Designs for an eight-story hotel-and-homes project incorporating the historic Harriet Jacobs House in Harvard Square drew debate Thursday at a Cambridge Historical Commission meeting, which ended with a 7-0 vote for design work to continue with a “certificate of appropriateness with a condition.”
That means the project continues while considering compromises with its neighbors, and under a label that is a step forward from the vote at a Sept. 4 meeting. That one ended with the granting of a “certificate of appropriateness in principle,” meaning members were supportive enough to want more details.
Committee members expressed frustration at having to facilitate a political conversation, though. Member Liz Lyster said that their job is to assess public good and historical preservation, but the debate had become about the transition of the building into the neighborhood separate from the restoration of the Jacobs House.
“This is so frustrating that we’re in this position of litigating a political issue. It just sucks,” Lyster said.
Neighbors on Hilliard Street worry about what the building will look like and how it will affect their homes and privacy, and those concerns are having an effect on the project, moving the proposed structure back 8 feet from a fence line from the previous plan of 5 feet, removing balconies from the second and third stories and recessing or “chamfering” as many as five stories – creating stepbacks that reduce the building’s mass.
With the loss in square footage, the balance of uses is changing too, developers said. While the project was once described as having as many as 67 hotel rooms and 50 condominiums, now the ratio has switched to being predominantly homes.
“The setup right now looks closer to like 70-30 in terms of housing versus hotel,” developer Patrick Barrett told commissioners, “as a ratio, because we haven’t designed the units yet.”
Under city zoning laws, 15 to 16 of the possibly 50 residences would be inclusionary – identical to other units but set aside for people with lower incomes – and two of those would be three-bedroom homes, Barrett said. Three-bedroom homes are understood to be family-friendly.
“Our goal was 50,” Barrett said of residences. “I think we can do better … the last time 50-plus units dropped into Harvard Square, it was the 1900s, as my kids like to say. It was just a long time ago, and we haven’t really seen that kind of development here for lots of different reasons.”
The plan, with developers operating under the name 17 Story Street, involves demolishing a building at 129 Mount Auburn St., across a small corner parking lot from the Regency-style home built in 1846 that once belonged to the writer and abolitionist Harriet Jacobs. The Jacobs house would be moved 30 feet from 17 Story St. to the corner of Story and Mount Auburn streets to be restored. In addition to using the interior to honor Jacobs, abolitionist and author of the 1861 memoir “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” a cafe would be added connect the house and building behind it. Also, “it will have hotel rooms or lodging house rooms on the second and third floor,” Barrett said.
In putting up the eight-story structure, developers would minimize tree removal, limit outdoor lighting and ensure the building would meet “passive house” standards, with insulation to reduce noise, they said.
Looking for more change
Neighbors say the changes are not enough.
“You asked the development team for meaningful changes to height and setback,” said Nicole Bryant, a resident on Hilliard Street, to commissioners. “This project remains essentially unchanged today from that which you saw one month ago.”
Another resident of Hilliard Street said conversations with developers had been futile.
“These meetings seem to have been little more than boxes to check off for them,” the resident said.
Their own architect
Noah Nathan, one of the Hilliard residents, referred to developer plans in telling commissioners, “The choice before you is not simply this exact design as drawn versus nothing. You have the latitude to seek a more appropriate scale, and I hope you continue to take it by imposing specific dimensional requirements.”
Bryant and other neighbors asking for height reductions and other changes said they had enlisted an architect of their own to show that more changes could be made. “The proposal we put together shows that there are viable designs that have greater setbacks and less overall mass of the project than the one that has been presented today,” another resident said.
Developers spoke against changes to the dimensions of the building, saying any decrease would have a detrimental effect on the amount of housing available and risk the project’s financial feasibility.
Plan for housing has fans
There was also support heard for the developer plans.
Jess Sheehan, a Central Square resident, argued that a shorter building, as Hilliard Street residents wanted, would mean fewer homes and that any delay in plans could increase costs. She said that with this, homes within the building would be made more expensive, which would go against inclusionary affordable housing.
“I don’t think the abutters are bad people, I don’t think they have bad intent,” Sheehan said. “But they are definitionally people who live in Harvard Square, and in asking you to mandate the removal of potential homes, they are asking you to deny to other families what they themselves already have.”
Steven Ortega, a resident of West Cambridge, said, “If it’s true that there’ll be 15 to 16 units built, then that’ll be 15 to 16 individuals or families who will have places to live.”
A stronger
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Prioritizing current homeowners over new and lower-income residents perpetuates exclusivity and deepens inequity.
Calls for further reductions are, in effect, demands to deny others the same privileges existing neighbors enjoy.
This approach would erode affordability and housing supply at a critical moment, and it runs counter to the majority of Cambridge residents who want an inclusive, diverse city.
If we keep catering to affluent homeowners, Cambridge will become an exclusive enclave for the wealthy.
The wealthy are fine. We need to support the vulnerable, not indulge the whims of the winners.
I’ve followed this process closely and appreciate how much work has gone into balancing preservation, design, and community concerns. Moving the Jacobs House forward into public view and adding long-overdue housing feels like the absolute right direction for Harvard Square. It’s disappointing to see continued pushback against a project that would finally add new homes, including affordable and family-sized units, in Harvard Square. And really I hope this conversation doesn’t lose sight of what makes this project special: the opportunity to restore and share the legacy of Harriet Jacobs. Preserving her house as part of a vibrant, public-facing site that people will visit, dine in, and live in, instead of leaving it shuttered and decaying, is an act of how Cambridge can model how preservation and progress can work hand in hand.
I am happy there is pushback here. We don’t want to kill what makes this community so great so a developer can make a few more bucks.
It would be helpful if the article specified what exactly the “condition” is in “certificate of appropriateness with a condition”? It’s hard to tell if this is the CHC continuing to drag out the approval process (and pushing its authority), or if this is an OK with just some minor procedural pre-construction checks.
The comment that this will “kill what makes this community so great” is completely baffling. Reminder: what currently exists at this corner is an ugly patch of asphalt and a heavily deteriorated historical building (which the objecting neighbors have NO plan/funding for a restoration should they succeed in blocking things). Are people seriously so worked up about shadows that they’d rather glorify parking lots now?
This project will give the Harriet Jacobs house pride of place, restore & reactivate it so the public can actually appreciate its historical significance, and create much needed housing, including several inclusionary units. It’s an unambigious win-win.
Claims that developers are making “a few bucks” on this project echo the usual anti-development trope—greedy outsiders versus a cherished community—but the facts don’t support it.
The Jacobs redevelopment was initiated by a local property owner in collaboration with CambridgeSeven Architects and approved by preservation authorities.
It represents a negotiated balance between conservation, restoring a deteriorated house, adding housing, and adaptively reusing the site to showcase Harriet Jacobs’s legacy to the public.
Rather than selling to a condo developer, the owner chose a plan that preserves and celebrates the property and makes it available to people.
The Harriet Jacobs Legacy Committee endorsed the project as an excellent way to honor Jacobs’s memory.
Is that “killing the community”? I would think that it is what makes the community great. Selfish people looking out for themselves is what kills our community.