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Image courtesy of Elkus Manfredi Architects.
The developers looking to revamp the CambridgeSide mall into a mixed-use development with residential and office towers are going back to the drawing board.
New England Development had filed a planned unit development zoning petition with the city of Cambridge earlier this year.
Three mid-rise buildings and one tower would have replaced the Best Buy, Sears and Macy’s locations and the mall’s First Street garage with four buildings with a mix of office and lab uses along with ground-floor retail. In addition, residential uses could have made up as much as 20 percent of the new project. The mall’s main atrium, food court and the shops and planned third-floor offices that line it would have remained intact under the proposal. The changes were billed as a way to make the mall more successful amid the national decline in brick-and-mortar retail’s fortunes, and a way to activate First Street.
The Sears space was sold last year to Northwood Investors for $55 million. New England Development and the mall’s owners had asked the city to rezone the site to allow for the new development under a “condominium property regime” by which development on different sites can be assigned to different owners.
“Over the last few months, our project team has worked diligently with the city council, the planning board, various city agencies, departments and boards and with the public to review the proposed plans and receive comments on the design,” New England Development said in a statement. “The feedback we received was overwhelmingly supportive of finding ways to ensure CambridgeSide’s success for the next 30 years and maintain CambridgeSide as a strong community partner to the East Cambridge neighborhood and the city of Cambridge overall. At this time, our project team is fine-tuning the plan, incorporating many of those suggestions, including those we received from the planning board at our last hearing. All of this input will inform a more responsive zoning petition that we plan to file this summer. ”
City officials want a larger residential component and “more compensation” for any success New England Development enjoys from the project, The Cambridge Day reports.
