Quality public housing is a priority.
There are wonderful examples of great public housing going up. New Street, Jefferson Federal, Blanchard Road – the list goes on. Projects that align with the geography of the space they occupy, projects where developers, neighbors and government alike agree on design, cost and placement.
Unfortunately, Winn’s project at Walden Square Road is something of a black sheep: a poor design that doesn’t enhance the ground it’s built on and instead destroys the fabric of the community. It is an unsafe development, it overwhelms an already densely populated area and it decimates many carbon capturing mature trees.
Winn’s plan enriches Winn’s coffers in the long term at the short (and long) term expense of quality of life for the road’s current residents.
What can be done to persuade WinnDevelopment to redesign or mothball the slab-and-tunnel project at 21 Walden Square Road in North Cambridge? What about the cost and funding sources?
Let’s start there.
Winn needs at least $56 million to build the things (plural, because there are two buildings, one with a tunnel the length of a football field that would destroy the current road as well as over a dozen mature carbon-absorbing London Plane trees). Of that $56 million, the city’s Affordable Housing Trust has donated $18 million contingent upon Winn’s obtaining the remaining $38 million. Winn is asking MassHousing and the Low Income Housing Tax Credit for that amount. In other words, Winn’s total cash outlay for the project is in the vicinity of a half-million dollars. Nearly all of the money for Walden Square II comes from public sources. Winn, moreover, will be owners in perpetuity of the development, meaning: no path to ownership for tenants.
Okay, you say: It’s all legal. The city has legislated a fast-track route to developments at just about any cost, terms, configuration and design.
What’s not to like?
Well, in the case of Winn’s Walden Square II proposal, there is a lot to push back on, starting with findings and conclusions by the city’s Planning Board, a group of citizens, many of whom are architects or urban planners.
The board, which unfortunately cannot veto a development (it can only advise), has not affirmed that Winn’s slab-and-tunnel project is safe to pedestrians and cyclists, children or seniors. It has not affirmed that Winn’s proposed bike path is the best possible solution to the traffic situation there. The board has even asked: “who today even thinks of putting up a building over a road?” Yet, even with the board’s poor report card, the city’s Affordable Housing Trust donated its $18 million.
So much for checks and balances.
On heat wave days such as the ones we’re seeing in July, my thoughts go out to the hundreds of immigrant families living in Walden Square who will see the greenery outside their front door ripped up and turned into concrete, turning the property into not only a heat island but an outright heat canyon.
The families at Walden Square Road are by and large low-income, limited in their English-speaking skills and do not vote (so councillors don’t do a whole lot of canvassing there). Moreover, these families that were living under a great deal of uncertainly before Trump are now very interested in staying out of the public eye. (Meaning: We won’t hear them object to Winn’s plans any time soon.)
Winn is asking the residents at Walden Square to keep quiet and accept its plan. Unfortunately, they will.
Environmentally, there is no doubt the slab-and-tunnel project makes life worse, not better, for the families at Walden Square Road, but what other aspects of the project are problematic?
The heart of the project’s design should be a deal-breaker for everyone. Can anyone point to an existing residential (not business) building anywhere in the world that is eight or nine stories high, has a tunnel underneath it that is two stories tall, runs the length of a football field and is in a densely populated urban area frequented by pedestrians, cyclists, children and seniors? I’d like to see one example, and if it exists I’d ask: Does it work? If it doesn’t exist, there must be a good reason.
Winn is famous (or infamous) for another egregious act: It is considered by many to be neglectful as a landlord, often allowing its properties to decline and decay before stepping up with fixes after prodding to do something. Is that the kind of company Cantabrigians and our city government wants to do business with?
Can the trust rescind its $18 million donation and award that money to a public housing project with more integrity? A project that everyone can rally around and champion? From the get-go Winn’s plans have attracted controversy, and justifiably so. We have not seen the same level of objection to other public housing projects.
There must be a reason.
A stronger
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Who wrote this? Why did they leave their name off? There must be a reason
“We have not seen the same level of objection to other public housing projects” says someone who has apparently never paid attention to any large housing development, especially one that is 100% affordable.
Trying to respond to this gish gallop of unrelated complaints point by point isn’t worth the time or energy, but if you want to know why the 100% affordable housing overlay was important in order to enable the expansion of affordable housing, this ridiculous letter is a decent example of exactly the kind of thing that you can and do see leveled at every attempt to develop affordable housing in Cambridge. I am glad that objections like these, from financially secure people who don’t have to worry about their ability to live in Cambridge, are no longer granted the formal power to block the necessary expansion of affordable housing to provide for those in need in our city.
More at:
http://www.openspacefilmproject.net/thefuture
I don’t find the author’s arguments persuasive. I listened to his videos and heard a lot of people complaining about parking. Did he talk to the 21,000 households waiting for an apartment?
As for the “tunnel”: People don’t generally put up buildings which route traffic beneath them because it is expensive. Given the land acquisition costs in Cambridge, this suddenly becomes financially viable.
The environmental claims about the project aren’t serious. Modern buildings have lower operating carbon than old buildings. Paying off embodied carbon can take as little as six years. Density is environmentally friendly.
If you want to improve the site environmentally, start with the parking lots. There are about 1.5 acres of asphalt parking. This is land that produces a heat island effect, reduces air quality, and eliminates useful green space. The project could be improved by converting the parking lots to towers before razing the existing structures for parks, playgrounds and green space.
Feels a bit disingenuous to say “We have not seen the same level of objection to other public housing projects” when you’re the sole person making the loudest, most frequent objections.
Throughout this op-ed you make several claims that you don’t support with evidence, such as:
– “It is an unsafe development”
– “Winn’s plan enriches Winn’s coffers”
– “the slab-and-tunnel project makes life worse […] at Walden Square Road”
Absent from this op-ed is the fact that this project will provide nearly 100 new affordable homes in a city with a years-long waitlist.
Also missing here is the fact that the author lives at the end of the street of the project site, maybe relevant?
This article makes it seem like your prime objection is that the project will be built over an existing road. But if the same amount of housing was built on the existing green space at the site, I don’t think you’d be any happier.
I see what you’re saying, the board should follow Trump’s lead: Don’t let other people tell you what you can and cannot do, just veto a wasteful and dangerous project. And as a corrupt organization reliant on taxpayer funding that fails to protect its most vulnerable, Winn calls to mind Columbia University. Well, the playbook is there!
Here we go again with the “slab and tunnel” complaints about Walden Square—like a broken record.
The project adds much-needed housing, yet the authors offer a mix of misleading claims and emotional exaggerations. “Unsafe development” (according to whom?), “enriches Winn’s coffers” (are developers not supposed to earn money?), and “makes life worse” (not for the people who need housing).
The environmental concerns are overblown. Modern buildings are far greener than older ones. If the author truly cared about the environment, they wouldn’t insist on keeping a parking lot.
We’ve seen this before. The author has been the loudest—and nearly only—voice in opposition. Let me guess: they own an expensive home nearby.
This is exactly why the AHO exists: so needed housing can move forward without being derailed by this kind of obstruction.
Disingenuous & entitled. Again: why should housing for nearly 100 low-income families be further delayed/”mothballed” just so the owner of a $1.9M property a half-mile away (even the tallest building isn’t visible from his house!) doesn’t have his aesthetic sensibilities offended on his way to Danehy? Comment limit’s too short to rebut all the misinfo (e.g. bogus “safety” concerns) so just 1 point: despite the “great public housing” lip service, Mr. Muchnik certainly would’ve opposed the New St project if he lived by it (and DID oppose the AHO that made it possible), given its similarities to this plan: it’s 106 units/380′ long (“a football field”)/6 stories/70′ tall with a 250+ ft long ground-floor parking area, vs. WSq2: 95 units in 2 buildings, the larger being ~260′ long/7 stories/80′ tall (still shorter than the existing building next to it!) with a 200′ long ground-floor parking area (literally just a parking garage with entrances at each end, despite the “tunnel” fearmongering).