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Would you live in Kendall Square?
By adamg on Fri, 04/27/2012 - 7:25am
Cambridge Day reports on a chat between city councilors and a consultant who says Kendall Square could do with another 3 million square feet of office and research space, some more retail and up to 2,500 housing units. Obviously, the only way to achieve all that is through taller buildings (even if the feds do give up the grassy fields of the Volpe Center); councilors, however, said they want to avoid the mistake that is the Broad Institute - a big blocky fat thing that just squats there, all bloated and massive.
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Comments
Not unless they put in some
Not unless they put in some convenience/grocery stores and a pharmacy. That place is a wasteland of unaffordable housing and business. I actually like Kendall square, but it's not really livable. The only other option is to hike over to the mall or the Central Square if I want anything other than food from a restaurant. I checked the prices of the apartments in some of the buildings around work, and 1-2 bedrooms go for like 4k-5k a pop. Are you frikkin kidding me? The new 17 story apartment building going up next to ZA/EVOO/Kikas will be more of the same.
I've always thought that whoever owns a convenience store in this area could make a small fortune. Oh wait...they'll probably have to put all their profit towards rent.
Sound like Boston
Same issue, luxury apartments are the name of the game. Everyone else can go screw.
It's What You Get...
When the community groups are so obsessed with height. The developer says they need x feet to make housing affordable, community groups claim they'll be killed by shadows, developer chops off some feet and raises the cost of the unit to cover the loss. Of course, the problem is that developers are all greedy capitalist pigs and not that the community groups are short sighted, so we repeat ad naseum until we're where we are today with one of the highest costs of living in the country.
I really don't understand the
I really don't understand the fear of shadows. I've heard it from a bunch of people. Shadows are nice! The buildings protect you from the sun. One of the most miserable things about walking in suburban sprawl is the complete lack of shade. On a hot day, you just get cooked. Same goes for overly wide streets.
your assignment
Wander down into the financial district in December.
You'll understand a little better. The gloom on the lower part of Franklin St. under the bulge of the Pregnant Building gets to be very depressing.
However, Kendall Square streets are a lot wider than Olde Boston streets with skyscrapers, and that makes a huge difference.
The financial district
...is gloomy because it's a dead, undiversified zone that people flee after hours.
Places that have multiple uses and attract people at all times are not gloomy, even if they do have tall buildings and small streets. Wide streets can be more depressing, because they have an annoying tendency to attract high speed traffic, which drives away people. Who wants to hang out on a highway?
And you can bundle up from the cold. There's little you can do about extreme sun, as taking layers off only makes the exposure problem worse.
Japan has many such scenes, for example:
The gloom is due to zoning.
and just historically not holding these builders feet to the fire.
There's not a whole lot of street level retail / food / shopping. What is slated away is 1/2 full with banks, travel agencies, or novelty stores. If you could get more street level retail, a lot of the gloom goes away.
Define "Overpriced"
If there are people standing in line waiting to pay $4,000 per month for an apartment, then that's what apartments are worth, and it's pretty hard to make a case that they're overpriced.
I don't much like it -- I'd like to live in a neighborhood that I can't afford to live in -- but I don't blame the property owners; I don't feel like they're telling me to go screw; it's just that there are other people with more dollars in their pockets than I have, who want those apartments more than I do.
Wealth
is both disproportionately held by the 1%, and also by generation lines. Boomers have quite a share of it.
NTTAWWT, or a comment on it, but my fear is it's leading to a major brain drain of young college educated professionals in this state.
Looking at the numbers, we can see it happening. Entry level and early career wages haven't been so hot in the last 15 years here, and young people have been leaving MA in droves to preserve any semblance of getting ahead. every year it seems to get worse, and people seem to be leaving earlier.
Thats going to be a huge problem for the local economy when the rich get tired of the city and the boomers start dieing or retiring to elderly care homes. I don't see my friends, who have started families elsewhere, picking up and moving back.
The need for college apartments and the need for investment properties still seems to be fueling a bubble here IMO. It might be a slow bubble, but when real wages aren't keeping up with increases in inflation and housing costs.... I see big issues ahead keeping the next generation of an educated workforce thats led to the successes we have now.
groceries
There's a Star Market just down Main near Central, or one in East Cambridge. Pretty sure both are under a mile, but okay. I mean, I know it's a hall, but I live in Dorchester and have to do the same thing.
Don't Forget
Johnny's on Beacon in Somerville, just past Inman Sq. and Whole Foods near MGH.
Kendall Square has a 7-Eleven store
Its official address is '600 Technology Square', but better to just look for it on the north side of Main Street between Portland and Albany streets.
That said, the area still desperately needs a drugstore. CVS, Rite Aid, Walgreen's, somebody needs to identify this market opportunity and run with it.
Doesn't Feel Like a Place to Live without a Bodega
I always wondered what the people that live there do for shopping. Do they all drive and go far for groceries and odd things you pick up on the fly at a corner bodega?
Or do they all use Peapod?
Or do they send out the houseboy [ok the real estate isn't THAT expensive but it's damn close] for their needs?
Some areas are just going to take forever to develop a neighborhood feel.
I imagine they do what people
I imagine they do what people in many suburbs do, get into their cars and drive somewhere. There's a reason (well, many reasons) I don't live out in the burbs anymore. I think you hit the nail on the head though talking about developing a neighborhood feel. It doesn't have much of a neighborhood feel. It doesn't really even looked lived in.
For $4k+/month I want my apartment to come with a replicator a la Star Trek TNG. It should also be self cleaning and take care of all my laundry.
You think it doesn't look lived in now...
...you should have seen it in the 70s and 80s. There was nothing there. No Marriott Hotel, nothing. Just a deserted, former industrial area. I mean there was NOTHING, except the F & T Diner (which appropriately always had a sign that said "closed", even when it was open)and the Terminal Barber Shop (the very existance of which seemed so bizarre that a local band released a song about it). I actually kind of liked the otherworldly feel it had back then.
But when it was otherwise empty, it had a drug store
Kendall Drug, where the useless Fidelity Investments office is now. If they could make it serving just the MIT students and Volpe employees, why can't CVS do much better there now?
Do you count
...areas west of Kendall such as Hampshire and Windsor, as part of Kendall? Or is that more Central/Inman?
Quite a few people living there.
Officially that's called "Area 4"
and most of it is quite pleasant to walk around. It has plenty of little shops and bodegas. I remember two of them as Newtowne Variety and Izzy's Subs, but I think they have other names these days.
Yeah, Area IV
Parts of it I noticed were the most densely populated tracts in Cambridge. I've been there a bunch of times to go to Lord Hobo or passing through to Somerville. Seems nice. If they manage, why can't Kendall? It's only a short walk.