Lexington Ave Landmark Petition Withdrawn
The petition to landmark 15 properties on Lexington Ave was withdrawn at the Cambridge Historical Commission meeting yesterday.
CHC Staff memo (While CHC staff recommend against landmarking these 15 properties, and had administratively approved the backyard infill project the NIMBY petitioners are trying to block, CHC staff still manage to credit nonsense about street parking (!) and amending multifamily zoning—putting your tax dollars to work advocating against housing!).
Withdrawal letter signed by lead petitioner Timothy Mansfield of 108 Lexington Ave.
Apparently this petition is in response to a proposal to add some homes behind 90 Lexington Ave. that the petitioners were trying to block but CHC staff had approved (basically cutting a secret deal limiting the size of the additional housing). Meanwhile, multiple of the homes their petition claimed to be trying to protect have been down-converted into incredibly large, incredibly expensive single-family homes, with assessments of $4 and $5 million! 😳 No one seems to have been concerned about that! 🤔 Keep that in mind when CCC makes their bad-faith claims about supporting affordability, as well as their pushing Doug Brown’s anti-affordable housing downzoning petition. 🙄
The CHC staff memo conveniently leaves out the fact that nine homes have been lost on Lexington Ave due to down-conversion, so density has decreased and street parking is obviously not the real issue. Note that the petitioners appear to have hired a law firm specializing in blocking housing, including 40B affordable housing. https://www.danhilllaw.com/dennis-murphy
West Cambridge NIMBYs love lawyering up to fight housing—exactly why multifamily housing has to be by-right or it won’t happen. Even with by-right zoning, CCC types have figured out that between historic landmark and NCD petitions to the Historical Commission, one-year demolition delay that can be applied to any building in Cambridge more than fifty years old (so the vast majority), Councillors Zusy and Flaherty’s downzoning amendments, and Doug Brown’s anti-affordability downzoning petition, these NIMBYs can delay delay delay, particularly harming building more permanently affordable inclusionary homes. 😡
