is facing down the road, so we can sensibly prepare for whatever is coming.

To vote on the MIT petition, or the K2C2 recommendations without looking seriously at the future is like continuing to set the table for dinner even though your senses tell you the house is on fire.

It’s time to stop and think; to slow the rush to development and to rethink dotting the landscape with towers. It’s time to stop and study the future, before we rush headlong into it.

It’s time to say no to mindless development.

Then let’s see what develops.

Cambridge’s Own Projections Point To Growth Tsunami

(As Reported by Shelley Reiman of Cambridgeport and Paul Steven Stone; statistics compiled by Richard Krushnic)

The chart above was compiled by Richard Krushnic, a community development professional and a member of the Cambridge Residents Alliance. He agreed to research the facts and figures of commercial and residential development slated for construction throughout Cambridge during the next twenty years. I’m not certain how visible the chart will be, given my past failure with posting images, but essentially it details the basis of the Cambridge Resident’s Alliance claims that we are looking at OVER 18 MILLION SQUARE FEET OF DEVELOPMENT coming to Cambridge over the next 20 years.

According to Richard, who used the city’s own figures and projections as the basis of his calculations, we can expect, at a minimum, 18,668,919 square feet of new commercial and residential development. That isn’t some pie-in-the-sky number, but projections developed from a.) what is already permitted, b.) what will be allowed under current zoning, or c.) what has been proposed by the Community Development Department or the Central Square and Kendall Square Advisory Committees. There is every reason to believe all this construction will happen.

The Cambridge Residents Alliance has been pushing for a one year citywide moratorium on all UP-ZONING—not on development or construction, merely on up-zoning—until this bombshell of guaranteed growth can be studied and planned for. It doesn’t take an MIT engineer to see how this “progress” will greatly impact Cambridge and the quality of life for its residents. Given the enormous upward shift in rents such new developments inevitably create, Cambridge’s diverse population can expect to be forced out and replaced by a relatively homogeneous group of middle- and upper-middle class residents. The city will be riddled with very tall buildings; there will be areas of extremely high density, and serious traffic and transit problems will result from such enormous growth.

How can we keep Cambridge livable if none of our leaders or planning-related bodies are willing to say “STOP!” and take a look at what the future is bringing? All we see are bogus committee studies served up to cover the pro-development agenda of the business community and the CDD, while we the people of Cambridge are left to exhaust ourselves fighting back recommendations for projects and buildings totally out of proportion, rhythm or logic to our communities.

Once again, I reiterate this is not a kneejerk NIMBY reaction. This is an honest response to a tsunami of development that anyone with eyes can see darkening our horizon. Look at Richard’s figures, then ask yourself why nobody in a position of leadership is calling for the problem to be addressed, the future to be secured? It isn’t what’s happening in our backyard that has us worried, friends, it’s what’s happening everywhere in our city!

THE TERRIBLE TEN

ten

“They’ll only let me have an 18-story building!”

TEN PAINFUL TRUTHS ABOUT THE CDD’S CENTRAL SQUARE RE-ZONING 

Let me start with a disclaimer. Each of us will find his or her own discomfort (or comfort) level with the Community Development Department’s (CDD) recommendations for re-zoning Central Square. This list represents what I find most disquieting and unnerving about their recommended overlay district which attempts to throw an up-zoning blanket over the entire Central Square district, extending to Green Street on the Cambridgeport side, and Bishop Allen Drive to the north.

I am not a planning engineer or an architect, so my basic understanding is just that—very basic. Working with a commonly accepted formula of 10 feet of height for every story, I attempted to cull whatever information I could from the CDD’s extensive and highly confusing recommendations. Which, thus, led to my list of the TERRIBLE TEN.

  1. TOWERS ON THE HORIZON: The CDD, breaking with the long-held tradition of maintaining a buffer zone to curtain off Central Square’s noise and chaotic activity, now wants to allow towers both in Central Square and on those streets once protecting the neighborhood. The recommendations would allow 14- and 16-story towers, with an additional 2 stories allowable under a transferable development right bonus. That means the potential for 18-story towers with an additional 20-30 foot penthouses on top. Take a walk over to Bishop Allen Drive and see what a blue sky looks like while you still have the chance.

2.   NOW, WE’RE GETTING REALLY DENSE. The CDD would bring 2-1/2 times the present     density to the overlay district with no concern for outdated and maxed-out transportation facilities. Think of sardine-like packed trains at rush hour on the T.

3.    CHRISTMAS FOR DEVELOPERS. This new overlay district would be a blatant giveaway to developers. I’m not sure what we would get back except large numbers of expensive condos and high-rent apartments, plus a small percentage of inclusionary housing units.

4.     WHERE’S THE PLAN? The CDD recommendations are made in absence of any citywide plan.

5.     UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES. The CDD’s recommendations give no thought to the unintended consequences of new towers in the neighborhood: congestion, crowded roadways, diminished parking, neighborhood shadows, loss of sky views.

6.     WHO COULD AFFORD TO LIVE HERE? Cambridge residents won’t be able to afford rising rents, nor retailers as well. High-rise market-rate housing drives prices up, not down.

7.     WE’LL BE THE ONES WHO SUFFER. Bringing in towers of new people will impact the quality of life for those of us already living here. We’ll be asked to accept increased congestion on our streets and more stress on our roadways and infrastructure.

8.     WHOSE IDEA WAS THIS ANYWAY? The members of the Cambridge Square Advisory Committee were appointed by our retiring City Manager and led by a CDD not answerable to the public. Many committee members were non-Cambridge residents with local business interests. Anyone who followed the workings of the committee could easily see the group was being led      from the get-go toward its eventual recommendations for massive up-zoning.

9.     IT WAS A ONE-TRICK PONY. No one seemed to consider any alternatives to this massive up-zoned overlay district. The committee was never presented with a menu of competing or stepped options, only CDD’s recommendations, which they could accept or modify.

10.   THEY KEPT THEIR EYES ON THE PRIZE. From the start, it was clear the C2 study was targeting city-owned parking lots on Green Street and Bishop Allen Drive.  Nobody seemed concerned about the assets these targeted lots represent: the open spaces, unhindered sky views,   artistic murals and the buffer function of the tree-lined lots. I personally find Lot #5 on Bishop Allen Drive quite attractive, with its David Fichter mural and flowering trees; it quite welcomingly serves as the gateway to Area 4.

Lastly, before I’m accused of being a NIMBY (a Not-In-My-Backyard-er), which is an easy way to minimize someone whose point of view doesn’t necessarily align with the marketplace realities of skyrocketing land values and rising tax base pressures, I would maintain that I, and the Cambridge Residents Alliance, of which I am a member, are not so much concerned with what happens in our backyard as we are with what happens on our watch!