Central Square would see residential buildings of up to 18 stories in its heart and eight stories on the outskirts in a preliminary recommendation by city planners working on rezoning the area. Cambridge city councillors got a glimpse at an Oct. 10 committee meeting, and a city-run street fair was held Saturday to spread the word.
A draft zoning petition for the square will be written over the winter for a process by the full council in the spring, with a vote expected in June, according to a Community Development Department timeline. In November, the department expects to present councillors with how many homes would be built in Cambridge’s squares and along major roads under different scenarios such as the Central rezoning.
“We have a goal of 12,500 new units. We just rezoned Alewife and are anticipating that if everybody maxes out, it’s only 3,000 units of housing. That doesn’t get us terribly close,” vice mayor Marc McGovern said. “So it’s imperative that we look at how we’re going to reach that number in other ways, in other parts of the city.”
Developers are allowed only a five-story building as of right in Central Square and 80 feet by special permit, which many think is why there hasn’t been as much new housing built as hoped since 2013, said Brian Gregory, senior urban designer for the city. Eighteen stories “you could say is a naturally emerging height” for the area, given the square’s 19-story Manning Apartments (a Cambridge Housing Authority property with 199 units, all affordable) and 18-story Market Central (285 units, of which 20 percent – around 57 units – are kept affordable under city inclusionary housing rules).
Developers would be incentivized in the Central Square rezoning to include retail and cultural facilities, getting more density and height in the bargain, planners said.
The rezoning process began in May at the council’s request and has included three community meetings as well as focus groups, online engagement and in-person outreach teams who looked for input from less-represented members of the community. The work looked to studies going as far back as 2010 and as recently as a study finished last year of best uses for the city-owned lots in and around Central.
“We’ve heard generally some support for that sort of dense urban fabric,” Gregory said, but there are limitations to the square, including what parcels will be available and what fits on them. A rezoning would not “suddenly result in a sort of a series of Manhattanized towers.” (The city’s “biggest opportunity” is redeveloping its own lots, assistant city manager Iram Farooq said.)
A key concern of city officials and residents is affordable housing, but not everyone agrees on the best way to create it – and it isn’t yet understood how the proposed recommendations would mesh with the city’s Affordable Housing Overlay zoning, which is meant to make it easier to finance and build all-affordable projects. The AHO allows for all-affordable projects of 15 stories in Central Square now but adapts to the maximum allowable, which would be 18, Gregory said.
Still, “conversations we’ve had with affordable-housing developers suggest that financing above that height can be really challenging, so there may not be as much of an advantage in giving them a taller height,” Gregory said. “The neighborhood edges will be the area where they’re most leveraged to be able to provide 100 percent affordable housing.”
“Nobody’s going to five”
Even while finding consensus for the 18-story starting point for zoning, “there were some pretty diverging opinions about height and density,” Gregory said.
That included among city councillors. The rezoning proposal drew support from Sumbul Siddiqui, while Cathie Zusy believed 18, shadow-casting stories was too tall, considering the bonuses that could make them even taller, and suggested looking closer to 12 stories, with most buildings at no more than six.
McGovern, who lives in Central Square, disagreed: “I don’t support going only to six stories on a major corridor. They can already go to five – and nobody’s going to five, because it does not pencil out financially to go to five.”
Affordable housing is especially important for middle-income people who will not qualify for subsidized or public housing but who are still rent burdened in an expensive city such as Cambridge, McGovern said. Some affordable housing in Cambridge is for households making up to 120 percent of the area median income, which is $125,000 for one person and $140,000 for two.
Fears of gentrification
Residents also had concerns.
“Any plan for Central Square should prioritize affordable housing and preservation of cultural spaces,” Carolyn Magid said. Because of this, she opposes letting market-rate housing be built up to 18 stories tall, which could create additional displacement. Magid wants the city to require developers to offer affordable spaces for the arts in their buildings; Don Totten, a former legislative aide, also worried about cultural institutions such as The Middle East nightclub complex, one-story buildings that would be prime for redevelopment. Restaurants in Market Central are there only because the developer had to agree to have businesses run by people of color in the building, he said.
A caller expressed similar sentiments about displacement, and added that as one of the few people of color at the meeting, she felt voices such as hers were being ignored. “An 18-floor building on Mass Ave. would take away what makes Central Square feel like home, a place where people belong,” the caller said.
Robert Winters pointed to what he sees as an existing Central Square problem: Being largely one strip of commercial development, unlike a Harvard Square where people explore side streets and walk around blocks to discover more activity. “Height is less important than doing things well,” he said, hoping that new residential buildings can add to a more expansive commercial district.
A stronger
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So this is going to be forced on us no matter what it appears.
I want to know, are the members of the existing council going to be moving out of their current residences and buying into these new “affordable” housing units? How many of them own vs rent?
If they truly support this grand effort where will they be living when these new units are built? Are any of their current residences going to be converted into these 18 story blocks of condos/apartments? Are any of them going to be displaced by new construction as many renters in the city will be when developers buy up the rental properties to make the? Or are they all going to be in parts of the city unaffected by current plans, or moving out to the burbs and leaving the rest of us that are here to contend with the end results?
Same with the developers that are coming in to buy and build… are they staying as residents or are they more buy, raze, build and flip and run developers who live in another state and won’t have to live with the consequences of the construction?
@Cambridgejoe I think you’ll find that the renters on the councils are the ones most in support of building taller, rather than the homeowners.
I somewhat agree with the concern about losing cultural spaces, I think the council should look into adopting some form of right-to-first-return policy for existing businesses in the zoning district, for instance. However, the status quo doesn’t do anything to protect these institutions either. Middle East, in particular, was already at risk of being displaced, but the hotel development project included plans for Middle East to return after construction completes.
Great idea! Let’s get moving as fast as possible.
I live in Cambridgeport, and go into Central nearly daily. Fully supportive of this zoning change
Great, more hideous luxury condos with like five “affordable” units that some clever wealthy cambridge people will find a way to game like they do throughout the city.
@Cambridgejoe. People who oppose the rezoning to create affordable housing are forcing a housing crisis on others.
q99, how exactly do you think anyone is gaming CDD’s Inclusionary Housing waitlist for the 20% of required subsidized units in new residential buildings?
Lack of enough housing is what causes rents to go up. Cambridge has added three times as many jobs as homes. There’s no reason to have an artificially low cap at 18 stories here. We should allow 24 stories or more to better offset the increased construction costs for taller buildings.
If Carolyn Magid asks the non-profit developers that build most affordable housing in Cambridge, they will tell her they aren’t going to build 15 or more stories in Central. They already told this to CDD, per Brian Gregory’s quote in the article.
There is also zero chance to City is going to pay to build 18-story 100% affordable buildings and pay even more to include Starlight when the City Manager and several Councillors are talking about slowing budget growth. Banning inclusionary housing here means we will get nothing, no new supply and no new subsidized housing.
The same people talk about social housing, so one might think they’d see that the City proposing to allow market-rate housing that will cross-subsidize a cultural amenity like Starlight is the same principle. Let’s take the win here.
what I am curious about are the new boundaries expanded into neighborhood edges allowing for “transitions” from 18 stories on mass ave to 8 stories on secondary blocks behind. that is a transition into small scale dense neighborhoods? Also, people in Mid Cambridge don’t necessarily identify with Central Sq after Lee St. There is a corridor between central and harvard squares. a particular councilor is pushing for Central Sq boundaries to extend almost to Putnam Sq presumably to force 18 stories in a strip that would have fallen under the 12 story AHO 2.0. that is manipulation without neighborhood information. this is all moving pieces around a game board without really walking the streets.
Bravo! Long overdue change finally happening. Hopefully with more housing the prices will be affordable so that our teachers, cops, nurses and everyone else working in Cambridge can afford to rent and buy a place.
Agreed. This is long overdue. Housing has to keep up with job creation and the needs of the population. There is nothing wrong with tall buildings. People need homes.