Meetings on courthouse parking are delayed, coinciding with citizen complaints of illegality
A proposal to develop East Cambridge’s former Edward J. Sullivan Courthouse, left, looks to leased space in the city-owned First Street Garage, right. (Photo: Marc Levy)
Two steps in deciding the future of the increasingly blighted site of East Cambridge’s former courthouse were delayed this week with the cancellation of a Tuesday meeting of the Planning Board.
The cancellation was attributed by city officials to illness, but comes as lawyers for a citizens group warned the city that holding its meeting would break the law.
As laid out in a city law adopted in 2013 about the “disposition” of land, the city manager holds a community meeting and issues a report, which the City Council refers to hearings – including to the Planning Board. In this case, the city manager’s report came out June 26, two days into the council’s two-month summer break. “The City Council has yet to receive the report,” the East Cambridge Planning Team noted in a Friday letter to the board.
Letters from the group and its lawyers followed Monday to emphasize that the process – not to mention the city manager’s report itself – was flawed.
Then, Tuesday, the board canceled its meeting.
“Unexpected illness”
It was canceled “due to an unexpected lack of a quorum,” the board said – later identified as a member’s “unexpected illness” by Lee Gianetti, the city’s director of communications and community relations. More information was requested of city staff Wednesday.
The Planning Board’s hearing is now set for 6:30 p.m. Aug. 13. That moves the City Council’s public hearing on the topic to Sept. 9, because “the City Council cannot hold its public hearing until after it receives [a recommendation] from the Planning Board,” Mayor Marc McGovern said, affirming information from Gianetti. Additionally, city law says meetings must be advertised at least 14 days beforehand.
Originally the City Council was to hold its own hearing July 29, the same day as its only meeting for the months of July and August.
Long-delayed development
The Aug. 13 and Sept. 9 meetings are to help councillors decide whether to vote in favor of giving courthouse developer Leggat McCall a 30-year lease on 420 parking spaces and 9,000 square feet of ground-floor retail area in the city-owned First Street Garage, at 55 First St. Leggat McCall needs the parking to satisfy the special permit granted it by the Planning Board to redevelop the Edward J. Sullivan Courthouse at 40 Thorndike St. – a 22-story structure built from 1966 to 1974, emptied between 2009 and 2014 and under a $33 million purchase and sale agreement since 2012. The current plan is to remove the top floors and rebuild the structure as 20 stories of office space with 24 units of housing.
Six of nine council votes are needed to lease the space.
Construction was long delayed by a lawsuit filed by neighbors who believed only the government could get away with violating local zoning on the height of buildings, and a sale to private developers ended the exemption. Courts didn’t agree.
The parking space and retail lease is the new sticking point.
In addition to pointing to the missed step in the disposition process, East Cambridge Planning Team leaders Chuck Hinds and Heather Hoffman complained that the meeting scheduled for Tuesday, had it taken place, wouldn’t have given citizens enough time to “digest this 45-page report and provide cogent public comment to help guide the Planning Board’s deliberations.”
Study called flawed
But the parking study done by city staff to help guide Planning Board members and city councillors is also “fatally flawed,” Hinds and Hoffman say, pointing to spaces identified as available to the public when they are not and spaces they say are counted twice, and that data identified as being gathered on weekdays were actually gathered on Saturdays. In addition, they say there is already a waiting list for use of the parking garage that would see 420 parking spaces subtracted and given to drivers at the redeveloped courthouse.
“The fact that there’s a waiting list of unspecified size for non-resident monthly passes, which would presumably be mostly for people wanting to park during the workday, gets no analysis,” Hinds and Hoffman write. “If there is sufficient capacity to give [Leggat McCall] 420 passes, why has the city not offered passes to people on the waiting list?”
The letter from ECPT lawyer Olympia A. Bowker of the Boston firm McGregor & Legere adds complaints, including that the city’s disposition law calls for analysis of alternatives to leasing the parking spaces and retail, but the report lacks them. The law also calls for explanation of “any actual or projected annual revenues or costs” for the property.
“The report blatantly skips this requirement,” Bowker said in her letter.
I hope this proposal goes through and the courthouse gets developed. It’s not doing any good in the current state. The area is well suited for retail and commerical space considering proximity to the city core and proximity to lechmere station.
So you don’t care that the City’s own parking study says there aren’t anywhere close to enough parking spaces in the First Street Garage to support this lease? You think the end you want justifies any means to get there? It’s okay to tell people on the wait list, that’s been in place for years, that Leggat McCall’s project is more important than they are, so Leggat McCall gets to jump the queue? It’s okay to tell people who need to drive to work in East Cambridge that Leggat McCall’s project is more important than they are? It’s okay to tell people who live in East Cambridge that they can pay for a parking pass but rarely find a place to park as it is that it should get significantly worse for them because Leggat McCall’s project is more important than they are? It’s okay to tell every other developer that they have to solve their own parking problems, but Leggat McCall doesn’t because Leggat McCall’s project is more important than they are? Dang. Nice world view you got there. Please enlighten me as to why Leggat McCall’s desire to make huge profits is more important than anyone else’s needs. How much corporate welfare is too much?
I prioritize making Boston a beacon of technology and advanced research. I also support making Cambridge a less car-centric city with easier pedestrian and bike paths. This emphasis on cars in an already congested area does not make sense. I am happy for Leggat McCall to make huge profits if it means that desperately needed square footage gets built for new residents and businesses. If that leads to other huge developments in Cambridge, all the better from my perspective.
The team opposing this development does not represent the true interest of the neighborhood residents. Most people want this development to happen. The building is a sore sight.
What is the alternative according to Heather and the team? Leave it rotting for years as you put up one legal defense against others? I walk past it almost every day. Its decaying. Its crumbling. You have a better alternative (with financial backing) that will solve this problem, then propose it. Come prepared with a solution and financial backing. Stop building pie in the skies of issues and problems. Be a part of the solution or get out of the way so residents in that area can have a nicer looking building that is put to use.
You make the fundamental error of equating the First Street Garage proposal and the courthouse redevelopment. They are not the same thing, and the neighborhood is far more united on the former than on the latter. My position on the courthouse is irrelevant. Talk to me about the garage. Just saying we have to give up more and more and more and more until there’s nothing left to give so that Leggat McCall doesn’t have to solve its own parking issues like every other developer in East Cambridge is indefensible. Address what I’ve said and stop wasting everyone’s time with your side issues. Let’s not reward bullies.
Fine. Separate the issues. I fully support the First Street Garage and Courthouse development proposal. Marc McGovern is a longtime record with an excellent record at Cambridge mayor. He has my support.
So you are unwilling or unable to answer my questions because Marc McGovern is god and you are incapable of rational thought in his glorious presence? I do not believe for one second that the mayor has that elevated an opinion of himself. This is not a situation where a normal person with normal faculties cannot formulate a defensible opinion based on reason. I’m sorry you’re unwilling to make the effort.
Leggat McCall needs to buy their own piece of property and build a parking garage for their building. Otherwise they are simply a corporate parasite looking for a handout. Don’t be a parasite Legatt McCall, be a responsible company.