The Cambridge Redevelopment Authority’s purchase of a portion of the Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House’s parking lot for $3.5 million, with plans to develop mixed-income homeownership housing, has drawn mixed reactions from residents of The Port who have used the property as a gathering place for generations.
The approximately 8,000-square-foot property at 42 Pine St. is expected to accommodate at least 10 condominiums, at least two of which would be designated as affordable to meet the city’s 20% affordable housing requirement. However, the agency has yet to determine the number of units, building height or final design, and construction is not expected to begin before October 2028.
“We’re still really trying to understand how that best fits,” said Kyle Vangel, CRA’s director of projects and planning. “Is there townhomes? Is there more sort of apartment-style building? Is there a combination of both?”
The sale will provide Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House, a 124-year-old community organization headquartered at 71 Cherry St., with funding to renovate its food pantry and the historic childhood home of its namesake, the transcendentalist writer and women’s rights advocate. While some residents welcome the infusion of new housing, others fear increased density, worsening parking shortages and the loss of a longtime neighborhood gathering place.
Vangel said the property offers an opportunity to create housing without displacing existing residents, a priority for the CRA given the scarcity of available land in Cambridge. “One of the things we like about this site is that it’s underutilized as a surface parking lot right now,” Vangel said. “It’s a chance to add housing without having to subtract any housing.”
A neighborhood institution’s future
For Selvin Chambers, 63, CEO of Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House, the sale is more than a property transfer. Born on Suffolk Street, Chambers grew up in the Port, spending 22 years in the Washington Elms housing development and much of his childhood at the neighborhood house. In the 1970s, he attended a breakfast and homework program run by the Black Panthers, learned boxing in the building’s basement and practiced with a neighborhood drill team in the parking lot now slated for redevelopment.
Today, Chambers sees the sale as an opportunity to preserve the institution that helped raise him. “As an organization that’s been around for 124 years, our goal is to make sure that we last another 124 years,” Chambers said. “This is personal for me. This is not just about a job.”
Most of the $3.5 million will go toward transforming the food pantry into a larger, more modern facility with additional space for community programming. Whether the existing structure can be expanded or must be rebuilt remains undetermined, pending a structural assessment.
Chambers hopes the sale proceeds will attract additional funding to renovate the historic house itself, preserving what one resident once called the neighborhood’s “community living room.” “We want to really stay true to having a place that is valued and stays true to the needs of the community, even as the community and the facilities around the community change,” he said.
A gathering place at risk
Daniel Jeffs, 46, an Eaton Street resident since 2007, sees the development as part of a broader transformation of the Port, a historically Black and working-class neighborhood where rising living costs have inflamed tensions and threatened longtime residents with displacement.
Jeffs recalled generations of Caribbean immigrant families, many of whom have since moved away. Today, he said, luxury housing and highly paid technology workers increasingly share the neighborhood with lower-income residents who depend on institutions such as Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House. “There’s people showing up, like Chinese grandmas on bikes for the food pantry, and then there’s guys going to work at Google on their e-scooters at the same time,” Jeffs said.
Jeffs argued that 10 to 12 new units would overwhelm an already crowded neighborhood and questioned whether reserving 20% for affordable housing justified losing the parking lot. “I’ve lived here a long time and I’ve seen the pattern of, okay, we have to build housing, but it always ends up being built in our neighborhood,” he said.
Opposition predates the CRA’s purchase. In 2021, neighbors circulated a petition urging the city to acquire the property for a public park. At a June 2026 Board of Zoning Appeal hearing, the board’s chair estimated it contained approximately 135 signatures.
Jeffs and two other nearby residents interviewed by Cambridge Day who requested anonymity worried that losing parking spaces could push Cambridge Health Alliance employees and Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House staff onto surrounding streets.
CHA spokesperson David Cecere confirmed that the health system’s allocation of 14 parking spaces at the Windsor Street Care Center will drop to eight on Nov. 15 and end March 1. CHA is encouraging employees to use the First Street Garage, with shuttle transportation to the care center. Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House will retain staff parking, according to Chambers.
Jeffs also questioned whether the remaining property would accommodate food pantry deliveries, which he said already require trucks to block nearby streets. At the June zoning hearing, attorney James Rafferty, representing Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House, said the subdivision included a setback intended partly for deliveries.
Jeffs, who drives to work and takes his children to school, has no off-street parking and said he already regularly parks two blocks away. “As it is, there’s not enough parking in the neighborhood, and the streets are very narrow,” Jeffs said, adding that with ongoing construction at 35 Cherry St., “it’s been three or four months of nonstop construction on the street and on housing developments, and with Margaret Fuller slated to do another development, it’s going to be nonstop construction for the next 10 years.”
A different vision for the neighborhood
Other longtime residents do not share Jeffs’ concerns. Although she acknowledged the development would exacerbate parking shortages, Nancy Ryan, 80, a Port resident of 46 years with longstanding ties to Margaret Fuller Neighborhood House, said she was optimistic about the project.
“To use that size of a space that will both house people and recreate a legacy institution that will further meet the needs of the neighborhood … to me it overrides other concerns,” Ryan said.
Chambers, meanwhile, sought to reassure residents concerned about the loss of parking and community space. He said plans for the renovated food pantry will preserve access for deliveries and that community gatherings traditionally held in the parking lot, including the organization’s annual Turkey Food Drive Block Party, will continue using the neighborhood house’s remaining property and permitted street closures.
Chambers acknowledged the gentrification and displacement that have transformed the Port over his lifetime, describing a neighborhood increasingly populated by people who commute in and out rather than put down roots. But he sees the development and the improvements it will finance as an opportunity to counter that trend by providing new housing while strengthening an institution that has long served the neighborhood’s existing residents.
“You’ve got to welcome new people in,” Chambers said. “But you also got to find a space where the people who are originally from there still feel that they have a place to stay and call home.”
A stronger
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