Tuesday night was quite a full one for the Cambridge City Council.
Along with their usual discussions, several groups came forward to speak about the plan to grow the Galt Heritage Conservation District (GHCD).
The proposal aimed to significantly increase the GHCD’s boundaries east of downtown. The idea behind this was to protect more historic buildings that give Galt its special character. Folks are worried that without protection, new development might change downtown too much.
On the flip side, some people fear that expanding the district could slow down building projects in areas without heritage sites or make it tougher for homeowners and businesses to update their properties.
One group against the expansion is the Cambridge Core Planning Advisory Committee (CCPAC). This committee includes local business owners, residents, and other community members who have concerns about how planning decisions get made in the city.
Patrick Simmons, a retired architect who’s lived in Cambridge for years, started CCPAC and spoke at Tuesday’s meeting.
He appeared on The Mike Farwell Show saying that what downtown really needs is more people living there. He worries that enlarging the GHCD would make adding housing downtown even harder.
“We haven’t had any developers interested in building housing downtown for years. I’m not talking about glass skyscrapers or concrete high-rises, I’m just talking about sensible housing in the core area. We have to attract these people into the core area.”
Simmons pointed out that making this zone bigger means extra rules and hoops for developers to jump through.
He made it clear he’s all for saving heritage buildings and isn’t against some expansion of GHCD-just not as big as what was proposed and more targeted instead of covering such a large part of downtown.
“We already have a little bit of a heritage conservation district on the south side of lower Main St. Maybe take it across the street another block or so to the north or south. But, let’s be judicious about it. Rather than taking the whole downtown and saying nobody can do anything without working with heritage planners. And, that’s not an easy process.”
Simmons also noted how past developments in Cambridge have managed to mix old buildings with new construction pretty well.
“City Hall is a great example of working within that quadrant,” said Simmons.
“The old post office on the waterfront, again great modern architecture combined with heritage buildings, fantastic work. The Cambridge Mill, a wonderful long time business, and a great restaurant by the way, also added to their building very thoughtfully, very sensitively. Nobody wants to tear down these old buildings. They want to work with them because they know the value.”
The council debated for quite some time before deciding against expanding GHCD boundaries by six votes to three.
