February 2, 2025
Dear Fellow Cantabrigians,
It’s been another very busy few weeks on the Council.
MOST SIGNIFICANT: Multifamily Housing
The MFH proposal continues to advance despite its potential to dramatically disrupt the City. Four of us tried to replace the current proposal: 4+2 (4 stories as of right plus 2 bonus ones if adding inclusionary units) with 3+3 (3 stories as of right plus 3 bonus ones if adding inclusionary units), without a 5,000 sq. ft. lot minimum requirement. Sadly, we lost. 3+3 was clearly the lesser of the two evils, even without the minimum lot size, which developers counseled wasn’t necessary because they’d want a larger lot for a larger development. 3+3 would have resulted in fewer tear downs and less contextual damage to neighborhoods. Believing that 4+2 could destabilize neighborhoods and, mostly, will just produce luxury housing, I voted against it—alone.
Proponents of the MFH proposal suggest that change will happen slowly. (Such hypothetical claims are always weak arguments in active and lucrative real estate markets like ours.)
I remain committed to working to solve the problem: creating more affordable housing for moderate income individuals and families. There are other ways to go about this, especially considering that Harvard and MIT only house about 50% of their graduate students, according to recent Town/Gown reports. This means that over 8,000 grad students rely on private housing. Our local universities must build more housing for faculty, staff and graduate students. [add link toTown/Gown reports: https://www.cambridgema.gov/cdd/planud/institutionalplanning]
I will lead a meeting of the Neighborhood & Long Term Planning Committee in late February (TBD) to discuss CDD’s zoning priorities which include discussions around focusing on targeted form-based zoning (prioritizing the form and context of buildings rather than their use) for areas like Central Square, N. Mass Ave., Cambridge St., Alewife’s MBTA area, the old BB&N playing field beside Fresh Pond, and transition districts (underdeveloped areas on the edges of neighborhoods, with surface parking lots or single-story commercial). I’d like to see us concentrate on zoning for corridors, squares and transition districts, in keeping with Envision Cambridge’s recommendations. I welcome your thoughts.
I am also excited to report that the urban planning professors who presented to the Council January 8 are eager to partner with the City. I’m encouraging this and hope that their students might study our underutilized lots. Development should happen in concentrated areas, where it makes sense contextually, rather than haphazardly in our neighborhoods.
Charter Review
On Monday, we discussed a proposal to give the Council more authority and the City Manager less, giving the Council the right to alter 10% of the budget and to hire the City Solicitor and Department Heads. I spoke against all three because they undermine the authority of the City Manager who ultimately is responsible for the City’s fiscal health (and AAA bond rating) and the City’s staff of 2,000. Colleagues agreed about the department heads. Conversations about Council engagement with the budget, who hires the solicitor and how we choose our mayor will continue.
Transportation
At the Transportation Committee meeting on Tuesday, City staff presented large state projects that will impact our City. These are large, complex, inter-jurisdictional, costly, projects with long timeframes. Cambridge’s livability and economic vitality depends on thoughtful execution. The good news: the CDD seems on this. Our MBTA bus and T service are both improving, and planning for I-90, commuter rail at Alewife and the Draw One Bridge at North Point is ongoing. Federal grants for these projects—while threatened by the Trump administration—have not been rescinded.
See Cambridge Day coverage of the meeting here. [link: https://www.cambridgeday.com/2025/01/31/five-projects-that-will-complicate-transportation-around-cambridge-for-the-next-decade/]
Plans for I-90 and West Station have been hung up by Amtrak and the MBTA, who now want about 7 acres of layover tracks in Allston. (Many argue the layover area should be at Widett Circle in South Boston, not at West Station.) I learned Friday that MassDOT must have a Draft Environmental Impact Statement by this fall to stay on track to receive the $335m committed federal dollars. So this issue must be resolved soon.
DCR’s improvements to Memorial Drive between the Eliot Bridge and JFK Street should begin this summer.
Infrastructure
To reduce water pollution and attempt to reduce or eliminate combined sewer overflow (CSO), the MWRA is updating plans for Cambridge and Somerville. This will potentially cost somewhere between $600m and over $2 billion. MWRA’s hopes to have a draft plan by the end of the year.
Eversource held a groundbreaking for its Greater Cambridge Energy Project (GCEP) Tuesday. This project, which includes a 35,000 square foot underground substation at Kendall (the largest in the USA), will ensure that we have more electricity and redundant systems. Estimated in-service date: 2029.
DPW says that the electrical conduits for the GCEP will require the removal of 150 trees, many of them mature, at or beside the Volpe site. While the City will replace them with many trees, planted in ideal conditions, this has upset many. Both the City and Reed Hilderbrand Landscape Architects tried but failed to develop alternatives. (The challenge involved squeezing both stormwater pipes and electrical infrastructure under Binney Street and its sidewalk). As our city grows, so must its infrastructure (and difficult trade offs).
Around Town
Over the past weeks, I’ve attended meetings about the bike lanes on Broadway, the Cambridge Nonprofit Coalition, a Know Your Rights training, and events celebrating Lunar New Year and Martin Luther King’s legacy of love and commitment to positive change.
While the world may seem topsy-turvy, I remain impressed with how in Cambridge, we continue to move things forward. Last week, BioMed Realty topped off a lab and office building for Takeda Pharmaceuticals at 585 Third Street, with a new performance arts theater that will seat 400. The Museum of Science also just launched a year-long, multi-disciplinary program: “Being Human.” Partnering with local universities and research institutes, “Being Human” celebrates what humans can accomplish in community.
Enjoy the snow! And, once again, please forward my updates to friends and neighbors and have them email me at czusy@cambridgema.gov. if they’d like to be added to the list.
Happy Lunar New Year!
Cathie Zusy
Cambridge City Councillor