In the end, a vote restricting residential development height seemed almost perfunctory, as Cambridge city councillors voted unanimously and without debate at Monday night’s meeting to allow maximum heights along two city corridors only for buildings with “active use” spaces on ground floors.
“Given the hour and the amount of time we’ve spent on this, I don’t think there’s much more to say,” Ordinance Committee Chair and Councillor Marc McGovern said ahead of his motion to adopt. The Ordinance Committee has debated the move for months.
The resulting petitions prevent residential developers from building to maximum heights in parts of the Mass Ave. and Cambridge Street corridors without setting aside ground floor space for “active use” such as retail shops, restaurants, daycares or community spaces. The change in policy is a check on Cambridge’s various upzoning interventions in recent years, which allow 12 stories of residential housing along the portion of Mass Ave. near Porter Square and six stories along most of Cambridge Street.
Throughout the year, council has been weighing how to create incentives for more street level activity without further increasing heights.
The newly enacted petition expands the four-story limit on residential buildings without active use along the portion of Mass Ave. that goes through Porter Square and just south towards Cambridge Common, while keeping an eight-story limit north of Porter Square. With active ground floor use in either area, buildings can go as high as 12 stories. Along a portion of Cambridge Street, developers will be limited to three stories of residential housing unless they have an active use ground floor, in which case they can build up to six stories. “Formula businesses” (chains with a distinctive brand identity that could affect a building’s façade) require a special permit.
The options for a petition to change Cambridge Street’s zoning received the most attention. Representatives for small businesses and advocates concerned about neighborhood character lobbied for this change in the zoning. As developers eye lots for renovation or demolition to build new housing at increased heights, public commenters were concerned that the spaces they occupy could be converted into apartments or condos, which often have better margins for developers than retail space, depending on the project type.
“Cambridge Street is a business district. There are only so many miles where you can build small spaces for commercial [development]. This is one of them” said Jason Alves, director of the East Cambridge Business Association, during an April Ordinance Committee meeting. “None of this is gonna happen overnight, but over time we could see a loss of retail space, active use, ground floor space.”
But some housing advocates and councillors raised concerns about applying an additional burden to increasing Cambridge’s housing stock, preferring an option presented by the Community Development Department that would set the non-active use height limit to four stories, rather than three. Some pointed to current storefront vacancies, arguing that mandatory set-asides for active use could be put to better use as housing.
“We have had situations where we have required [active ground floor space], and those places have stayed empty for years and years,” McGovern said in a March Ordinance Committee meeting. “We can require this, and we can say to a developer, you have to do this … there is no guarantee that that space is going to get filled, right?”
But councillors eventually landed on an option for Cambridge Street that could result in less new housing, but with a better possibility of preserving buildings that house long-established businesses, particularly in the Inman Square area. The option just reached the six-vote threshold needed to move forward in the ordinance committee.
“Maybe [the option] is more restrictive,” Councillor Timothy Flaherty said during the April Ordinance Committee meeting. “But I think it’s appropriate for that area.”
A stronger
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