Candidate’s Diary: Week 1 (May 3-9)

Over the course of my campaign I will be blogging weekly about the civic meetings and events I attend. This exercise will give me an opportunity to share my thoughts and ideas with voters. I hope readers will share their perspectives, either in the comments section below or via email to jan@jandevereux.org.

Sunday, May 3

It’s exactly 6 months to Election Day, and I held my kickoff event at the Summer Shack in Alewife. I was thrilled (and relieved) that over 100 people attended an indoor event on a spectacular spring afternoon. Many went home with campaign t-shirts and tote bags (if you want either, please let me know — free with a donation). I was even more gratified by the warm words of those who spoke on my behalf and enthusiastically welcomed me to the race: City Councillor Nadeem Mazen, School Committee member Patty Nolan, Boston Cyclists Union board president and Cambridge Bike Committee member Steve Bercu, and Fresh Pond Residents Alliance stalwarts Alison Field-Juma and Doug Brown, my campaign treasurer. By the end of their remarks, I was probably blushing as orange as the balloons decorating the room. My own remarks are attached. Thank you to all who attended. I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to chat with everyone individually.

Monday, May 4

I watched the weekly City Council meeting at home (Channel 22 CCTV on most Mondays starting at 5:30pm). I had submitted comments to the Board of Zoning Appeal, opposing one item on the Council’s agenda: the request by Citizens Bank for a variance for a great deal of additional commercial signage at 30 Brattle Street in Harvard Square. I was pleased that the Council voted to reject the variance.

The Council voted to appropriate $6m toward renovating and repurposing the historic Foundry building on Third Street as a STEAM center for all ages – money very well spent in my opinion. The Cambridge Redevelopment Authority will identify a private developer to do the renovation in return for a 50-year lease and the ability to tenant the building. The Council must stand firm and insist that the majority of the building’s 53,000 square feet be put to community use. I would support an additional public investment to make the numbers work. The city needs a dedicated space for the community, especially underserved segments, to get a foothold in the innovation economy. The Foundry is ideally located on Third Street overlooking a large public park on Rogers Street (the park is soon to be redesigned as part of the Kendall Connect open space contest; a proposed land swap could result in public green spaces on both sides of Third, bringing the park right to the Foundry’s doorstep).

Tuesday, May 5

After work I attended a public hearing on municipal broadband held by the Neighborhood and Long Term Planning Committee and chaired by Councillor Nadeem Mazen. Some members of the city’s Broadband Task Force attended. As the Internet embeds itself deeper into the fabric of our lives and even our household devices demand to be online and connected (“The Internet of Things is Far Bigger than Anyone Realizes”), affordable access to high-speed, reliable service has become a matter of social justice and is critical for continued economic growth. There remains a significant digital divide in Cambridge and access to high-speed networks is limited because FIOS is not yet available to most non-commercial buildings. The guest speaker was Christopher Mitchell, director of community broadband networks for the Institute of Local Self-Reliance. His group advocates for communities investing to take control of their Internet service, similar to operating a municipal electric utility. This is an important and complex topic I hope to learn more about as the Task Force continues its research and issues recommendations.

Next I met up with a friend, and we took the T into Boston to attend the ceremony for the annual Princeton Prize in Race Relations awarded to high school students who have worked to bridge racial differences in their communities. Students from two Cambridge schools (CRLS and BB&N) were among the five recipients. The keynote speaker was Randall Kennedy (Princeton ’77), a professor at Harvard Law School and one of the country’s most respected scholars on racial justice. A Rhodes Scholar and a Yale Law School graduate, he clerked for Justice Thurgood Marshall. As Professor Kennedy delivered an hour-long refresher course in the lessons of the Civil Rights Movement – and cited the unfinished work ahead (“We still live in a pigmentocracy,” he noted) – I was increasingly unsettled by the venue for the event, The Algonquin Club on Commonwealth Ave. The private social club, founded in 1886, is housed in a magnificent Back Bay mansion designed by McKim, Mead & White. While the club now accepts all races and women, its décor retains all the trappings of white supremacy, from the carved “wooden Indian” statue on the grand staircase to the oil portraits of Boston Brahmins lining the Calvin Coolidge Room where the ceremony took place. I couldn’t help but wonder whether the people of color in the room (a minority that included Professor Kennedy, the high school honorees, their families – and the club’s wait staff) shared my unease about holding this particular event in such an elitist setting. Food for thought.

Thursday, May 7

I was flattened by the stomach flu on Wednesday and was still recovering at home on Thursday. One of the Council’s budget hearings was televised in the morning (starting at 9 AM — attendance by members of the public was nil apart from Robert Winters). By the time I tuned in, the hearing was winding down, but I did catch the discussion of the Animal Commission’s budget and heard the director say that the number of licensed dogs has increased by more than 1,000 recently. He did not specify the time period but he did note that the actual dog population is higher because not all dog owners comply with license law. In a blog post I wrote for Cambridge Canine in 2011, I reported that there were 2,963 licensed dogs in the city in 2010. I would expect that five years later the number may be approaching 5,000. All of the new developments around the Fresh Pond Alewife area are pet friendly. As part of the citywide master planning process, I hope the city will consider where new dog parks should be located to accommodate our new canine residents.

Saturday, May 9

I spent the morning in Kendall Square on this year’s “Jane Jacobs Walk” led by Charles Sullivan (Cambridge Historical Commission director) and Roger Boothe (the city’s retired urban designer). The walk was entitled “Considering Change Afoot in Kendall Square” and the (very big) changes it focused on were MIT’s East Campus expansion (six new buildings replacing 26 acres of surface parking lots; 1.2 million square feet in total) and the Volpe Center redevelopment (adding up to 3 million square feet on the 14-acres the Federal government owns between Broadway and Binney; the Feds will soon select a private firm to redevelop the entire site in exchange for constructing a new state-of-the-art transportation center to replace the dated Volpe Center complex).

My first impressions of the MIT East Campus plan are positive overall. On the plus side: putting all parking and loading activity underground; adding sorely needed graduate student housing (270 net new beds after the ugly Eastgate tower is demolished); adding retail (100,000 square feet along Main Street and the Broad Canal corridor off Third Street); relocating the MIT Museum into one of the new buildings; adding public open spaces (3 acres) and improving the pedestrian connection between the Broad Canal and Main Street/MIT; preserving three historic buildings on Main Street; expanding the MBTA head house on the east side of Main Street; adding other housing (240 market-rate units and 50 affordable units).

Questions I would ask: 1) What transit improvements will be needed to accommodate new demand? The redevelopment also adds significant new R&D lab and office space, bringing new workers into the area. Between MIT East, the Volpe redevelopment, and the CRA’s intent to upzone its MXD District, we could see about 5 million square feet of new development in Kendall in the next decade or so. MIT has not yet produced a traffic study for its project. 2) The number of net new beds for graduate students (270) is about a quarter of the number needed (1,000), according to a recent housing study by a group of MIT faculty and students – when will MIT construct additional grad student housing on its West Campus? 3) Three of the new buildings are fairly generic glass towers…. Could MIT do better, architecturally?

In the afternoon I visited the Tobin School’s Spring Fling & Silent Auction. It was far too nice a day to be indoors, but Tobin’s drab gym was a hive of activity, thanks to the energetic staff from Knucklebones. My oldest child, now 26, attended Tobin in kindergarten in 1994-95, and I’ve lived around right the corner since 1999. Tobin’s prison-esque exterior is a daily reminder of how important good architecture is to creating inviting and functional spaces – and to how far wrong well intended decision makers can go when they can’t recognize the difference. I gather the Tobin may be next on the school district’s list of schools to redesign (after the King School in East Cambridge). You can expect me to take a personal interest in seeing the design process yield a new school building that my neighborhood can be proud of.

Late in the afternoon I visited Danehy Park, where I saw the lunar landscape the snow storage on Field 3 had left behind. This last remaining grass playing field is slated to be re-turfed with plastic despite strong objections from a large number of residents last year, including me. Replacing grass with artificial turf (a petroleum byproduct that some believe poses a cancer risk to younger athletes) will cost the city almost $1 million. It may save some on maintenance, but even prior to its being used for snow storage Field 3 was not well maintained and in very poor condition, so any savings may be illusory. Artificial turf is much hotter underfoot (aggravating the urban heat island effect) and less forgiving on older joints. I think the city may regret the unintended consequences of its the decision to replace all four grass playing fields at Danehy with plastic. Time will tell.

Field 3 at Danehy Park awaits renovation post-snow storage