We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it? With 42 acres of a new neighborhood expected to be developed over what may be decades, that’s most of what Cambridge Planning Board members wanted to do Tuesday – come to the bridge over train tracks in the Alewife Quadrangle that has been asked for since at least 1979.
Members made a unanimous preliminary determination that Healthpeak’s development plans were in line with what planners and residents wanted for the area, but returned repeatedly to ask about a pedestrian and bicycle bridge to the Alewife T station – and designed with a future commuter rail station in mind. The north-south bridge over east-west train tracks would cut time to the station nearly in half, developers said. (A second bridge is planned by the city from Danehy Park on the other side of Alewife Brook Parkway, which also runs north-south.)
Healthpeak’s plans for a “planned unit development” foresee turning a largely industrial area in the Cambridge Highlands into a new, all-electric neighborhood of 18 buildings, including labs, offices and 2,076 homes, across a patchwork of parcels. Buildings would go as high as 12 stories with retail, and there would be 14.6 acres of green space, described as costing $4.5 billion.
The first building to go up, referred to as R2, would hold more than 400 homes on a lot across from “our great neighbor, Iggy’s,” architect David Manfredi said, referring to the destination Iggy’s Bread bakery that “creates a kind of focal point for the entire neighborhood.”
The homes would go at the foot of where Healthpeak expects to put the south landing point of a bridge, which is considered crucial in a plan that also includes an expected 4,600 parking spaces, mostly in garages. The multistory parking garages were a point of concern for Planning Board members in a city with oppressive traffic problems caused mainly by cars passing through; the cluster of commercial buildings Healthpeak plans for the northwest corner of its neighborhood was another.
Tucked away among the two dozen application documents for the project is a note that four buildings – the majority of second-phase development sites – are “encumbered by existing leases that prevent construction until 2040.” The property is in use by a Raytheon branch called RTX BBN Technologies, which specializes in military technology.
Healthpeak’s presentation made it clear that the developer wants the bridge as much as anyone.
“The energy that we have focused on the bridge cannot be understated,” said Anthony Galluccio, one of the company’s local lawyers. “Healthpeak would would love to deliver the bridge earlier.”
Derailed by MBTA shift
Dates are left unclear in developer materials and responses, but bridge construction comes halfway through a vague timeline that relies on an improved economy to keep moving, triggered in zoning at 50 percent buildout of commercial construction and to be finished when Healthpeak has 75 percent of its commercial square footage up, said Rylan Squirrell, the company’s director of investments. That could be as much as 10 to 15 years into construction, noted Planning Board members and resident Doug Brown, a neighborhood representative.
“We’re working hard to make sure we get the MBTA on board,” Galluccio said. “It’s critical to the development.”
James Rafferty, the company’s other local lawyer – and, like Galluccio, ubiquitous in Cambridge development – said the problem lies with the shifting MBTA priorities. “What we heard about for the first time a year into it is that they’re thinking around electrification of the commuter rail,” Rafferty said. That means trying to figure out how much land the state need to keep, and where, to make electrification work at a station that doesn’t exist. “I don’t want to describe that as a monkey wrench, but it was a significant shift in the focus of our discussions.”
Answers from the MBTA aren’t immediately forthcoming, and to get them will need a push from residents, Cambridge’s legislative delegation and city officials who can leverage an offer of $25 million to the state in 2016 to see the green line rail extension built. Cambridge had given $15 million by the time the state said a budgeting crisis had passed. “That relationship and the goodwill that was created there is paying dividends,” Rafferty said.
Phasing that depends on bridge
In the structure of the planned unit development special permit that Healthpeak wants – and for which this was the first of two required public hearings – R2 leads to more homes, parking, 1.2 acres for Cambridge Public Works to use and a medical building before moving to the commercial buildings in the northwest part of the Quadrangle.
“When we first acquired these parcels, it was a completely different economic environment where development made a bunch of financial sense, both life science and residential,” Squirrell noted, while today Healthpeak faces “very serious challenges” from increased interest rates, inflated construction costs, reduced lab rental rates and regulatory uncertainty.
As the commercial space goes up, so does the bridge. “We have to begin construction on that bridge as long as commercial development is moving along. So if the commercial environment doesn’t warm up, we’re going to all going to have different priorities,” Galluccio said. In fact, the consequence of failing to deliver the bridge is a halting of development on about 1.3 million square feet of commercial space, Rafferty said, making it “critical for the long-term success of the project.” It’s why the bridge has been Healthpeak’s focus for the past six to eight months.
The plans include a New Main Street of homes and businesses – including retail and restaurants – running along the east side of the neighborhood from Concord Avenue and its car traffic to the bridge in the north connecting with transit.
“The viability of this market hinges upon that pedestrian bridge,” Squirrell said. “It would be relatively tough to build and invent this type of development that we’re talking about right now and invent this market without such a large investment in infrastructure to allow more people to come to this area.”
Deemphasizing cars
Healthpeak is also working on adding service and stops from an existing area shuttle service to its neighborhood, said Selma Mandzo, a transportation engineer for the project with the firm VHB. There are 3,500 bike parking spaces planned, and Bluebikes rental stations. Still, parking “does remain essential” for the site, she said with the same spaces that are vacated at night by employees being used by residents returning home from work. (Also long wanted and expected in this development: a connection with Terminal Road, a loop from the nearby Fresh Pond Mall that connects cars with the parkway.)
During public comment, bike advocate Chris Cassa pointed to North Point, a neighborhood of around the same acreage built over decades on industrial space next to East Cambridge. Developers there deemphasized car infrastructure, and now EF, one of its largest employers, says 85 percent of its staff don’t arrive by car. “Maybe we have to make it more bikeable and walkable and make it easier to get to transit, which really means we have to front load this type of bridge – make it earlier in the project, so that you don’t have to waste all this money on these parking garages,” Cassa said of the Healthpeak project. “There’s no one on this call and no one on the board who imagines 4,000 more cars a day is a good idea for this area.”
Board members agreed there should be continued work toward fewer cars and traffic. “This is probably the first time I’ve seen a memo from the department of transportation that has serious concerns in many years,” member Ashley Tan said.
Brown agreed that the bridge “needs to be delivered earlier. Waiting 15 years to start construction would be a disservice,” and Planning Board member H Theodore Cohen also pushed to get the bridge fully within phase one of the project. His read of the timeline largely matched Brown’s: It would be 10 to 15 years before a bridge would come into use.
There are reasons for the timing, though, and some look unchangeable.
Waiting until phase two for the bridge allows time for the city, Healthpeak, fellow area developer IQHQ and other developers to pay for a commuter rail stop, just as Healthpeak plans to pay fully for its bridge – making infrastructure agreements easier for the MBTA in a way “that would be beneficial to all Alewife,” Galluccio said.
There are also the leases in place that delays their teardown and replacement. “That really dictates when these uses come online,” Rafferty said.
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