Tag Archives: Cambridge Residents Alliance

WHY THE CAMBRIDGE RESIDENTS ALLIANCE MATTERS: The Power of Community Acting as a Bulwark Against the Influence of Money

Take a drive on the Leverett Connector alongside Route 93, and you’ll notice a curious sight. Steve K.There’s a partially-built exit ramp, hanging out from the road; its suddenly halted steel girders and roughened concrete startle you, offend your eye, like the aftermath of an amputation. As if the phantom exit ramp had been brutally excised to prevent a cancer from spreading. Which is true, in a manner of speaking. For this is a ghastly reminder of one of the most ill-conceived highway transit projects never perpetrated—the Inner Belt, which would have sliced through the cities of Somerville and Cambridge to funnel many thousands of cars daily into the City of Boston.

This amputated exit ramp also serves as a mute tribute to the power of an aroused citizenry. For that highway would have been built 42 years ago, and Somerville and Cambridge would have been split in two, had it not been for the raised voices and continuous resistance of an engaged and outraged local community.

Today, we know the cost to a community’s social fabric when you run an elevated highway through the heart of a city, but back then many of these raised voices were denounced as fighters of progress or NIMBY’s (not-in-my-backyard-ers) or advocates of the status quo. When in fact, they were authentic voices of Cambridge sticking up—and speaking up!—for the city they loved.

Today, there’s a parallel situation arising in Cambridge, and once again the sellers of progress, unstoppable and unsuitable development and unbridled profits are railing against a group of citizens who have risen up to demand due diligence and a steady hand on the helm before we chart a ruinous course for Cambridge from which we will never recover.

I am proud to be a member of the Cambridge Residents Alliance. Proud to stand alongside members of the community who have worked tirelessly over the years to serve Cambridge and its residents. People like Nancy Ryan, who has a long history of community service, Jonathan King, an MIT professor and veteran of many citizen initiatives, Cathy Hoffman, who served on the Cambridge Peace Commission, Bill Cunningham, advocate for public housing tenants, Lee Farris, an activist for affordable housing, Rich Goldberg, a leader of the Area 4 Coalition, Steve Kaiser, Traffic Engineer and outspoken critic of the city’s lax transportation study practices, to mention just a few. These people have no bone to pick with progress or appropriate development. But they will not be silenced, or frightened off, by the size of a developer’s war chest, the shrillness of the arguments and accusations made by pro-development forces, or the vision and machinations of Cambridge’s own city management and Community Development Department.

We have witnessed those forces engage in a focused effort to guide a supposedly objective study of Central Square’s future toward recommendations so drastic they endanger the character and livability of the area they’re ostensibly trying to improve.

More to the point, we have witnessed these studies move ahead without anyone—except members of our alliance—conducting studies or collecting information to project the impacts of these recommendations and other projected developments on the city as a whole. Using the city’s own statistics, we have been able to project a minimum of 18 million additional square footage of development—a virtual tsunami of new offices, residences and labs—about to wash over the city during the next 20 years. Plus a minimum of 50,000 additional car trips daily, and 50,000 additional public transit trips—on subways and buses that today have little if any additional capacity.

As we state on our CambridgeResidentsAlliance.org web site…The Cambridge Residents Alliance represents individuals and neighborhood organizations committed to preserving and promoting a livable, affordable, and diverse Cambridge community.

We believe the innovative and creative character of the Cambridge economy derives in part from the multi-cultural, cooperative and inclusive social fabric of our city, which needs to be protected, not dissolved.

We support preserving, enhancing and expanding our public and affordable housing.

We believe the choking up of travel on streets, buses and trains through over-development is not in the interest of the community.

We value sunlight, sky views, and our very limited open community spaces and parks, and seek to limit shadowed canyon-like streets from over-size buildings.

We believe traffic has to be limited to levels such that children can go to and from school and after school activities safely.

We oppose the construction of high-rise buildings designed primarily to make large profits for developers.

We need continuing comprehensive urban planning efforts to improve the quality of life and work for Cambridge residents.

And lastly, like those activists in the 1960’s & 1970’s, we will not be silenced by those who propose development at all costs, who will not learn from the lessons or the amputated highway ramps of the past. Cambridge is a city of people from diverse backgrounds, economic levels, ethnicities and visions. Rather than put any of those parties at risk by serving the vision of taxes-hungry city managers or profit-hungry developers we’re calling for an unbiased citywide study of development and growth issues from which we can fashion a sensible approach to creating a future we all can share.

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!

 

Housing, Yes—Towers, No!

When the Cambridge Square Advisory Committee (CSAC) was first convened to make recommendations for the future of Central Square, its members were enjoined to be bold. Now that we’ve seen the recommendations coming out of their year-long study, it’s clear they chose instead to be reckless. Their recommendations would bring truly Bold and perhaps Dangerous changes in zoning that would upset both the rhythm of life in our neighborhood and the unique personality of Central Square. If accepted by the Planning Board and City Council they would bring 14- to 18-story towers to the Central Square area on streets now populated by mostly two- and three-story buildings.

Forgive me if I get some of this wrong, but the recommendations are highly complex; easily obfuscating the bare facts.

The Cambridge Square Advisory Committee (CSAC), whose 21-person membership featured 9 non-Cambridge residents, is recommending a new overlay district for the Central Square area that would dramatically raise height restrictions to 140 feet and 160 feet. Ordinarily that could result in 14- and 16-story buildings, but the CSAC and CDD added a little more gravy to the developer’s pot by facilitating transferable development rights. This little twist confuses me, I admit, but essentially it allows developers to add an additional 20 feet to their 140- or 160-foot tower if they own property elsewhere. Simple math says we are now looking at the potential for 16- and 18-story towers, each of which would have 15-20-foot structures on top to accommodate heating, cooling and elevator systems.

If you look at the photo above you can see what two 18-story towers look like. Suffice it to say these look a lot different than the watercolor smudges the CDD added to their Cambridge cityscapes when they first began selling the idea of replacing our city-owned parking lots and garage with new developments.

As a member of the Cambridge Residents Alliance, I reiterate our concern about the pending Tsunami of mindless and planning-less citywide development even though there have been efforts to discredit our integrity. Understandably, especially in light of the CDD-led abandonment of zoning protections in Central Square, we renew and hopefully reinvigorate our call for a one-year citywide moratorium on all up zoning.

Not a moratorium on development, but on up zoning. On developer giveaways. One year for the city to take a hard look at its future and start planning for it.

We also invite anyone who cares about the future of our city and the quality of life it affords us to join the CRA in resisting the lure of easy money and the CDD’s flawed arguments about inclusionary zoning offsetting the loss of families and low-income households that are driven out by the rising rents these Towers For The Affluent historically breed. The Alliance of Cambridge Tenants (ACT) has joined us in this effort precisely because it knows this kind of towering development is detrimental to low- and middle-income tenants and families, and has seen no future for those parties in the recommendations the CSAC and CDD are making.

To those with eyes to see, there is little in those recommendations that brings anything but congestion and long shadows to the future of Central Square and Cambridge.

I conclude with what should be an anthem for the citizens who value the texture and quality of life in our city…

HOUSING, YES—TOWERS, NO!
DENSITY, YES—CONGESTION, NO!

Interested parties can get more information at CambridgeResidentsAlliance.org.

 

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A TALE OF TWO CAMBRIDGES

It is a city comfortably settled, it is a city ripe for development, it is city in need of housing for families and those with low incomes, it is a city that hopes to lower rents and create housing by building towers for the wealthy, it is a city dedicated to improving the lives of its current residents, it is a city committed to bringing in new people and new revenue streams at the expense of current residents, it is a city whose roads and T-stations are already overcrowded, it is a city that wants to believe more capacity remains, it is a city that needs a citywide study to determine the city’s future, it is a city that wants to blindly step on the gas to keep things moving. It is a city still liveable, it is a city whose liveability is on the selling block.
Whatever you believe about the City of Cambridge: believe this…it is on the cusp of change. Big change. The kind of change that comes when you add over 18 million square feet of NEW development to a city already densely populated. That’s 18 million square feet of new labs, offices and residences, ADDITIONAL to what’s here today! Which will generate over 100,000 ADDITIONAL car and transit trips a day.
If the Community Development Department hadn’t spent most of its time and psychic energy trying to bring in more development, rather than helping us prepare for the future, we in the community who care about such things might actually be engaged in a sensible discussion on what the City of Cambridge should be doing to prepare for this virtual tsunami on the horizon. We might be studying possible impacts on our schools, on our air quality, on our city streets, on city services, and on dozens of other aspects of our lives.
But instead, rather than study and anticipate the impacts of all this developmental activity, our civic leaders appear to be caught up in a dance that has them pandering to it, inviting more in, treating developers as the solution rather than just more of the same problem. And the Community Development Department, our agents of change and preservation, often appears to be working more for the interests of development than the community, as if maximizing developer profits was the only way to gain concessions for the city.
There’s an interesting parallel you can draw between what’s happening here in Cambridge and the effort nationally of rich and powerful interests to control the debate as they maximize their profits (or tax advantages). Isn’t this the same as their trickle-down economic theory—that we’ll award some lucky millionaire the rights to build 15 story apartment towers with 130 apartments, and thus help him earn many extra millions of dollars, as long as he doles out 15-20 of those apartments for our poorer citizens? Isn’t that another way of saying we should live off the largess of our job creators, eating whatever crumbs trickle down to us, and in return we tax them less than we tax their secretaries?
But fear not! We’ll not spend a second of time pondering the fate of our schools or the congestion of our roads, rather we’ll argue and plead our case against the gradual diminishment of Cambridge one zoning petition at a time, one preliminary set of recommendations at a time, one City Council hearing at a time, one Oped at a time. All in the interest of the destiny and long-term well-being of this city we love.
There were two meetings last week that reflected this tale of two Cambridges in the flesh. Meeting Number One was held by the Central Square Advisory Committee, overseen and guided by the Community Development Department (CDD). In which the committee publically reviewed their final draft of recommendations for the rezoning of Central Square. Meeting Number Two, held by the Cambridge Residents Alliance, was a community-led forum on transportation.
In Meeting Number One, The Community Development Department offered a long involved presentation with slides, but the ugly truth could not be hidden. They were recommending building heights of 140 feet in a Central Square neighborhood that had long served as a buffer zone between the square and the neighborhood. Now they were zoning for 14 or 15 or 16-story apartment towers in an overlay district that essentially expanded the Central Square footprint to include the two streets that run parallel to Mass Ave. on either side. This overlay district was designed so that city-owned land, a series of parking lots and a two-story garage, could now be sold off to developers and, possibly, used for residential projects.
So what, you might ask, is the big deal? There must be tradeoffs for having such out-of-scale buildings casting shadows on our neighborhood… Of course there is, the community gets back a set percentage of the units, usually 11-15%, to be set aside for low- or middle-income folks.
What if the neighborhood doesn’t want the shadows, or the noise, or the congestion, or the added newcomers further crowding an already crowded T-ride?
And what if the neighbors actually do want the low- and middle-income units that come with the towers?
Let’s build them ourselves! Only not as towers. Once we let go of satisfying the gluttony of developers we can actually look at building structures appropriate to the site and to the neighborhood. We can be just as resourceful as the developers, since we’ll be building small and efficient instead of big and expensive. “We” being the City of Cambridge, of course—with PCA funds, or by digging up all possible sources of funding before we’d ever think of defacing the neighborhood with sky-blocking towers.
In the other meeting, Meeting Number two, late Saturday afternoon, men and women who not surprisingly support the city building its own small-scale affordable housing communities, were gathering to present a forum on the grim future realities of real estate and transportation in Cambridge. Hoping that by presenting the facts, they might also help shape the city’s future.  Right now, the millions of dollars that come with development are driving both the discussion and the city’s actions, they’re certainly not driven by the needs of the city or its residents.
In Meeting Number One, Cambridge was served up as a side of beef to be chopped up into its different cuts. 140 feet of height in one district, 160 feet of height in the next. Or should we call them Rib Cut and Pork Chop?
In Meeting Number Two, Cambridge was seen as a gem whose facets can be easily scratched, and thus need protection. It’s our very diversity and liveability, now at risk from over-development, that makes us so attractive to those who would come in to share our city, all the more reason for not allowing market realities to dominate our thinking or treat us roughly.
Meeting Number One continued to ignore the fact that 18 million new square feet of development is coming to Cambridge. Bringing more cars, bicyclists, T-riders and bus passengers than the present systems can handle.
Meeting Number Two attempted to thwart the misguided lurch towards weakening our zoning protections, that was coming out of Meeting Number One .
Meeting Number Two envisioned a Cambridge whose delicate intertwining of races, economic groups—blue collar and white—is a rare and beautiful thing that needs to be protected, while Meeting Number One saw a Cambridge whose liveability, liberality and academic propinquity were merely happy underpinnings of its highly sexy, and highly priced, real estate market. And too much of a good thing can’t be all bad, can it?
In the end, of course, one vision will win out. Whether it’s the Voice of Money finally convincing us to let the investors and big developers make more money off our city so that a few of us can eke out better lives. Or if it’s the Voice of Reason asking us to be good stewards of this city we have been handed down. A voice that believes the abiding principle in steering Cambridge towards the future must be borrowed from the Hippocratic oath, “First, Do No Harm!”
There were two meetings last week that were sharply focused on where we see Cambridge evolving. They were also sharply divided, one calling for expanding higher-rise development, the other calling for a temporary halt to all up-zoning, so we can study and prepare for what the future is sending our way.

Which meeting spoke to you?

Cambridge is Two Cities
It is a city comfortably settled, it is a city ripe for development, it is city in need of housing. It is a city that hopes to create housing by building towers for the wealthy, it is a city dedicated to improving the lives of its current residents, it is a city committed to bringing in new people and new revenue streams at the expense of current residents, it is a city whose roads and T-stations are already overcrowded, it is a city that wants to believe more capacity remains, it is a city that badly needs a citywide study, it is a city that wants to blindly keep things moving. It is a city still liveable, it is a city whose liveability is on the selling block. It is a city some of us love, it is a city some would love to develop.