The view from Richdale Avenue as envisioned in a plan to expand the Walden Square Apartments affordable housing complex in North Cambridge. (Image: WinnCompanies)

The owner of Walden Square Apartments, an affordable housing community in North Cambridge with 240 apartments over 21 buildings, plans to add a seven-story apartment building off Raymond Street with 103 more units. The building would use land occupied by parking lots and a drive aisle on the 7.3-acre complex, and not displace current residents during construction, WinnCompanies said.

The plan would use the city’s affordable housing overlay zoning adopted by the City Council in October and a combination of state and local financing, WinnCompanies said. The company, developer and manager of multifamily housing, has owned the complex for more than two decades.

The 103-unit apartment building would replace part of a parking lot. (Image: WinnCompanies)

Walden Square Apartments, at 21 Walden Square Road between Porter Square and Fresh Pond, has a waitlist of more than 900 households, the company said.

Forty-four of the proposed 103 apartments would be three- and four-bedroom units suitable for families; six more would be set aside for households with impaired mobility, and three would be set aside for households with sensory impairments such as blindness, the company said. The new building is proposed as completely accessible.

Construction could begin as soon as January and be done by June 2023, with full occupancy of the new units expected by January 2024, the company said.

The proposed building will include rooftop solar panels and “will be built to meet the state-of-the-art sustainability standards,” the company said. Other parts of the Walden Square property would see improvements too under current plans, such as more trees, better landscaping and new bicycle parking and parking spaces.

The company is offering tours to residents and held a Tuesday neighborhood meeting. A website for the project is at waldensquare2.com.

This post took significant amounts of material from a press release.