A residential project can go forward at 90 Lexington Ave. in West Cambridge, the city’s Board of Zoning Appeal decided Thursday, rejecting unanimously an appeal by neighbors to take back approvals for a building permit. It was the first appeal of a project approved under the city’s multifamily housing zoning passed in February 2025, noted one of the opponents.
The four neighbors presented an appeal of an Aug. 21 building permit with 10 complaints over a half-dozen areas of zoning; the city gave a three-page response. Supporting materials from the complaints included a 1,019-page document. That led to complaints about the process – “I don’t think that I’ve had an adequate opportunity to digest 1,000 pages,” member Wendy Leiserson said – but didn’t disrupt a vote on what members saw as bigger issues with the appeal.
Namely, the members said, that most of the items under consideration don’t fall under their purview, but are decided by the state.
On issues that did apply locally, board members found them to be the kind typically handled by plan revisions overseen by the Inspectional Services Department and other city staff as a project proceeds – not something that takes back the right to build at all.
“My confidence is with ISD and our city’s departments when they review an application,” chair Steven Ng said. Other members who work in the construction and zoning fields said the general practice is to hone designs, not cancel a project. “As a staff member in a different city’s inspectional services division, I have seen multiple plan sets submitted after a building permit was issued,” Leiserson said.
The project is described as a three-story rear addition of six homes (two are basement units) going up behind a historically preserved front house with four, for a total of 10 homes. That number led to one of the points on which board members felt they had a say: Neighbors argued that at 10 homes, inclusionary zoning kicks in and 20 percent of the square footage must be set aside as affordable – and wasn’t. The law, though, specifies that what counts is new square footage. “Because the existing three units will not be rebuilt or substantially redeveloped, the project in question only develops seven units and fits outside the definition,” according to the city’s memo by Peter McLaughlin of Inspectional Services.
Inclusionary question
A neighbors’ representative was asked for an example supporting the argument that the 10-unit standard was met.
“I can’t give you a Cambridge example,” said Dennis Murphy of Hill Law. “The commonsense understanding is that you’ve had a complete demolition of the interior of the existing building, so there are no existing units right now within the building. Nobody lives there.”
That drew an objection from member Brendan Sullivan. “If you were to renovate your house, you’re not living there, but its status does not go away,” Sullivan said. “I can’t connect the dots on this one.”
Murphy acknowledged: “You’re right, Mr. Sullivan, and I agree. It is a matter of interpretation.”
Developer efforts
Developers said that upon learning of the appeal they reached out to talk about the concerns and to find a resolution.
“We were met with crickets,” said Ilya Fuchs, an attorney at the Brookline law firm Kirzer/Fuchs + Hill and a founder of Trio Design Build in West Roxbury. The company paid $3.2 million for the site in September – after approvals were won by Avenue Capital Partners, which paid $2.6 million in October 2025 and began site work, including the interior demolition. “We are new to Cambridge, but we are a high-standard development firm that’s been in business for nine years … We look forward to working with the city and with the neighbors.”
Multifamily zoning
Tom Pounds, a Lexington Avenue resident working with the complainants, indicated in an email that he’d hoped for more, calling the appeal a “milestone in the evolution of the city’s multifamily housing ordinance.”
The zoning has led to a wave of projects citywide, many of them drawing protests from neighbors and some city councillors who see development destroying the character of the city and evicting middle-class residents. Changes to the zoning are under consideration in a council process.
The project at 90 Lexington was “riddled with significant violations of the ordinance, among other serious shortcomings,” Pounds said, and the appeal could bring “into the light for the first time the product of the process that happens between developers and the city behind closed doors under ‘by-right’ permitting. The appeal lays bare the extent to which the city is not enforcing its own laws.”
This post was updated Oct. 16, 2026, to correct two instances where quotes should have been attributed to Dennis Murphy of Hill Law and a change in description of a city-filed document that was more than 1,000 pages in length.
