City sets aside $20M to cover demolition at condos in West Cambridge that are in danger of collapse

Cambridge is setting aside $20 million to cover the costs of demolition at the Riverview Condominiums, the 66-unit building at 221 Mount Auburn St. where dangerous structural issues were discovered in 2023.

City officials held a community meeting Thursday to update residents on the city’s recent takeover of the demolition, which the homeowners’ trust could not afford on its own. They also provided updates on road closings and detours that have resulted from safety concerns about the presence of people near the building.

About 220 people attended the meeting, according to Kristin Kelleher, the community relations manager for the Department of Public Works.

The condo has been vacant since last fall, after engineers discovered dangerous structural issues with the building’s concrete – the result of construction in 1963 that seemed not to follow approved plans and now leaves the building in danger of collapse. In June, after it was determined that the building had to be demolished, the board of trustees for the condo asked the city to take over the complicated and extensive process.

City staff were authorized officially to enter the property, which remains under private ownership, on Tuesday, deputy city manager Kathy Watkins said at the meeting. The authorization came after a Board of Survey, whose five members included the city’s fire chief, building commissioner of the Inspectional Services Department and a city engineer, published a report confirming that the building has to be demolished.

The City Council on Wednesday authorized the $20 million in funding for the demolition, Watkins said in the meeting. She said the city expects to recover all costs by placing a lien on the property. A report by consultant Consigli Construction estimates demolition costs at more than $8.8 million.

“It is our hope that it doesn’t cost $20 million,” Watkins emphasized. “It is a conservative estimate to make sure we have funds in place.” She said that the decision to undertake a demolition on private property, using public money, “is not something that we take lightly.”

Demolition is not expected to begin for six to eight weeks, she said. The city is in the process of hiring a contractor, structural engineering consultant and environmental consultant for the project. It has also been conducting biweekly drone surveys of the outside of the building to assess changes in its condition.

“We are actively working on it,” Watkins said of assembling a demolition team. “It is a matter of weeks, not months, in terms of getting those folks on board.” She noted that the city has received approval from the state to bypass the traditional bidding process for contractors, which can take several months.

“We’re moving as expeditiously as we can to get to demolition,” Watkins said in response to a question from an attendee at the meeting about whether the building was at risk of collapse before demolition. “If we start going through there and people haven’t really thought through the demolition, we could be doing more harm than good.”

She noted the presence of asbestos in the building, which cannot be removed in a traditional abatement process because it is too dangerous for people to enter the building. The city is hiring a consultant to make a plan to manage the asbestos and other health risks of the demolition before it can begin.

Once plans for the demolition are set, Watkins said, the process is estimated to take between 12 and 16 weeks.

During that time, road closings around the building that the city implemented Saturday will remain in place. Sparks Street between Brattle and Mount Auburn streets and Mount Auburn Street between Lowell and Willard streets are closed to all through traffic, including pedestrians and bicycles. Other nearby streets have been limited to local traffic or one-way traffic, and buses will make detours from their regular routes to avoid the closings. The state also said it would close one lane of Memorial Drive.

“We did not take it lightly, and it’s really all in the name of health and public safety,” transportation commissioner Brooke McKenna said at the meeting. She and Watkins emphasized that, because the building is structurally unsound, the city views these street closings as necessary to keep people away from the site.

McKenna said she and other staff are in close contact with residents of abutting properties, who will maintain full access to their homes. She said that the Department of Transportation has already made some changes on surrounding roads in response to resident feedback, including adding signs and converting some two-hour parking spots nearby to spots reserved for residents.

“We will continue to monitor and continue to make tweaks as we go along,” she said. “We are happy with the way that [the closings have] been going so far.”

While many details of the demolition process are still underway, Kelleher, McKenna and Watkins said outreach to residents would continue. The city plans to hold another community meeting ahead of the beginning of demolition, likely in September, they said.

“This is a very uncomfortable position for us,” Watkins said at the close of the meeting. “We’d like to have much better answers and be able to be better assuring people about the situation. But the city, across city departments, is spending significant effort on this … we are all committed to working through this process.

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