The latest attempt at a land grab was grand in its audacity and disgraceful in its clear disregard for the quality of Cambridge citizens’ lives.
First it was the political land grab of just a corrupt few, moving a local issue to a statewide referendum forcing the end of rent control in Cambridge and nearby towns and cities.
Then of course we have the takeover of Kendall Square and the current march down Massachusetts Avenue of MIT and its ilk to Central Square, resting only momentarily to continue a Sherman-like March to Arlington so we’ll have to say goodbye to every neighborhood mom-and-pop store along the way, leaving in its wake ruined lands, a changed atmosphere and a decreased quality of life. There will soon be block after block of wind tunnels, with walls of sterile brick, steel and glass: buildings with absurd rents that continue to rise year after year and vacant first-floor retail spaces that haunt the few pedestrians left walking by as they look sadly at their smudged windows. Investors laugh, collecting huge tax write-offs, contrasting with the tears of a lone maintenance person who checks the lights once a month or so.
Cycle by, my friend, nothing to see here. The hunger of these predators will be totally unleashed if the tunnel-and-slab design by Winn is allowed to proceed at Walden Square in North Cambridge. Imagine the lion tamer in an old-fashioned circus having his whip and chair taken away. Imagine a six-story building on every block, any block, your block, my block, it doesn’t matter.
To paraphrase a New England legend, the great basketball coach Red Auerbach: “Some of the best deals I ever made were the ones I never did.” A word from the wise, my friends: Don’t be in a hurry to slay the golden goose.
Kevin Whalen, Linnaean Street, Cambridge
The writer is a member of the Alliance of Cambridge Tenants.
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Six stories on every block? Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Really though, how ridiculous it is to equate “investors” of “buildings with absurd rents” to a public housing development that’ll add nearly 100 units of permanently affordable housing to Cambridge.
The dye is cast, the beat of the drum or the roar of the crane can be heard from Kendall Sq down Main St to MIT gliding to ‘dilapidated ‘Central Sq for a bite, a parcel here, a parcel there. who will notice ,what used to be there. All the while, the many one or two story parcels of mom and pop stores get ready to pack their bags as the March to Arlington begins to unfurl. ‘It’s nothing new, I told you to be aware. Through Porter Sq, past the bike path, now nowhere left, to cut your hair.
I remember the wizard of the Boston Celtics the great Red Auerbach once said, and I paraphrase “Some of the best deals I ever did, where the ones I never made”.
Let the buyer beware, who will put the genie back in the bottle and all that jazz, nowhere left to even cut your hair.