First version of lab zoning to the Planning Board gets knocked out as confusing and overly broad
The directory in Fairlane Properties’ Geek Offices on Cambridge Street in an image posted in 2019. (Photo: Geek Offices via Facebook)
A citizen zoning petition that would limit where labs can go in the city was rejected Tuesday by the Planning Board, with most members finding it overly broad and confusingly written – too much so to be improved for reconsideration before it expires April 4.
The zoning’s goal was to keep commercial research-and-development laboratories from outcompeting the creation of housing and to keep the city’s squares and business districts lively, proponents said.
“We should get involved in this discussion, potentially,” said board member Tom Sieniewicz, giving context to his vote against the petition. “But that’s a measured planning process that I would imagine would take years, frankly, to do properly.”
The 6-1 vote – member Hugh Russell was the outlier in wanting to give proponents an immediate chance to iron out language with city staff – doesn’t end the discussion. The petition’s automatic referral by the City Council on Oct. 31 sent it not just to the Planning Board, but to the council’s own Ordinance Committee.
The petition is also nearly identical to zoning suggested by councillor Quinton Zondervan and debated in September and October, which councillors declined to forward as zoning ready for the Planning Board and Ordinance Committee. It was adopted Oct. 3 for discussion in committees focused on economic development and long-term planning – and came before the council Oct. 31 again as a citizens’ petition.
Zoning proposed by councillors doesn’t get forwarded automatically; zoning proposed by citizens does.
There was annoyance at what seemed like an end run around procedure, but Zondervan said Tuesday that was not the case. “When the residents of Cambridge saw that [my] petition was not being processed as a zoning petition, they took it upon themselves to file it as a zoning petition,” he told Planning Board members. It was an accounting confirmed by Lee Farris, a resident who said she helped gather the petition’s 250-plus signatures because “we didn’t want to wait for months before the zoning could be considered.”
Substance of this petition
The outcome was much as several councillors expected in October. The idea of diverting Zondervan’s proposal has been “to actually have a conversation about the substance of this petition before it went to Ordinance because, as we know, the Ordinance Committee stuff starts the clock. And it’s difficult to have a real substantive conversation [there],” vice mayor Alanna Mallon said at the time.
The zoning starts by adding a definition to a vague category of uses – that of a “technical office for research and development, laboratory & research facility” – and applies the definition to restrict new labs from “vulnerable squares and zoned business districts” while grandfathering labs in place before Jan. 1.
Michael Grill of Fairlane properties, majority owner since 2008 of a building in Wellington-Harrington at 1035 Cambridge St. that houses small and large tech and biotech tenants, cited that language as an example of the petition’s lack of clarity. “What’s grandfathered? A tenant? A space? A use?” Grill asked.
Board members and business leaders
Planning Board members had similar complaints when summing up their opposition. There are “all the language issues, the lack of definitions and the confusion of the text,” H Theodore Cohen said. Members also said repeatedly that the language of the zoning was too broad.
“It seemed the equivalent of St. Louis, Missouri, banning beer making or something like that, because laboratory research and entrepreneurship is really central to the ethos of this place, as it has been for centuries,” Sieniewicz said.
Business and technology leaders piled on as well. During public comment, there was perhaps predictable opposition voiced by Beth O’Neill Maloney, executive director for the Kendall Square Association, and Sarah Gallop, of MIT’s Office of Government and Community Relations. But Denise Jillson, executive director of the Harvard Square Business Association, spoke as well – and she oversees an area the zoning seeks to protect.
“It is clear that due to Covid, many of our office spaces remain empty or sparsely used in businesses large and small, and we continue to take a hit because office workers are not here to support them. Adaptive reuse of office space is critical, be it housing or labs,” Jillson said, noting more opposition to the petition from the city’s chamber of commerce and business associations in East Cambridge and Central Square. Meanwhile, she said, “Cambridge has nearly the highest percentage of affordable housing in the state, and that number will continue to grow.”
Respecting science, advocating housing
The drubbing came despite efforts by Farris and fellow presenter Kavish Gandhi to show how the zoning respected science and innovation and was focused on economics rather than issues such as biosafety or light and noise impacts. Gandhi pointed to a letter in support of the zoning about young biomedical students and scientists who should be working in new labs. “This critical group is being forced out of Cambridge by their inability to find affordable housing,” Gandhi said. “If you restrict the lab use, this facilitates more potential housing to be built.”
The meeting opened with an eloquent plea by Duane Callender – the first signer of the petition, which became known by his name as a result – that focused on housing from a perspective rarely heard at Planning Board meetings: a lifelong Cantabrigian who became homeless for a time and now lives in inclusionary housing on a Section 8 voucher.
“The petition was signed by a great number of low-income tenants, because we know that if there are new labs developed in places like Harvard and Porter, it is going to get a lot harder to create and preserve affordable housing in this city. Take our petition seriously, and try to appreciate our intent,” Callender said. “No one is afraid of science. We would like to see a balance of commercial development with housing of all types so that more people like me can come back to Cambridge … Every unit we build makes a difference for someone in my shoes.”
This post was updated Dec. 26, 2022, to fix the spelling of Duane Callender’s name.
I am tired of this “affordable housing” argument. I was all for it until we started overdoing it and injecting it into every single decision.
Cambridge is a desirable place to live. That is why a lot of people want to live here. So it is affordable for those who can afford it. If you cannot afford it, there are many other housing options. You cannot expect to pay rent for a place like Osceola, KS, and want to live in a place like Cambridge, MA. That is not reality.
By restricting labs, you are restricting entrepreneurship. You are constraining the golden goose that pays for your parks, bike lanes, and nice paved roads (and even supports affordable housing). The small 10-person lab founded in one of the squares could be the Moderna of tomorrow employing 1000’s of people.
Quote – “Cambridge has nearly the highest percentage of affordable housing in the state, and that number will continue to grow.”
You can thank the labs for that.
Does anyone think that if this were an upzoning proposed by a multi-billion-dollar corporation to build more labs anyone on the Planning Board would have objected that there wasn’t enough time to get the language right? When our city government has the opportunity to shovel gobs of money into the pockets of giant corporations, while taking a cut for the Cambridge city treasury, somehow there’s all the time in the world to keep refiling until all the important players are happy. When residents who are not fabulously wealthy try to look out for their own interests, suddenly it’s really important to have everything totally perfect from the get-go because there just is not enough time or interest to work on the language. Besides there’s a study going on in a couple of City Council committees, and that grinds everything to a halt. Right?
Good decision. Glad we gave people interested in progress rather than stifling development to protect their piece while excluding so many others
As one of the petitioners, I want to clarify that the purpose of the petition is not, at all, to stifle innovation. We love science, labs, and the innovation that they bring. This petition would not regulate any existing labs, only new development. The question we started with was: How do we balance the economic and scientific upside of new labs with our goals of more housing and lively squares/business districts? The fact is that the lab use is 3-5x more profitable than housing at the same density. That means that, barring regulation, new development around our squares and corridors may in many cases be developed into the lab use *rather than* into more desperately needed housing, affordable or market. We came to the specific regulations and restricted areas of the petition after careful deliberation, to both achieve our goal of allowing housing to compete in these commercial corridors and squares while also allowing labs to thrive in other parts of Cambridge.
I’m happy to answer questions from a personal perspective, and also receive feedback, and also want to say that we are certainly considering changes to the petition based on feedback from the Planning Board and the community.
@kavish the pricing indicates that there is demand for substantially more lab space. Labs, housing, retail all require square footage. We balance this need by building a lot more of everything through substantially higher density.
Adding restrictions of lab zoning belies the true intent. Having experienced the awful low density result of palo Alto that was a country club for the super rich, I want to avoid that outcome. Cambridge is desirable for many to work, play, and live. Produce the space needed to accommodate as much of that as possible.
@taguscove:
I’m certainly open to entertaining a separate (or combined!) proposal to allow for higher densities of housing on these corridors. Such planning is already underway for Cambridge st and other corridors.
I don’t really anticipate the lab demand shrinking anytime soon, whereas the housing need is urgent and immediate. I appreciate your concern in principle but I don’t think that your advocacy for higher densities in many of these areas is incompatible with our proposal, or a proposal that aims to prioritize housing among other uses, as this does.
I think fundamentally I’m at odds with a vision that just unrestricting development in general will lead to outcomes that is socially advantageous / one that “we” (by which I mean Cambridge present and future citizens) prefer. I think a planning process is necessary, which by necessity prioritizes certain uses for certain spaces.
Definitely appreciate the good faith engagement.
I also want to add that I think that while I acknowledge the “economic demand” for more lab space, the need for more housing supply and affordable housing, combined with active support and expansion of tenants rights and a further commitment to ideas of social housing, is a broader “moral demand,” in a sense, that arises from the increasingly worse affordability crisis. I don’t believe myself the market will “sort things out,” but even assuming that vision, there is a clear moral demand to prioritize housing as a first use (development takes time!) given the crisis that confronts us
I’m far more favorable on using market signals to show what’s needed. That currently is an acute need for a whole lot more lab space. I see adding zoning constraints as counter-productive. It entrenches privileged low density zoning that is is seen in West Cambridge.
This shows that the overwhelming housing created is from major projects of 8+ units. This data really surprised me; i previously thought that SFH to condo conversion was a major source of unit creation. The data shows that major new units comes from major new development projects.
https://crschmidt.medium.com/history-of-cambridges-housing-construction-61b89b1ed731
If Cambridge would allow more of the 20+ story residential builds like what we see at alewife and recently at central, that’s what creates many more residential units. I believe that lab zoning would substantially limit lab construction, while not doing much to alleviate the residential housing need. that comes from allowing more construction of 4+ story residential buildings.
Philosophically, I am heavily influenced by my experience with in my view disastrously bad zoning of Palo Alto and the SF Peninsula area. I experienced an entrenched and privileged set of existing residents use their local democratic processes to stifle new development and exclude prospective new residents who wanted to live and work there. I have a more favorable view on “unrestricted development” as a means of signaling the volume and kind of development needed. In general, I would like to see a whole lot more of everything.
Thanks for your comments. Again, I think I just differ with your view of what will happen, and have empirical reasons to do so. I agree that we need more 4+ story residential buildings. Definitely would be interested in talking more about specific examples of biotech lab development that I personally believe could have been large(ish) housing developments in other regulatory settings, in Central, Porter, Harvard, etc.