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MIT plans 'major rezoning effort and political campaign' to remake Kendall Square in its image
By adamg on Fri, 12/10/2010 - 11:17am
The Tech reports on MIT plans for the area around its campus, starting with construction of a new $100-million, five-story R&D facility at 298 Mass. Ave. next year and continuing with a decade-long effort to add up to 1 million square feet of office sapce and 100,000 square feet of retail to Kendall Square. A key part of the school's Kendall plans is to turn it into more of a destination location rather than a collection of random unconnected buildings, with much of the work focused on the area immediately around the T station.
MIT's president is inviting "city leadership" to her home for a chat on the plans. No word if an invite is going out to Councilor Ken Reeves, who recently called the guy in charge of all the planning "duplicitous and deceitful."
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Comments
Please start by evicting Fidelity Investments
which is a total waste of commercial space, and bring in a drugstore (which is what that space used to be).
Some parts of town have too many drugstores, but Kendall has none at all -- the closest ones being in Central Square or Charles Circle. Should you really have to hop on the Red Line to buy aspirin?
There's a CVS in the
There's a CVS in the Galleria. (no pharmacy though.)
Which is about just as far
Which is about just as far from the T stop as Central Square.
drugstore
The drugstore was miserable. It made money on lottery tickets and cigarettes. I think anything but is a better contributor to the neighborhood.
You can buy aspirin and some other OTC drugs over at the Coop, actually.
The transformation will be
The transformation will be complete when the Infinite Corridor runs all the way to 1 Memorial Drive (or better known as E-87).
Since MIT destroyed Kendall Square
It's only appropriate that they might rebuild it, some 50 years later. Then the concern was "OMG! There are poor people near our prestigious university! Let's kick them all out and build some boring office buildings!" Now the concern is "OMG! We're losing all the hipsters to Alston! Let's build some hip retail to lure them back!"
MIT didn't tear down houses in Kendall Square
Kendall Square was an industrial district, and a largely abandoned one by the mid-1970s when I went to school at MIT.
It was "abandoned" because
It was "abandoned" because they went in and tore down all the buildings. That was the modus operandi in those days: tear everything down, sell the land at below market rates to private developers and hope the magic of the market fixes everything.
How little you know
Maybe you should do a little history search on the area, perhaps talk to people who were around before you were?
Something about mission control, collapsing furniture and tool and candy industry, tar paper factory wasteland, and all that - long before MIT bought much or any of it. 25 years ago, it was largely an abandoned waste land and had been for many years. MIT had nothing to do with any of that - the industries moved off shore and didn't steward their properties.
Please get your facts straight before you comment again.
the real story behind the Kendall Sq. 1970-1990 wasteland
Actually, what happened was that a mixed residential/light industry neighborhood was ripped out to make way for a major NASA research institute, which was supposed to be loosely affiliated with MIT and to leverage local expertise in aero-astro. This was a federal initiative of the Johnson administration, under the slogan popular in the day of "urban renewal", not an MIT project per se.
Then when Massachusetts failed to vote for Richard Nixon in 1968, it got punished by the withdrawal of all funding for the unbuilt NASA center, which was built in Houston, Texas instead.
The result was the wasteland some of us remember on that spot until the glorious Marriott and its fellow dreary high-rises replaced it.
That's incorrect, the NASA
That's incorrect, the NASA Mission Control Center was scrapped here once JFK was replaced by LBJ. When the state didn't vote for Nixon, he ordered the closure of the Charlestown Navy Yard, which by that point in time was already an obsolete facility to the Navy and only operating as a political favor to the state.
Nixon was the one
I don't think you're right. I'm not a specialist in Cambridge history, but I've been googling around, and it looks like the decision to scrap the NASA project for Kendall Square was made in December 1969 by the new Nixon administration.
Look, for example, at this source -- the paragraph that begins "With a change in federal administration" (first full paragraph on the page).
I simplified somewhat (for humor, which no one appreciated)
It was a mixed residential industrial area that was somewhat rundown. It was hardly a wasteland though. MIT was not directly responsible for the redevelopment, but played a large role behind the scenes.
Kendall Square is arguably the worst urban redevelopment in the Boston area. No sense of place. No reason for anyone to be there other than for work.
West Enders might disagree with you
Kendal Square isn't great, but it's far better than what happened in Scollay Square and the West End. And unlike Boston's urban renewal experiment, the one in Cambridge is at least improving.
Anti-Gentrification Madlib
See, what you people don't understand is that back when the _____________ people lived in ____________, nobody thought it was worth anything. Then one day _____________ came into town and started buying up all the properties for a song. Nobody noticed until the wrecking balls came and all of a sudden the whole area was in the pocket of __________ and all the ____________ people had to move out of their houses. Then ____________ built _____________ and turned the quickest profit ever. The property was worth more every year. And the neighborhood has never been the same. Now everywhere you look it's just ________ people.
It usually works. But every once in a while you fill out the place name with Kendall Square and hipsters or something and it doesn't make any sense.
WIN
Once again Sock_Puppet, you're brilliant.
The president might want to review the open meeting laws...
...before they get too deep in conversation. Not an expert, but wouldn't inviting decision makers to discuss in your private dining room rather than the council chamber/public forum pose a problem? Perhaps if she did it one at a time it would be okay, but that's probably not what they had in mind.
MIT is busy screwing up the
MIT is busy screwing up the students' lives too. A few years ago they forced all freshman to live in one big dorm (said it would enhance student community - it didn't). They just introduced a new mandatory (also expensive and inconvenient) student meal plan that is opposed by a significant fraction of students, parents and MIT community members. And they also just announced that they are evicting all student groups from their offices in Walker Memorial, including the WMBR radio station and the Muddy Charles pub.
Basically, the MIT administration has spent the last decade or so coming up with new ways to "socially engineer" (read: infantilize and regiment) the students and "develop and enhance" (read: screw over) Cambridge. It takes a lot of effort to ruin the premiere science and engineering school in the world, but they're giving it their best shot.
Have they actually decided to
Have they actually decided to evict the student groups from Walker? I thought they announced the beginning of the decision-making process for what to do with the building.
When MIT announces a
When MIT announces a decision-making process, it means they've already made the decision.
Here's an article:
Here's an article: http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N60/walker.html
Kendall Sq. history
Here's some good info on Kendall Square history:
http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N12/kendal.12n.html
And here are some photos from
And here are some photos from the 1950s:
http://dome.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.3/35248/...
http://dome.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.3/34858/...
http://dome.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.3/35109/...
http://dome.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.3/35190/...
http://dome.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.3/35481/...