The demolition of a building at 13 Roberts Road was rejected Monday by the Mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Conservation District Commission. Members weren’t won over by a plan to tear down three homes in an architecturally significant building to build them back but bigger – not when the zoning being applied was intended to add housing.
It took a little time to get to this point, as commissioners sought a justification for proposed demolition.
“My fellow commissioners are very generous to say that they don’t understand the reason,” member Katinka Hakuta said finally. “The reason that’s been given is very clear. I’m just not sure that it approaches the threshold that we would need to approve it.”
When the hearing was continued from May 4, commissioners said they wanted more information about why demolition is called for in this 1917 triple-decker building – one of three in a row by architect Henry Slocum – to add one floor with street-level parking.
At the time, developers said a teardown was needed for structural reasons to provide the open floor plans wanted by tenants, though a neighbor in another Slocum building of the same vintage said it was renovated in 2005 to provide open floor plans and high ceilings without a full demolition. On Monday, developer Evan Stellman of Khalsa Design asked for the same height but with below-ground parking, maintaining a “triple-decker aesthetic” to create three homes with four bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms, each about 2,500 square feet. The fourth floor in this version is a stepped-back shed-style roof with dormers, reducing the building’s overall proposed height by about a foot and a half.
But, developers said, they still needed a full demolition.
“Could you go in there and paint the walls and sell it? Sure, but that’s not really an option here, right?” said Mike Tokatlyan of Contempo Builders. “To end with a proper product, you can’t really do a renovation here, it’s just not an ideal solution.”
Tokatlyan is working with Stellman also on a six-story building with 28 units at 60 Ellery St. in Mid-Cambridge.
Commissioners were slow to demand the logic of the project, starting instead with questions about square footage and materials, or why a bay window had no glass in its sides. (“That’s something we can look at. We’d be happy to add side windows into that window. That would be a nice addition,” Stellman said.) Questions about the effect of the project on the parcel’s mature trees and backyard, which would be largely replaced with the bigger homes, were at first cautious.
Project called “utterly unnecessary”
Neighbors were more eager to get into it. Katie Slivensky led the charge, citing a petition of nearby residents overwhelmingly opposed to the project and “how utterly unnecessary it all is.”
“It’s literally kicking out our longtime neighbors to replace their apartments with an identical number of units, but now luxury and huge,” Slivensky said. She reminded commissioners that a renovation rather than demolition was “literally done next door at an identical triple-decker at 11 Roberts with great success not too long ago – it’s the same-design building, same architect, same year built. The ceiling heights in there are totally normal. I’ve been in both 13 and 11. They’re both beautiful in the interior.”
Neighbors wanted a significant change or for the developers to “quit the project,” Slivensky said. “We would love to bring in new neighbors, we’d love to help people around here, but this is not it.”
Commissioners affirmed the neighbors’ qualms about the project, expressing concerns about altering so dramatically one of a series of three buildings – especially when its “proportions seem ill-conceived and cheap,” in the words of Alex Van Praagh – and the lack of a plan for saving trees or making up for their loss. Like the neighbors, commissioners kept coming back to the unchanging number of units.
Role of the commission
Zoning changes in 2023 prevent the commission from denying applications based on the size and shape of new construction or additions to existing buildings, or imposing dimensional and setback requirements beyond those required by zoning, but members can consider such things as the historic and architectural value and significance of a site or structure, general design arrangement and materials. More changes came in 2025 in the form of Multifamily Housing Zoning, making four-story residential buildings such as the one proposed for 13 Roberts Road allowed by right in certain districts and changing requirements for how much space is needed around a structure – about 5 feet in setbacks on the sides and rear, and 10 feet in the front, Crosbie has said.
Demolition review hasn’t changed much: The commission considers the physical condition of the building, any claim of substantial hardship and the design of the proposed replacement structure.
There is another major change in addition to the zoning, though, which is that the commission take into account the goals expressed by the City Council for its changes. “Notably,” Crosbie has said, “the need for more housing.”
Hakuta’s summary was significant in saying that, after finding the existing structure contributed to the character of the streetscape, “there has not been presented a compelling argument for the demolition when we’re not changing the number of units.”
“We haven’t seen any evidence that the existing structure couldn’t support a very nice renovation,” Hakuta said.
Member Catherine Tice made the motion to deny the application for demolition, and Van Praagh added encouragement for the applicant to renovate within its current context and form. The motion passed unanimously, with appreciation for the applicant coming back with an alternate design.
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