These are just some of the municipal meetings and civic events for the coming week. More are on the City Calendar and in the city’s Open Meetings Portal.
Land buy to protect city water
City Council, 5:30 p.m. Monday. Cambridge prepares to pick up 52 acres in Lincoln to protect its drinking water supply at the Hobbs Brook Reservoir, paying $800,000 to get $350,00 in reimbursement from the state. Another state grant of $30,000 helps pay for paperwork and fees. There are also appointments to make to a one-year City Manager and Mayor’s Joint Cambridge Social Housing Task Force – to explore how to create the mutual-aid-style housing here – that includes the mayor, city councillors Ayah Al-Zubi and Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler; two high-level city staffers; and 13 people from outside City Hall, including Tom Evans of the Cambridge Redevelopment Authority and Carl Nagy-Koechlin, executive director of Just A Start, a nonprofit developer of affordable housing.
Councillors have items from the previous week to pick up where they were dropped, from shutting down ShotSpotter, the technology that tries to listen for gunshots, to looking at letting Cambridge voters elect the mayor directly and keeping all seniors exempt from paying for resident parking permits. The council meets at City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square. Televised and watchable online and by Zoom videoconferencing.
Harvard Korean, Kendall coffee
License Commission, 10 a.m. to noon Tuesday. A giant Korean restaurant called Gen Korean BBQ House seeks to open at 26 Brattle St., Harvard Square, over all five stories – a basement, three floors of dining and a rooftop deck – for a total occupancy of 293 diners over 8,671 square feet in the former Dickson Bros. hardware store. The store closed in the summer of 2020, during the Covid pandemic, and billionaire Gerald Chan bought the structure that November for $10.1 million. Chan said in 2021 that he was considering opening offices in the space, but at least the ground floor has seen no use for nearly six years. The chain, founded in in 2011 in Los Angeles, has more than 50 company-owned locations across the country, but the closest are in New Jersey and New York. At its restaurants, diners grill their own meals at their tables, with an all-you-can-eat option that allows unlimited rounds of food within a two-hour time limit (with a fee for leftovers). There are reservations only for parties of 10 or more for proposed seatings from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sundays through Thursdays and 11 a.m. to 1 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays. (We wrote about it here.)
Tradesman, a Boston coffee shop and lounge, seeks to open its second location on the ground floor of the Marriott Hotel at 50 Broadway, Kendall Square. In the Financial District location opened by Meki Durakovic with interior designer Stephen Martyak in the historic Batterymarch building, Tradesman serves breakfast and lunch sandwiches, pastries and afternoon snacks with coffee and cocktails until 8 p.m. This is proposed to be different, open until 11 p.m. all days with proposed seating for 24 and an occupancy of 49, while the hotel looks to remove other restaurant and lounge spaces and increase its room count. Marriott wants its 25-floor, 312,546-square-foot building to end with 457 guest rooms, up from 433. Watchable by Zoom videoconferencing.
Memorial Drive gunfire debrief
Community debrief, 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday. Residents shaken by Monday’s shootout on Memorial Drive hear an overview of the event and its emergency response as well as get a sense what to expect from the investigation and court process. Police will speak. Representatives from the Mayor’s Office, Cambridge Public Health and the Riverside Trauma Center will share information on support services. At the Cambridge Community Center, 5 Callender St., Riverside.
Filling school district roles
School Committee, 6 p.m. Tuesday. The superintendent gives updates on school and district hiring for principals of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School and Fletcher Maynard Academy and with recommendations for an assistant superintendent of secondary education and legal counsel; and on the future of 158 Spring St., once the Kennedy-Longfellow School. There will also be a staff presentation on student use of tech devices with screens. Committee members discuss letting teachers buy into a retirement plan retroactively after some were blocked in 2001 – a fix that needs the state Senate and governor to sign off – and getting more information about allowing artificial turf on John A. Ahern Field by the former K-Lo.
The committee meets in the Dr. Henrietta S. Attles Meeting Room at Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, 459 Broadway, Mid-Cambridge. Televised and watchable online and by Zoom videoconferencing.
Items from surveillance report
Public Safety Committee, 3 p.m. Wednesday. This committee run by city councillor Ayah Al-Zubi reviews items from the annual surveillance report. The committee meets at City Hall, 795 Massachusetts Ave., Central Square. Televised and watchable online and by Zoom videoconferencing.
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