'We Do Not Need, Nor Want, Another Kendall Square': Residents Back Alewife Office And Lab Moratorium

The Cambridge City Council Monday evening tabled a discussion on a temporary ban on office and lab projects in Alewife, but not before a dozen local residents voiced support for the moratorium.

City officials last week presented the zoning order in response to REIT Healthpeak Properties’ $625M area spending spree in its play for a 36-acre life sciences campus.

The order would bar office and lab uses in the neighborhood for approximately two years until 2024 — or earlier, if the city updates the neighborhood’s zoning, which currently allows residential, business and light industrial uses.

“We do not need, nor want, another Kendall Square,” Cambridge resident Ann Tennis said during the Monday meeting’s public comment period. Tennis referred to the East Cambridge neighborhood around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that has transformed into the nation's life sciences epicenter over the past few decades and is home to numerous biopharmaceutical and biotechnology players.

Cambridge City Councilor Tim Toomey used a “charter right” action to postpone discussion of the zoning action until next Monday’s meeting. Toomey, the longtime councilor whose district includes Kendall Square, didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning on why he postponed the policy discussion. 

Cambridge City Councilor Patty Nolan said in an email Monday morning she was “disappointed” discussion was tabled, but she remained hopeful the zoning order would pass if Healthpeak works with the community.

“I don’t think the charter right will impact anything,” Cambridge City Councilor Marc McGovern, a co-sponsor of the policy order, said Monday morning in an email.

The policy order is a rare municipal roadblock for the life sciences industry, though it has run into a few snags in Boston over the past five months, including a City Hall committee hearing on the expanding industry and an office owner’s suit against the city’s Zoning Board of Appeal over a rejected lab conversion plan.

Healthpeak last week unveiled its Alewife plans during its Q3 earnings report as executives explained to investors the benefits of a lab campus for future growing life sciences tenants. The REIT is hoping to capitalize on the booming industry that, in Cambridge, regularly demands rents exceeding $100 per SF and currently has a vacancy of 0.3%. 

Healthpeak didn’t respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning, but the firm’s senior vice president and co-head of life science, Scott Bohn, spoke for two minutes during the public comment period and said the REIT spent plenty of time studying the Envision Alewife Plan. 

“We embrace the overarching themes of the Envision Alewife plan, including creating a mixed-use district that includes both commercial and residential uses with focus on urban fauna, mobility, traffic mitigation, climate, sustainability, and public green space, among others,” Bohn said. 

Two councilors and Cambridge Mayor Sumbul Siddiqui cited in their policy order last week a 42-year-old Alewife Revitalization Plan calling for residential, business and light industrial development as well as a 2019 plan maintaining those development goals. A zoning petition in 2019 from developer Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, the seller of much of Healthpeak’s recent acquisitions, was defeated over misaligned development goals, Cambridge Day previously reported.

“We can’t repeat the same mistake that we did with C, C, and F (Cabot, Cabot & Forbes) in that we cannot be caught off-guard without having the Envision Cambridge and the Alewife Plan be reviewed or ordained by the city,” Cambridge resident John Chun said during the meeting.

The Alewife neighborhood, approximately 4 miles west of the Kendall Square life sciences epicenter, is largely bereft of life sciences development when compared to East Cambridge. Healthpeak owns the nearby Cambridge Discovery Park with developer Bulfinch. The Davis Cos. is constructing The Quad, its own 510K SF campus near the MBTA’s Alewife Station, while life sciences REIT IQHQ in the past year and a half also scooped up area properties for a combined $179M to develop its own 565K SF life sciences campus.

Healthpeak has spent approximately $580M so far in eight separate transactions for existing office, research and development and land parcels, some fully leased to companies, including Raytheon and an affiliate of Beth Israel Lahey Health, according to earnings report filings. A final transaction, a $45M acquisition of a 53K SF industrial building across 110 and 125 Fawcett St., has yet to close. According to Healthpeak, plans could include a future pedestrian footbridge to the Alewife Station.

Not every resident voiced support for the proposed moratorium. Cambridge resident Patrick Barrett called the moratorium a “strange idea” without outreach to the developer, and battled back against the notion of preventing another Kendall Square-like neighborhood. 

“Kendall Square’s not a fun place to go to, and that needs to be fixed,” Barrett said. “And maybe we can take those things we've forgotten and didn't implement in Kendall Square and think about a more holistic plan for Alewife. But all this has to do with outreach.”