Cambridge’s first cricket field is expected to open in May, and the same residents advising on the perfect place for a “crease” are lining up to reserve the space for Saturday and Sunday games, city staffers said Monday.
Despite happiness at the field’s arrival, members of the City Council are already looking past the cricket matches to other uses. An 8-1 vote in December 2021 appropriating $18.5 million for the city’s new 4-acre Larch Road Field came with the understanding it might be affordable housing or a prekindergarten in addition to open space.
Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui, whose family is from Pakistan, where cricket is considered a national pastime, seemed the most pleased with the sports use alone. “I’m glad we’ll have cricket there soon, and I intend to play,” Siddiqui said, inviting the councillors to join in as well.
Cricket is “one of the most popular sports in the world. For a city as diverse as Cambridge, it’s a very important message for our immigrant community that we do embrace culture and sports from around the world,” Siddiqui said. “This is a good use. And it’s not the exclusive use.”
The field at 185 Larch Road, across from Fresh Pond, hasn’t been available to the city since its purchase from the Buckingham, Browne & Nichols private day school. The former Buckingham Field came with a three-year hands-off clause as the school transitions its sports to a 20-acre athletics complex in Watertown – on land the sale to Cambridge helped buy.
With the three years at an end, cricket is the first use until a process decides the next one. Councillors were eager to know more about that and ensure they are involved from the start, and that other stakeholders in the neighborhood and citywide have a say.
The eagerness was evident – vice mayor Alanna Mallon said she expected to work over the next couple of weeks on a policy order to get a process started, since the council is off for the Patriots’ Day holiday and meets again April 24.
“It’s great that in a temporary sort of way we’re going to be providing a playing field for cricket,” Mallon said. “When we approved this expenditure, many of us around this table agreed that there’s a lot of open space in West Cambridge, and not a lot of affordable housing.”
There’s no reason a open space and a sports field can’t coexist with affordable housing, especially if the housing is built high but with a smaller footprint, councillor Quinton Zondervan said. He was countered almost immediately by councillor Dennis Carlone, who liked the idea of affordable housing on the back portion of the lot away from Fresh Pond with prekindergarten on the first floor – but said “this is not the site for a high-rise.” It’s a debate carried over from committee meetings on Affordable Housing Overlay zoning.
City staff had no timeline in mind for moving on from cricket, deputy city manager Owen O’Riordan said.
“We haven’t thought about anything beyond the interim use at this point,” O’Riordan said. “That’s certainly not the end of the story.”
Councillors were warned to keep in mind a hidden use of the land: stormwater storage that was buried in Buckingham Field after “a very serious flooding event” on Poplar Road in 1997, infrastructure now betrayed only by a grassy ridge at the edge of the green. “It is critical as we think about the alternatives here that we think about the amount of storage of stormwater that exists in that space,” O’Riordan said. “If that doesn’t exist, then you are making that community more vulnerable again.”
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I said it here first! It’s just a matter of time before the city proposes affordable housing in parks and open spaces. This park will be the first one to go, and more down the line.
will the new housing include parking? The poor larch neighborhoods are about to get a major influx of traffic!
Seems as usual that its green space that will suffer every time when there is a desire for development in this city. Whether its parks or even shade trees, money keeps going to growth rather than maintenance and improving quality of life for those who have lived here for decades.
Homeowners who have lived here for years have all become millionaires by artificially restricting the housing supply through exclusionary zoning.
Meanwhile, 6500 Cambridge families are on the CHA waitlist for affordable housing.
It’s a giant lot—there is plenty of room for both green space and affordable homes.
Those people bought their place knowing there is open space. They bought their place, knowing it will not be thickly settled. That is why it is still a desirable place to live. Because it is such a desirable place, 6.5K people are on some list wanting to live in Cambridge. Come up with a list of people wanting to live by the Boston Common and there will 20K people on that list. Whats your argument then? The Boston Common is big enough to have affordable housing and open space?
There are no regulations forcing these individuals to live within the city boundary of Cambridge. It’s not a health requirement, job requirement, or any other kind of requirement. It’s a want. Not a need. I want to live on Marlborough Street the last house next to the Boston Common. But can I ??
@HelloCambridge I totally agree.
@EastCamb “people bought their place knowing there is open space….it will not be thickly settled.”
People probably said the same thing in 1870! Cities change. They always have. You don’t get to freeze things after you arrive.
Here’s a quote from Nimbee, a parody of NIMBYs:
“I dislike anyone or anything that threatens to change my neighborhood from what it was like the day I moved here. Any change that happened up until that moment is totally cool, though, and should be given historic preservation protection in perpetuity.”
I can’t say it any better than that
Source:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/02/04/nimbee-bee-mascot-satire/
I would like to know how many identified “nimbys” are ever interviewed for their point of view instead of being tarred and feathered because they inherited their grandparents’ house. They are not millionaires because the money they get from their sale would be totally eaten up buy another property at current retail prices. So where will they go?
This was hoped to be Affordable Housing around the edges. It abuts other neighborhoods and should be contextual. the 1960s-1980s “Tower in the Park” Zondervan is advocating for didn’t work because of tall isolation, construction, infrastructure and mechanical costs. Shorter buildings can yield the same number of units with a more human scale.
This is city-owned land. Nice to have the luxury of an athletic field. But if there is a crisis, please consider housing as an integral part of redevelopment here. It can be a new campus, not shoe-horned in dense neighborhoods.with no set-backs and green space It can have elbow room here.