Four Alewife projects: What the boom brings us
This graphic will be added to a story from last week highlighting the latest project proposed for the Alewife area, but it’s worthwhile to look at the figures on their own. With all four area projects considered, we’re looking about 1 million square feet in development, bringing more than 1,900 residents making a daily 5,080 car trips and 2,620 bus and T trips. As noted before, 68 percent of the proposed units are studios or have one bedroom; 31 percent have two bedrooms; and the family-size, three-bedroom units make up less than 1 percent.
These figures are the most recent available from the Community Development Department and the developers, with much gratitude to Rich McKinnon of The McKinnon Co. for his help in compiling data — the applications collected by the city don’t always share the same kinds of figures, making apples-to-apples comparisons more difficult.
There is no official submitted figure for residents of 165 Cambridgepark Drive, but the developer has been asked for one. Until then, an estimate based on unit counts from the other developments has been plugged in. As usual, if anyone spots errors or areas to explore, please say so in a comment or e-mail and we’ll try to respond as quickly as possible.
Nice. All four properties are in the 100-year flood zone; good place for high density housing, eh?
Since these thousands of residents all need to be in the Alewife rotary area, the just-passing-through traffic will push to the residential side streets not designed for high volume commuting. At least now West Cambridge and Avon Hill will feel the impact of huge development projects that are conveniently non-existent in their neighborhoods, as Rt. 16 traffic (which is higher volume than most realize) will divert down Huron to Walden, Upland, and Linnaean.
Also the Cambridge Highlands will get the traffic we warned them about when they gave their approval to the Concord-Alewife zoning as the only resident representatives allowed in the discussions of the planning committee.
Hard to imagine the square footage of the buildings add up to about one Forest City Central Square building *more* than the Prudential Tower.
Accolades to all who helped make this possible.