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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Planning Board attention for eight loft-style apartments, underground parking and a woodworking shop at 95 Harvey St. was put on hold Tuesday so developer Michael O’Shea and neighbors of the property could have more time to iron out their differences.

The neighbors were angry when they found out the item had been bumped from the agenda after a “last-minute call” from the developer They railed against board members and city officials giving the developer special treatment.

But O’Shea has been asked by members of the neighborhood group to request a postponement.

O’Shea, a resident for 35 years, was more than happy to talk about his plans.

“I bought this place a year and half ago,” he said, of the 10,000-square-foot former ice cream factory next to Cambridge Lumber.

O’Shea is a cabinet maker who says he wants to stay and rent out the apartments, parking for which would be underground. He shares a driveway with one of the abutters, which is “the rub,” he said, and raises issues that have yet to be ironed out.

But few people know that he hopes to rent out one of the artist loft apartments to his daughter, Jocelyn O’Shea, a 2000 graduate of Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, who is attending  Oregon College of Arts and Crafts in Portland, studying fabric arts with a specialization in theatrical costumes.

“I can’t make her come back,” he said. “But if I don’t have a place for her to live, I know she won’t.”

In a brief phone interview, O’Shea named the person he talked to about the postponement — Michael Brandon, a member of a the North Cambridge Stabilization Committee, who was at the meeting when all the complaining was taking place, both in the meeting and in the hallway.

Brandon confirmed that he’d “suggested” the developer’s delay ahead of time.