The Planning Board reluctantly took the final step to allow 95 affordable apartments to be added to a development for lower-income families in North Cambridge despite serious concerns with the design of bicycle and pedestrian routes and tree removal and replacement. The decision on July 2 exposed the advantages and drawbacks of the city’s Affordable Housing Overlay zoning, which eliminates most zoning restrictions for developers of 100 percent affordable housing projects.
Board members’ discomfort with the Walden Square II project near Danehy Park was obvious. “I think we’re better off than we were,” said chair Mary Flynn, referring to design changes made after a first hearing on the project March 12. “But there’s still serious issues around circulation [of bicycles and pedestrians]. I’m concerned about the trees, too.”
“Every additional amount of effort that you’ve put into this project has improved it. But there are still concerns,” Flynn told project proponents. Under the AHO, the board has no power to approve or reject the project, only to comment on the design and whether it adhered to the zoning ordinance’s guidelines, she and other members pointed out.
The $80.4 million project by national for-profit housing developer WinnCompanies’ WinnDevelopment unit will add 95 apartments to the 240-unit Walden Square site near Danehy Park. Winn will construct two new buildings, nine stories and six stories, on the property. Sixty-two of the new units will be two bedrooms or more, filling a need for low-income family housing.
Ed Cafasso, a spokesperson for WinnDevelopment, said the company “has used constructive feedback to consistently adjust its plans for more than three years” and will continue to work on improvement in line with Planning Board comments “where possible.” Cafasso said the design plan includes “a commitment to plant more than 150 trees, improve open space for Walden Square residents and install a sustainable solar energy array.”
The board voted to send its comments to the city – the last step in approval of a 100 percent affordable housing project under the overlay – although some members said they didn’t believe the latest design for the project complied with Affordable Housing Overlay goals that housing fit in with the neighborhood and promote cycling and pedestrians. “Candidly, I think that’s something we should talk about as a board, how this project meets or does not meet the Affordable Housing Overlay design guidelines. And I think we were not maybe as clear about that last time as we should have been,” said member Mary Lydecker, referring to the first board hearing in March.
Member Ashley Tan questioned the AHO process. ”Are there any changes that need to be made to this process? Is there enough community process involved right now?” Tan said. She called for a discussion that involved Community Development Department staff and the public.
Funding approval already
In another example of the board’s powerlessness, members said they were surprised that the city’s Affordable Housing Trust had voted to help fund the expansion without waiting for a report from the Planning Board. The trust approved a $18.8 million loan to WinnDevelopment on June 27.
Iram Farooq, assistant city manager for community development, said the loan was “contingent” on the report from the Planning Board, and senior manager for housing development Cassie Arnaud said the trust had acted before a Planning Board vote on at least one previous occasion. The actual language of the trust’s approval of the WinnDevelopment loan says one of the conditions for granting the loan is “the Trust’s review and consideration of Planning Board final AHO advisory design review report.”
The trust isn’t scheduled to meet again until September, which was one reason not to wait until the Planning Board acted, Arnaud said. State agencies that will help fund the project have deadlines for developers to demonstrate they have local financial support. “There’s a lot of things that are tied to having a commitment of local funding in order to be able to queue up all of the other funding sources that a project needs. You need the local funding commitment to be able to begin that process,” Arnaud said.
But is the loan from the city housing agency a commitment of local funds if it’s “contingent” on the report from the Planning Board? No one asked, and neither Farooq nor Arnaud addressed that issue.
City spokesperson Jeremy Warnick said it’s “common” for developers to “pursue financing and permitting concurrently.” Walden Square II is the fourth of seven AHO projects that won funding commitments from the Affordable Housing Trust before the Planning Board review was completed, he said.
In those cases, “funding commitments are conditioned on the Trust’s review of the advisory design review final report from the Planning Board,” Warnick said. When the Planning Board reports are completed, “those reports are transmitted as a new item to the Trust so that the Trust can review, discuss and accept the report in a later meeting pursuant to that condition in each funding commitment,” Warnick said. “If the review is not satisfactory, the commitments could be altered,” Warnick said.
Incremental improvement
The time pressure dismayed Planning Board chair Flynn. “Why don’t we just slow down a little?” she said. “I mean, I know that it’s important to get affordable housing. I totally understand that, I understand that [there is a] very long waiting list, but it just seems to me that we’re kind of throwing caution to the wind here.”
Other board members said WinnDevelopment’s design changes didn’t significantly improve the project’s bicycle and pedestrian routing and tree canopy, two issues the Planning Board had identified in its first review of the project in March. “I see you have one more tree removed, and you have three more shade trees. So there really hasn’t been much of a shift in that tree balance,” Lydecker said. In March, the board had urged WinnDevelopment to plant more large shade trees and fewer small “ornamental trees.” Project development consultant Matthew Robayna said the newest plan replaced “100 percent of the tree caliper inches” of the trees that would be removed, a claim that didn’t address the board’s request.
As for bicycle and pedestrian routes, Lydecker said: “The project team has made changes they can here and there. I think the circulation is still confusing.” Member H Theodore Cohen said he had walked in the development the day before the meeting and “I will point out that the circulation is really horrible right now. And anything that’s done to improve it will be a great improvement.” But Cohen also said of the new design that he was “perfectly comfortable with saying that this is not yet where it should be.”
A green light during a process
As board members continued to criticize Winn’s design and call for the company to spend more time to improve it, the company’s lawyer, James Rafferty, said the approval process had been “underway for three years.” He reviewed the history, saying Winn’s initial proposal for one new building was “roundly criticized by the staff, neighbors and others.”
There was no hearing on that idea, and the company returned in March with its current plan for two buildings, Rafferty said. Trying to fix bike and pedestrian circulation on a “tight site” with few separated bike lanes and crosswalks “has consumed a tremendous amount of time,” Rafferty said.
Nevertheless, “at the end of the day, what we’re doing at this point is following the report that we received from the first meeting,” he said.“This is not something that has not been given proper attention, it’s been given considerable attention,” he said. With a second Planning Board meeting, “there was every reason to believe that this meeting will conclude with comments as the process calls for but it will allow the project to go forward,” Rafferty said.
“Property acquisition” cost
Board members praised the developer for providing more affordable housing and prioritizing larger family-sized units. Lydecker and Cohen, while criticizing the design, said limitations of the site might not provide much room for improvement. Lydecker said the original Walden Square Apartments, which takes up most of the site, were built in a time when cars were ascendant: “Bottom line, for getting housing no site is going to be great in Cambridge. It’s been built up a lot,” Cohen said.
WinnDevelopment initially included a cost for “property acquisition” in the project budget, although it already owns the site. The Affordable Housing Trust required the company to remove the item from the project cost as a condition of approving its loan.
Cafasso, the company spokesperson, said the cost represented the “property value” of the site where the buildings will be constructed. Asked why a developer would include such a cost, city spokesperson Warnick said: “Generally speaking, including acquisition costs in a development budget can be beneficial to affordable housing projects as it can sometimes increase the amount of tax credit equity the development can raise.”
City easements
The project still faces a legal wrinkle. The site includes two easements owned by the city. Both were supposed to be used for “public pedestrian ways” but Rafferty acknowledged they are not.
Heather Hoffman, a title examiner who frequently criticizes city development actions, disclosed the existence of the easements in public comment at the Planning Board meeting, to the surprise of at least one board member. Rafferty said it was no surprise and WinnDevelopment had already been negotiating with city officials about transferring them to the developer, which is necessary to proceed with the expansion, he said. The City Council would have to approve any transfer, Rafferty said.
Registry of Deeds records show that one easement contains 111,800 square feet. The other is only 453 square feet; their location in the site is not clear.
Former City Council candidate Federico Muchnik, a filmmaker who started a campaign against the project on the progressive website Change.org, said he and a group of supporters intend to keep fighting. He has collected 1,026 signatures on an online petition to stop the expansion, he said. Muchnik said he didn’t know the addresses of signers so can’t say how many live in the development; he added that he believes 70 percent live in Cambridge.
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The biggest manager of military housing in the country tried to “charge themselves” $5 million for land they already own?? (How does THAT work… Bono guesses you just “do it,” and then, if you get caught, well, hey, you just drop it, and then you can turn around and claim you’re being “generous,” by agreeing to instructions to remove it… Get your damn hands out of that cookie jar!!) It’s all very patriotic, I’m sure!
WinnDevelopment’s claim that this process has consumed 3 years of the company’s and the city’s time neglects to mention that much of that time was spent with Winn trying to improve living conditions at Walden Square Road. Then Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui penned a letter to the developer stating there would be no public funds until Winn addressed the “egregious and unresolved pest infestation”, the “lack of appropriate communication from management to residents”, and the “environment of intimidation”.
When Cassie Arnaud states “There’s a lot of things that are tied to having a commitment of local funding in order to be able to queue up all of the other funding sources that a project needs. You need the local funding commitment to be able to begin that process,” she is effectively sending a message to federal and state funders that the AHT has approved Winn’s slab-and-tunnel project when, in fact, approval is contingent upon the Trust’s review of the Planning Board’s (yet to be published) report card on the project. In politics, perception is everything. Arnaud and the CDD’s statements appear to make funding look like a done deal.
But as spokesperson Warnick points out: “If the review is not satisfactory, the commitments could be altered.”
To learn more:
https://www.openspacefilmproject.net/thefuture
https://www.change.org/stoptheslab
This project is an excellent example of why we need the AHO, and why NIMBYs make everything worse.
In an ideal world, we could have a stronger review process, and the Planning Board would then be able to force Winn to fix the pedestrian issues. At least in the previous design the pedestrian issues were real, and they may well still be a legitimate problem in this design.
Unfortunately, we don’t live in an ideal world, and we have lots of NIMBYs who will try to kill any sort of affordable housing that is more than 2 stories (and sometimes even that isn’t acceptable). Given access to veto power, they would just come up with another reason to delay, and another, and another, and eventually kill the project. This is what happened to the proposed affordable housing project at 2072 Mass Ave, when the BZA kept saying “make another change” until they succeeded in stopping the building.
Thus the need for the Affordable Housing Overlay to take away vetos. The downside is that we sometimes end up with worse designs… but at least the building gets built. Thanks to the NIMBYs’ war against affordable housing, that’s the best alternative we have.
Who is Mary Flynn? How do these folks get chosen?
Just build the thing, good Lord. The site is already developed. People need places to live.
Giving free money to slum lords is never a good idea. All the talk about lack of tree canopy and accessible walking routes for the rich people that live all around Walden Park fail to address the biggest issue with the project: Wynn properties treats these people like 3rd class citizens. The buildings are infested with bed bugs, no one can do laundry in the building due to the cockroaches, and if anyone tries to complain they tell them they can leave if they don’t like it, because they have a waiting list in the hundreds of people that can move in. The only people benefiting from this development is the Wynn family.
This project is the perfect example of the flaws with the AHO. This neglectful developer is not only putting up a bad building, but getting city money to do it.
Inflating asset value as Winn did to try and receive funding is the same fraud Trump Inc was convicted of in NYS.
The tunnel and pedestrian traffic flow of this project will be a disaster for the many kids and families who use the underpass as a safe alternative to connect North Cambridge.
But as one City Councilor always says, “Its all about the units”
Itamar Turner-Trauring- Cambridge residents have allowed thousands of affordable and market rate housing units to be built since the demise of rent control. Weve lead with one of the highest % of new housing in the state. Only two AH projects received community pushback, Temple Place and the highly problematic 2072 Mass Ave. where the developer chose NOT to build under the AHO. So accusing your neighbors of NIMBYism is completely dishonest and uncalled for.
Where will this actually be? Hopefully close to bike lanes and the T.
kdolan: Let’s look at some evidence!
Example #1: I used to not pay attention to Cambridge housing politics, until I saw a notice for an affordable housing project in my neighborhood, what became Frost Terrace. So I went to the meeting, and I heard the neighbors try to make the project much smaller with a range of utterly ridiculous arguments.
Example #2: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/07/20/structure-with-affordable-housing-could-blend-more-with-its-neighborhood-developer-hears/
“some neighbors were concerned about the lack of parking and loading zones provided around Mellen Street and called for a new parking study to be done. Some said the new building – a large, square structure – did not adhere to the character of the neighborhood. ”
Example #3: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2024/02/12/senior-affordable-housing-project-in-cambridge-would-build-space-for-services-on-its-ground-floor/
‘“We’re opposing the six stories of the building – the Affordable Overlay provides for a limited increase, and the number of stories here are far more than what we would consider limited,” said Ann George at the Planning Board meeting. She was also concerned about the building being an area designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency as a flood zone, and about potential noise during construction. George also said there has been an increase in crime on the property since it has been acquired by B’nai B’rith.
Rafferty said the building is not, in fact, in a FEMA-designated floodplain.’
Example #4: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/05/04/state-backlog-gives-third-delay-to-jefferson-park-which-a-group-of-10-residents-petitioned-to-stop/
“A group of 10 residents led by Madeleine Aster, a North Cambridge neighborhood activist, asserted that the project would damage the environment because of “new and unique circumstances,” including tree removal, reduced parking and construction traffic.”
So that’s 4 additional examples, without even trying to look very hard.
So, again, there are NIMBYs trying to stop or shrink almost every single affordable housing project in Cambridge.
I hope they build a delivery and Uber area into the design that’s doesn’t block the road and bike lanes. I’m constantly swerving my bike around both on new street between danehy and the new buildings behind Whole Foods.
Itamar-TT- Here you go again twisting facts to fit your narrative.
The “evidence” is that all these projects have been or will be built.
Frost Terrace is an excellent example of a community working together to get a better project. Even the developer acknowledged that. Same will happen with Mellon Street and Blanchard Road. Jefferson Park was never in danger of being stopped, except for the fact that that the Trust seems to have no oversight on spending.
Perhaps this process is messy and unsettling to you, but public input is an important part of our democracy, compromises make better projects, and we have been very successful in building a livable, human scale city with more subsidized housing than almost any other city.
There is no justification for name calling to silence people into doing things your way.
kdolan: Of course public input is valuable! The question is not whether there should be public input, but which process we should have for deciding how to apply that always-contradictory input.
Every process has its benefits and drawbacks. Our current process removes many veto points, based on the fact that NIMBYs try to convert feedback mechanisms with veto power into ways to kill or shrink these projects. The drawback is that useful feedback can also be ignored, for example pedestrian street design in the previous design of the Winn building (the new design may be bad or may have improved the situation, I don’t know).
Frost Terrace involved feedback about keeping trees, which the developers did, but also NIMBY neighbors trying to reduce the height of the project (to preserve their view) and the footprint (to add more parking and therefore reduce competition for street parking). Their perspective was that affordable housing is valuable in the abstract, but not in this specific case unless the building next to them was shrunk dramatically. Thankfully the BZA chose to stick to the current design and ignored the requests to make the building smaller, but that was a discretionary choice; in the case of 2072 Mass Ave, they chose to listen to similar complaints. Thus the resulting changes to process.
Which is to say, NIMBY is not name calling, it’s a description of a perspective: Not In My Backyard. In the case of Frost Terrace it was technically Not In My Sideyard for most of the neighbors, but it’s close enough. If you dislike this shorthand, do you have a proposal for a different name for this perspective?
Great to see a developer investing in an affordable project. Not so great that, yet again, it’s in the densest part of a dense city. I’m sure that there were absolutely no decent sites closer to Brattle or Huron.
HockeyPuck, the proposed building is on land that the developer already owns (and already has affordable housing), so “closer to Brattle or Huron” isn’t a factor in this case. BTW, East Cambridge might contest the title of “densest part of a dense city.” ;-)
James–you are certainly right on the first point, and probably right on the second. I’d just like to see development in this dense city to be focused on the less dense neighborhoods, and the denser.