Just Say NO to the Council’s Parking “Giveaway”

I used to live on Thorndike Street – just three blocks from the former Middlesex County Courthouse, and witnessed firsthand the terrible scar that was inflicted on my neighborhood. Besides the obvious and tangible issues of being horrendously out of scale, casting a shadow throughout most of the day, bringing in an absurd of amount of traffic, and creating a never-ending scofflaw parking problem, the Courthouse was seen among my neighbors as an example of how the city and state will do whatever they please - without regard for the East Cambridge community.

The parking garage, which was built later was supposed to alleviate the parking problems in the neighborhood. The land it was built on was taken by eminent domain, and done so only after a long and arduous battle.  Although the garage failed to live up to 100% of the community’s expectations, it did take some of the parking pressure off of the East Cambridge residents.

The original 22-story “Brutalist” concrete eyesore was forced down the throats of the community in 1974. About a decade ago, due to the presence of asbestos (typical in most older buildings), the state decided to abandon it rather than fix it. It has been vacant since. The state has finally come up with a plan for the site – but instead of turning the tower into housing, a park, or something that would benefit the community, the state wants to allow LMP to turn it into a HALF MILLION square feet of office space and a few apartments 

The courthouse tower has been vacant for years. The state owns it, and was obviously in no hurry to plan for the site’s future. After years of inaction, the state has finally decided that it’s time to move forward… but with what?

Conflicting Interests

The State government’s goal is to get the most money for the building. Cambridge doesn’t have a say in who will buy it. BUT we do have one powerful tool: parking. The building doesn’t comply with our zoning laws, and for a private company to buy it, they need to secure legal parking. This essentially gives us, the City of Cambridge, “veto” power.

The residents’ goal is to minimize the impact of whatever occupies the building. That includes minimizing the impact of traffic and parking. East Cambridge has been one of the city’s hardest hit neighborhoods, suffering through an onslaught of traffic and congestion brought about by poor planning in Kendall Square, First/Commercial Streets, and North Point.

The City Council seems split. One group wants the cash windfall of selling the developer enough parking spaces to move forward with what’s been called “the development from hell,” placing more office space in East Cambridge, which will create more traffic – and lead to even more spiraling of rents. This is despite the fact that the parking garage was created (from land taken by eminent domain) to take the parking pressure off this dense neighborhood. East Cambridge has few off-street spaces, yet it’s one of the densest parts of the city. Giving it to a developer would take away this badly needed resource from the community and give nothing in return.

Other members of the Cambridge City Council are inclined to stop the parking giveaway. When Worcester was faced with a similar problem, they worked out an impressive $36 million in affordable housing financing for their courthouse, which will soon become a 117-unit affordable housing community. This should serve as a model for Cambridge, and with Cambridge’s hot real estate market, it’s assured that a qualified developer will propose something better for our community.

The city administration seems more focused on our commercial tax revenue and the city’s bond rating than what the residents want.

And lastly, we have a developer that wants to maximize profits, extracting hundreds of millions in dollars from this project, and giving the community as little as possible in return.

This has created quite a bit of controversy on the City Council. But despite the tension, some councillors are clearly lining up on the side of the community. One odd argument that I heard really stunned me: “Would I prefer to leave the building vacant for another decade?” If a landlord rents an apartment to a tenant who’s a “bad fit”, his/her lease would end in a year. But as history has certainly proven, having an inappropriate development in East Cambridge is far worse than nothing.  A bad deal is worse than no deal at all.  Developers want to build in Cambridge – if our City Council refuses to give away spaces in the garage, there will undoubtedly be better proposals that come forward.

There are so many ways that this situation could be solved. But LMP’s commercial /parking proposal isn’t a solution – It will haunt the community for decades.