A Democracy Center tenant speaks Monday at a meeting about the closing of the Harvard Square, Cambridge, meetinghouse. (Photo: Yaakov Aldrich)

Soon-to-be displaced Cambridge nonprofits, activist groups and events were again dangled the possibility of returning to The Democracy Center after renovations, but with no certainty, and responded with skepticism Monday during the second of two informational meetings with little hard information.

The center, a beloved, long-standing meetinghouse in Harvard Square that is owned by a nonprofit called the Foundation for Civic Leadership, shocked its tenants with an April 6 announcement that it would close July 1 for the foreseeable future. On Friday it said the change was to make way for another FCL program called Democracy House, which focuses on youth leadership.

Though that’s three months away, the foundation doesn’t have building permits, plans, a builder, a timeline for the work or money budgeted, said Sue Heilman, the interim executive director of Democracy House, who answered questions Monday for some 110 in-person and online attendees on behalf of the foundation. That timeline may be optimistic: Cambridge officials and business owners have testified repeatedly over the years to how complicated local licensing is, and how hard it is to find contractors to work in the city. 

Peter McLaughlin, commissioner of the Cambridge Inspectional Services Department, confirmed that there are no permits on file for the address of The Democracy Center. “It’s very, very strange to me that they would do be able to do any of this without permits or a contractor. You can’t do much in a building without a permit,” he said.

For basic interior renovations at the center, once the owners had architects’ drawings in hand they might be able to get permits within two or three weeks – but as of this week there were no applications. Finding someone to do the hands-on work is the bigger problem: “Usually, good contractors are booked for a year or two in advance,” McLaughlin said.

That anyone would ask about the logistics at the Monday meeting was a surprise to Heilman. “I didn’t realize that people would want to know those details. So in retrospect, that might have been helpful, because obviously that’s what they want to know,” she said afterward. “I don’t have the answers, and that’s unfortunate, because it was not something I anticipated.”

She also was unable to say if the FCL might be able to renovate the building in phases to let groups stay in the space for longer – Heilman said she’d have to check – or could help the displaced organizations with direct financial aid while the center is closed.

“I know that we’ve been in touch with [the Cambridge Community Center], and I believe some others as well,” Heilman said.

A meeting was arranged for Monday between the organizers and Ian Simmons, the president and founder of the foundation, who was unable to attend either informational hearing, but Heilman agreed to reschedule it when she was told that was the first night of Passover. 

Need for repairs

Heilman maintained repeatedly on Monday that the decision to close the center was due to necessary repairs and space demands for Democracy House programs and had nothing to do with a recent controversy over a Jewish organization using the center amid tensions over the Middle East, or with the foundation’s board wanting to purge more radical groups from its roster to sanitize its political image.

Longtime tenants pushed back, acknowledging that they had been consulted by the FCL in past years about possible repairs to the building, but stressed that they never knew such discussions could lead to the center’s closing.

“We did give feedback on things that we would like to see improved about the building, and I don’t think that there’s anybody here that wouldn’t love to see greater investment in this building and be part of an envisioning process for that,” said Alan Palm, executive director of the Better Future Project. “There’s a big gap between saying ‘We want the window fixed’ and things like that to ‘We all need to be evicted on July 1,’ right?”

The meeting’s tone became more heated as the night went on and organizers grew frustrated with the lack of progress. Heilman was heckled several times as she gave closing remarks.

Despite the lack of plans, Heilman reaffirmed that extensive construction would begin in the summer, and that she hoped the Democracy House would work alongside community organizations in the center once it reopened.

An “existential threat”

The lack of details or definitive plans worried tenants, who said any time without a home would be precarious.

“Because the rents in Cambridge are astronomical, it’s absolutely impossible to find space in the city that’s accessible. The Democracy Center has really made it possible for us to create this beautiful experiment to support our community,” said Dara Bayer, a co-director of Cambridge Heart, a citizen-led unarmed crisis-response team. “And it’s been a pretty magical place to host so many different kinds of events to connect with all the other organizations that are residents here, and with all the other people who are doing really meaningful, really transformative work in the community, both internationally and locally. We are facing a significant existential threat – like this could mean we couldn’t exist anymore if we can’t find space.”

Early in the meeting, organizers with the Showbooking Collective, which worked with the center to rent space for music shows, announced it had more than 100 signatures on a petition with two demands – to keep the center open while negotiations continued, and the implementation of an accountability process in contact with the FCL. The document also had six pages worth of testimony with regard to how much the center has meant to local activists.

This post was updated April 18, 2024, with comments from Peter McLaughlin, commissioner of the Cambridge Inspectional Services Department.