People living nearby are watching closely as demolition plans move forward in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where a problematic condo building is about to be taken down.
The Riverview Condominiums on Mount Auburn Street have been shut down permanently. The building poses safety risks because of concrete problems.
The City of Cambridge is managing the demolition, but it’s expected to be tricky due to the building’s size and its spot right next to the Charles River and other apartments.
There will be road closures including Sparks Street between Brattle and Mount Auburn streets, plus Mount Auburn Street closed between Lowell and Willard streets, along with part of the right westbound lane on Memorial Drive.
Traffic in Cambridge will get worse than usual this weekend with the city’s first Porchfest happening alongside these road closures for tearing down a big condo building.
The whole process will affect locals for several months – which pushed Rose Freudberg and her roommates to make a tough call.
“We’ve decided that we need to move out because of all of this that’s going on,” said Freudberg. “We just found out about it about a week ago. We’ve been living in the neighborhood for about three years.”
“We are nervous about the unknowns of what the project is going to look like and if there are safety risks associated with it,” Freudberg added.
Traffic worries are also a big deal here.
“They’ve made these streets one way so I am trying to figure out how to get home to my garage. Will I have to leave and come back again? Or do I have to go to Harvard Square and come back? Or go down and around the river and come back? So I’m thinking about that,” Andrea Dupree said. “And just walking around now for the first time, but cars are really speeding up those streets. I was just on Lowell Street and this is a residential area and they are supposed to be going 25 miles an hour and they sure were not going 25 miles an hour so I think we all have a lot to learn about this.”
Freudberg says traffic hassles also played into her choice to move.
“Definitely the road closures. We live right close by and we park our cars on the street. The length of the project that they’re predicting, that it could go on multiple months and not wanting to live just a few houses down from a potentially hazardous situation.”
No official start date has been set yet since they’re still looking for someone to do the job. They hope everything will wrap up before December.
