The nonprofit developer Just A Start has acquired two little-used parking lots near Porter Square in Cambridge and will turn them into affordable housing, according to a letter sent Wednesday by executive director Carl Nagy-Koechlin to city councillors.
The lots at 1826 and 1840 Massachusetts Ave. have been Lesley University property, one must used by customers of a Planet Fitness gym across the street at the 1815 Massachusetts Ave. University Hall.
The parcels together total more than 25,000 square feet; the city’s assessor database values them at $688,400 and $867,800, respectively. They were marketed by the real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield as “prime development parcels [that] provide more than 300 feet of highly visible prime frontage along Massachusetts Avenue” with a red line T stop across the street – all signifiers of expensive deals. The firm said the lots were offered on an “as-is” basis and without a formal asking price. Just A Start paid $10.5 million, according to the Bldup real estate update platform.
In the past three years, Lesley has put around 15 parcels on the market worth millions of dollars, with president Janet Steinmayer describing the sales as essential to a plan to “right-size” its holdings at time of financial distress.
Yet in April 2022 the school sold its historic 1862 building at 1627 Massachusetts Ave., formerly its admissions and visitor services center, to Homeowners Rehabilitation Inc., another nonprofit builder of affordable housing in Cambridge. The price was less than Lesley could get from a for-profit bidder, making it a gift of sorts to the city, Steinmayer said.
An email was sent Thursday seeking comment from Lesley University about the new sales.
“These two parking lots in Porter Square are a terrific opportunity for us to create new affordable homes in the heart of Cambridge,” Nagy-Koechlin said, thanking city staff at the Community Development Department and Affordable Housing Trust for “funding the acquisition and consulting with us throughout the process.”
Nagy-Koechlin said he was grateful for Affordable Housing Overlay zoning “that enabled us to successfully compete for and secure these sites and which gives us clarity as to our development options.”
With amendments to the Affordable Housing Overlay passed Oct. 16, 2023, the by-right height of buildings with 100 percent affordable units is 12 stories along the city’s main corridors – including Massachusetts Avenue – and up to 15 stories in Central, Harvard and Porter squares. Zoning maps show the parking lots falling within the Porter Square area for development purposes, suggesting a pair of 15-story buildings are possible at the site.
This post was updated Dec. 3, 2024, with the price of the purchase.
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Replacing parking lots with affordable housing is a beautiful thing.
Especially unused parking lots!!
Such good news! The Affordable Housing Overlay is great and should be made even greater by allowing taller buildings and more units!
More of this please! Less of build anything anywhere!
This is a great place for AHO housing. I wish instead of a single tall tower (or 2 tall towers), that height could be cut for a combination of heights– 8 and 7, 6 and 12 on each lot, some combination in trying to keep some kind of human scale. I also hope there is good design review and not a free-for-all/ as-of-right which will happen if this was the unbridled upzoning now being contemplated. There are great places for housing. Good planning and design review would go a long way towards community benefit. Under the original AHO review was part of the process. The “amended” AHO has shaved some of those guidelines for expediency. And now the current upzoning proposal has even taken some of those away.
Interesting.
One thing that jumps out at me are the city assessed values.
Two parcels totaling 25,000sf,
one assessed $688,400 and the other $862,800, in prime Porters Sq. location?
My postage stamp lot, 1,434sf, is assessed at $742,700!
Go figure.
This is a unique opportunity to build new affordable housing on an empty lot requiring no demolition, in a location directly accessible to multiple transit options, and where literally the only people potentially impacted are extremely wealthy already. It should be built to maximize this rare opportunity not cut down due to aesthetic concerns. This is one of the lowest density areas in Cambridge closest to transit, it is time it does anything close to its share in meeting housing production goals.
Another two lots of low income will continue to push Cambridge way ahead of it’s 2030 goal of affordable housing.
Perhaps we can now focus on other dire needs – middle income housing, traffic flow (or lack there of), improving the schools (will these two projects require a new elementary school?), removal of lead pipes to each home.
Please take care of your residents who live here now first!
No MORE tax increases either! 10% annual tax increases are pushing many out of the city.
slaw– I agree with your points. My point was a different combination of heights which would still create the same if not more units but be a better design. you are fighting where there isn’t one. I often wonder why “rich” people don’t count. they may be property rich and cash poor, or have several rental units in their big houses.
At what age do seniors and long-term property owners become obsolete for the next generation? why don’t they matter?
@ruby “continue to push Cambridge way ahead of it’s 2030 goal of affordable housing.”
Cambridge is in fact way behind this goal what are you talking about?
You know someone has lost it completely when they say “enough affordable housing we need more middle class housing.” The city also is doing a lot to improve traffic flow that’s what all the bike lanes do and removing lead pipes. And no despite suburban style fear mongering adding two buildings in Cambridge will not require a new school.
“Please take care of your residents who live here now first!”
Are existing residents not impacted by high housing prices, displacement, etc? Who says that new housing is exclusively for new residents there are multiple preferences in application processes for people who already live here and many who already live here desperately need more affordable options because they are extremely rent burdened.
@pete
One of my biggest pet peeves is saying you agree with someone when you clearly do not. We are not in fact in agreement at all.
A different combination of heights would create fewer units. There is a max height of 15 stories for affordable housing. You cannot go above that and you cannot create more units than that by reducing height to create variety, only reduce them.
The whining of the wealthy shouldn’t matter because they are beneficiaries of an unjust system. Profiting off an artificial restriction of housing supply that they actively participate in ensuring continues. This part of neighborhood 9 is literally the lowest density neighborhood in Cambridge almost no one is having several rental units in a big house. It is extremely privileged people living in mansions. The question is do we continue to inflate their property values and cater to their aesthetic concerns or do we maximize the number of new affordable housing units. The answer is obvious to me, unfortunately many like yourself still seem to disagree.
People moaning about developing unused, ugly, and decrepit parking lots says everything about the anti-community people in this city. That is what they would rather have than homes for people. Icky.
If you are a student of architectural design and city planning, one can indeed split a tower in half to keep scale AND build the same units projected, sometimes more. Depends on the size of the lot. It is all in the design! I’m not in the habit of defending “rich” people, but not everyone is rich who live in some of these houses. We are not talking about “aesthetics” in older buildings but history. You (and some councilors) think it is as simple as a pretty building. nope. Nor is it subjective. What do you think the Harvard School of Design teaches? some houses are living documents about our culture, but that doesn’t seem to matter to siloed thinkers. low- income people deserve to live in well-designed homes.
In some cases, even keeping them from looking like warehouses with cheap materials. I’m talking about a specific thing. You are painting with broad brush strokes and damning everyone.
These are already fairly small blocks breaking them up for the sake of breaking them up will create worse design. This is actually an issue that plagues modern buildings contributing to the cheap look. Attempts to break up the massing that only emphasize the size and bizarre forms of the building.
Cambridgeresident, are you just looking to pick a fight? I hear ZERO people “moaning about” or opposed to replacing ugly parking lots with affordable housing on here or any other places that cambridge residents bicker about the usual bugbears.