Plans for a 4.6 million-square-foot mixed-use development in Alewife describe an idyllic future for the neighborhood, “designed to revitalize the area, while creating a more sustainable and integrated community.” But the proposal, filed recently with the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs by Denver developer Healthpeak Properties and real estate partner Hines, lacks specifics some locals want explained.
“The documentation that they submitted doesn’t really go into details at the street level about what is being proposed,” said Doug Brown, an officer of the Fresh Pond Residents Alliance with experience on various local development and zoning committees. “It’s really just at the level of master plan – square footage, number of buildings, general siting.”
The $4.5 billion project, dubbed Cambridge Point by developers, would be a combination of residential (market rate and affordable), commercial, retail and open space built over 10 years and spanning 21 buildings on nearly 46 acres of the industrial Quadrangle area of West Cambridge near the Alewife station.
Key features of the project include 14 acres of public open space, 2,000 residential units, more than 2 million square feet of lab and office space and a new pedestrian and bicycle bridge over the MBTA commuter rail tracks connecting to Alewife station. The tallest building would reach 160 feet, estimated at 15 stories.
https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/26035350-250729i-healthpeak-pud-master-plan/?embed=1
Brown said he and other Alewife residents seek details on some of Healthpeak’s plans: Where in the neighborhood the maximum height will be, what kind of retail will be included, what portion of the open space will be actual parks as opposed to public sidewalks or roads and how market rate and affordable housing units will be integrated .
Cambridge affordable housing laws require a minimum 20 percent of units – 400 for this plan – to be affordable. A Hines representative did not respond to a request for confirmation on the number of affordable units or on plans for placement of those units across the multiple residential buildings proposed.
Healthpeak, which owns holdings across the district, revealed plans for the neighborhood development in 2023 after zoning changes to height and density restrictions in West Cambridge. Healthpeak announced a partnership with Hines, which will manage the residential buildings, this spring.
A separate but adjacent project by the MBTA seeks to redevelop outdated infrastructure at and around Alewife Station, primarily replacing the parking garage with new parking. “It will also include improvements to the station complex that enhance transit, improve public space and add to the economic development and sustainable growth of the Alewife area and surrounding communities,” according to the transit agency.
The Cambridge Point project is one of the latest in a long history of rezoning and development efforts in Alewife. That history means neighbors have high expectations for the project and Healthpeak as a developer. “I like to remind them that they’ve inherited a lot of promises. The people of West Cambridge have been promised many, many things over the last 45 years, none of which have really come true,” Brown said, pointing to requests for a diagonal park from corner to corner of the Quad, completion of the full street grid and connection between Fawcett Street to Terminal Road as long-standing desires of community members.
Other asks include solutions to flooding and sewage overflow in the district and traffic on the Alewife and Fresh Pond rotaries. In a blog post, the Cambridge Citizens Coalition expressed concern those problems would only be worsened by new development. “Adding thousands of new residents and cars without first addressing these choke points is not just shortsighted – it’s negligent,” the post said. The project also comes at a time when office and lab vacancies are on the rise.
The plan proposes square footage that is larger than the 3 million square feet permitted under zoning defined by the Alewife zoning working group, Brown noted – a process he said Healthpeak was involved in and in favor of the results. “What is surprising is when they then propose their development, which exceeds that zoning by 50 percent,” Brown said.
Councillor Patty Nolan, who initiated calls for a construction moratorium and rezoning in Alewife in 2022 when Healthpeak began amassing property, said the plan was “exactly what was hoped for in the rezoning.” She called the plans “exciting” considering the faltering local economy and years of stalled work.
Brown, whose group worked with life sciences developer IQHQ toward shaping its nearby campus and the community benefits it brought, said “People involved at the community level are not antidevelopment. They are in favor of good development. Often it’s all about the details, and what we don’t have yet is a lot of details.”
Brown and other residents have reached out to Healthpeak for information on specific questions and concerns, and the firm has promised to provide answers.
“To the degree that you can trust a developer, we trust them to communicate,” Brown said. Community members did not see the plan submitted to the state before it was filed, though, and the project’s name came as a surprise. “No one in the community thinks that’s a good description of the area,” he said.
A Healthpeak representative said Tuesday that federal regulations limited their ability to provide further comment, but that the project is “still in the very early stages of permitting, and we’ll have a better sense of direction as we move further into analysis and design.”
Developers estimate its 10-year construction timeline for after the proposal is approved and plans for a two-phase process. The bike and pedestrian bridge is included in the second phase of that plan – but is only one of two bridges expected to finally connect neighborhoods divided by MBTA commuter rail train tracks, and only adds to pressure for the state to respond to another long-standing want in Cambridge: an Alewife commuter rail stop.
“I hope it connects with the MBTA on a commuter rail stop,” Nolan said of Healthpeak infrastructure plans. “We really need to push hard for that if we’re going to have 2,000 new units of housing there.”
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Great to see zoning reform working and plans for more housing, including 400 affordable units. Kudos to Cambridge for leading on the housing shortage.
And needless to say (but I will), the predictions that zoning reform will lead to McMansions and no new housing have proven to be nonsense.
This article omits what I consider the main problem with this development: it includes 4,773 parking spaces. This is a net increase of 3,292 spaces over what’s there today.
Who benefits from this? If you lived in the area, would you want an additional 3,292 cars passing through the Fresh Pond rotaries and Alewife intersection?
2,000 new units of housing is great. But before we get too excited about using this project to alleviate pressure on our housing market–the 2MM sq ft of lab space is likely to add something like 10,000 jobs in the very same space. So we should expect that this will worsen the local housing shortage
This would be a positive game changer for Cambridge