We vehemently protest WinnCompany’s plan to construct a part of its Affordable Housing Overlay development over Walden Square Road, creating an awful tunnel that will negatively affect Walden Square residents and neighbors who use the Yerxa Road tunnel. The Planning Board hearing was overall very negative about this aspect of the plan (“Affordable housing additions at Walden Square move forward with Planning Board misgivings,” July 9). We support a citizen proposal to reduce the 250-foot building tunnel to 60 feet and at the same time yield additional affordable housing units.
Pam and Don Giller, Pemberton Street, Cambridge
A stronger
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Genuinely why do you care that cars have to drive through a tunnel in a parking lot while the pedestrian path goes around the building?
NIMBYs will find any excuse to object to change. The complaint about the tunnel makes no sense, and the linked article barely mentions it.
This is a classic NIMBY strategy: picking at any aspect of new construction, using scare tactics and vague claims of negative impacts without explanation.
The housing crisis affects more than just the homeless. Unaffordable housing drags down the local economy as businesses struggle to find workers who can afford to live nearby.
People need homes. Workers need homes.
Nitpicking new housing construction over trivial concerns is short-sighted, selfish, and heartless.
The citizen counterproposal makes no sense. It requires demolishing existing apartments, resulting in no real net gain in units. Displacing residents and delaying affordable housing for no benefit is illogical.
This is classic strategy: complain and offer nonsensical counterproposals to kill projects.
We need the AHO to prevent individual NIMBYs from vetoing projects that benefit the greater good.
Neighbors prefer a counterproposal. Homeless people prefer housing. Essential workers prefer shorter commutes to Cambridge. Small businesses prefer easier employee recruitment.
I would prefer it if some Cambridge residents would think about more about others and less about themselves, their aesthetics and parking.
And perhaps that would include the residents of parts of Cambridge other than North and East Cambridge.
Ha ha–just joking. Never going to happen.
You guys in the comments section are too much. Knee jerk reactions written out of ignorance. Virtue-signaling. Sanctimonious codswallop.
Look: there’s plenty of bad to Winn’s design and plenty of good to the 3rd option – but you prefer a rush job to a right job.
You’re going to upstage the Planning Board’s expertise with your arguments? You’re going to find 1200 people to sign a petition that’s pro slab-and-tunnel? We found 1200 signatures against it at http://www.change.org/stoptheslabs.
You’re not helping the low income people at Walden Square who’ll have to deal with this monstrosity. You’re helping the rich developers, dammit. Haven’t you ever seen a Frank Capra film? Jesus, we’ve got a better plan that adds units and whole lot more and you’re acting like you’re from central planning.
Learn something about design. Go to openspacefilmproject.net/thefuture and see for yourself. Talk to the residents at Walden Square Road (oh, I forgot: you don’t speak Ethiopian, Haitian Creole, Spanish, French, or Somali.) I hang out with many people on that campus. Come by and try to defend Winn’s god-awful design.
You will likely get your 250-foot tunnel and parking garage – but we’re going to try to the end to a) add 12 units bringing the total from 95 to 107. b) bring the price per unit down by 100K per unit. c) set building A further back from the Yerxa Underpass so as to avoid accidents (lotta kids in Walden Square Road) d) preserve the old growth/mature trees. e) make sure no one ever tries to build a tunnel like this one again.
My e-mail to Winn:
Dear WinnDevelopment,
Curious as to why you passed on taking a second, deeper look at the neighborhood-conceived scheme for the proposed development at Walden Square Road.
Community voices persuaded you to come down to (still a whopping) 250-foot tunnel. And, there’s a better neighborhood-conceived design that brings that tunnel down to a “we can all get along” 60-foot length, avoids heat islands, saves the mature canopy, and adds a net gain of 107 units (as opposed to the net gain of 95 with your plan). On an 80 million dollar project that brings the price per unit down from $842,105 to $747,663, a savings of $94,442 per unit.
More units, less cost per unit, public safety issue solved. Doesn’t it make sense save money while getting more units? Any company or city official would want to take a closer look. It just makes good business sense.
The plan we’re calling: The 3rd Option:
– Brings the total number of new units up from 95 to 107
– Brings down the per unit cost by 100K.
– Shortens the tunnel / parking garage to 60 feet, down from 250
– Sets Building A back from the Yerxa Underpass thereby solving a major public safety matter
– Preserves the site’s oldest, most mature trees, solving a chunk of the negative environmental impact two buildings will have on the site
– Is supported by residents at Walden Square Road, abutters, and nearly 1200 signatures on a petition
See attachments, and take a look at the video (9 mins) at: http://www.openspacefilmproject.net/thefuture, top of the page, “the residents speak”.
In the words of Planning Board chair Mary Flynn: “Why don’t we just slow down a little? It seems to me that we’re throwing caution to the wind and not ackowledging fully that there are still issues that need to be resolved.”
Thank you!
Federico Muchnik
(617) 869-3463
http://www.openspacefilmproject.net/thefuture
Jeez dude it’s a development for homes and you’re acting like the whole thing has to have more planning than the city itself does and has to meet every single demand you set.
This attitude over a single development in the city is exactly why the AHO was created. Exactly the reason.
Exactly right, @cambridgeresident.
@Federico Muchnik, you are not convincing anyone. You’re following the NIMBY playbook with histrionic complaints about vague concepts like “city character” and unspecified environmental concerns.
Then, you keep making demands in order to add delays, hoping the developer will give up.
We’ve seen this repeatedly.
As others have pointed out in Cambridge Day, your plan displaces current residents and makes no sense.
But your goal isn’t a feasible plan, is it? It’s to kill the project with demands and delays.
And this, folks, is why we need the AHO.
@Federico Muchnik
“Knee jerk reactions written out of ignorance. Virtue-signaling. Sanctimonious codswallop.”
Is a genuinely impressive level of projection and lack of self reflection. If you are going to act the way you do, saying things like this about others is simply hilarious.
@Federico Muchnik uses alarmist terms like “slab-and-tunnel project,” and implies that a tall residential building is an environmental disaster. This is nonsense.
The AHO was designed to prevent frivolous concerns from obstructing affordable housing.
This project has already been delayed to appease those who won’t be satisfied. It’s time to move forward. Cambridge needs housing.
I don’t get it. This guy keeps complaining about a tunnel. What’s the big deal?
Any aesthetic concerns about a tunnel are trivial compared to the housing crisis.
I understand why others see this as a scare tactic.
So what if he got 1000 signatures on a petition? It can’t be hard to find 1000 NIMBYs in Cambridge.
This just shows why we need the AHO. No more dealing with such silliness.
I live on Richdale Ave and I say bring on the affordable housing!
I’ll make the same corrections here as for the other, similar op-ed from last week:
– The “citizen counterproposal” claims to build more units (107), but hidden/unstated is the fact that it would require demolishing some existing apartment buildings on the site (and therefore displacing residents), which makes the actual net gain in housing 97 units – pretty much on par with the developer’s proposal for 95 additional units.
– Given the net gain in housing units is barely different, the per-unit cost savings of the counterproposal are minimal, even without factoring in the added expense of demolition.
– The “tunnel” is 200′ long, not 250′ – not a huge difference, sure, but emblematic of the exaggeration/misinformation at play. And despite all the repetition about how awful it is, there still hasn’t been a single good explanation of actual, concrete problems a tunnel would cause.
– Pedestrian/bicycle through traffic will NOT have to go through the tunnel: a paved path will be added alongside Building A that connects to the Yerxa underpass. This is an *improvement* over existing conditions, since currently there is no sidewalk at all on the north side of Walden Square Rd, only grass and dirt desire paths that aren’t accessible for people using a wheelchair, pushing a stroller, riding a bike, etc.
Anyone confused by all the conflicting narratives can check out the recorded community meetings on the revised design for themselves, at https://www.waldensquare2.com/meetings. The reception was nowhere near as negative as project opponents are trying to paint it as (their videos lean heavily on cherry-picked soundbites). Here’s what one long-time Walden Square resident said at the 2nd meeting:
“I’m excited about it. It’s a big change. I’ve been there 20 years. And to see how it is now is not really pleasing to us. So having something different, and unique, and with a lot of facilities – I think it’s going to encourage a lot of families to come in, and we’re going to have a healthy and safe community. That’s how I see it. To answer to Federico [Federico Muchnik, who is leading the campaign against this development and had given a 10-minute long speech earlier in the meeting]: from what I hear from your point of view, pretty much it’s all about you, how you’re getting through, what you think it is, what it should be from your perspective. But you don’t live there.”
I agree with @picoplaff and others. The alternative plan proposed by @Federico Muchnik is neither reasonable nor feasible.
The Muchnik alternative plan involves destroying existing apartments with no net gain over the Winn plan and will displace residents, worsening the housing crisis.
Furthermore, Muchnik’s arguments are filled with lies and exaggerations, as @picoplaff pointed out.
The Winn plan offers improvements and much-needed housing for Cambridge.
This is precisely why the AHO was necessary.
@Federico Muchnik
How are you getting your numbers for the $100k reduction in cost per unit? Because it looks like you’re assuming the demolition of existing units and construction of 12 additional units will not change the project cost at all.
As you said, it’s an $80 million project, but that is an estimate for the current proposed project, not a fixed sum. $80MM divided by 95 units _is_ $842,105, and divided by 107 units is $747,663, sure.
But to assume that the entire project could be re-designed, with additional construction and demolition at no additional cost is…well, a generous person would call that disingenuous.
I don’t think we should be putting this much-needed housing at risk because a few people that don’t live in the development don’t like the vibes of a tunnel.
It’s really telling to me that all of the most vocal opponents of this affordable housing project are people that live in homes assessed in the $1.5-2MM range, living across the tracks or down the street from the proposed development. People that have inherited their homes, or bought decades ago before the rapid rise in prices, who have seen their home values skyrocket past the point of inflation. I have to ask myself what they stand to gain from blocking this development, and it seems pretty obvious: continued growth of their home’s value, or general opposition to development anywhere near them.
@cwec +100 There are many flaws in @Federico Muchnik’s plan. No-cost demolition? That’s unrealistic. Additionally, the demolition will displace people from their homes. We aim to create more housing, not less.
You’re also right about money being a factor. All this NIMBY-ism is essentially more affluent people protecting their property values at the expense of the less affluent.
To summarize: This alternative plan will cost more money and displace current residents without any real benefit. All because Federico Muchnik doesn’t like a tunnel??
This is why we needed the Affordable Housing Overlay (AHO). This kind of decision-making contributes to the housing crisis.
Cambridge, please build more affordable housing. I want to live in a vibrant, diverse city with a strong economic base. Denying housing to essential workers won’t achieve that.
Thank God AHO passed. People who have their housing and want to pull up the ladder for others are insufferable