Just look at what happened to the former East Cambridge courthouse property (now “40 Thorndike”) …
One of the problems with a collapsing news industry coupled with an endless daily news cycle covered by an ever-shrinking cadre of full-time reporters is the loss of institutional memory—even in the few well-run, long-established publications that still survive in the sector. Which goes part of the way to explaining why the Boston Business Journal could run the piece “Tech-heavy Cambridge struggles with office vacancies” on Monday seemingly unaware of very relevant events in 2018 that myself and others covered extensively … and in my case, critically.
The article discussed rising vacancy rates for commercial real estate in Cambridge (and Boston to a lesser extent) due to developers glutting the regional market with office and lab space in recent years and stated with alarm that “(a) 20-story office tower now hitting the market ‘may be the first to deliver vacant.’” It explained that this phenomenon is due to a combination of: tech workers taking strongly to hybrid and remote work arrangements in the wake of the COVID pandemic, a slowdown in venture capital investment in technology, and a resulting “high level of layoffs” in that industry.
With the lab portion of the market doing somewhat better than office space, BBJ pointed out that converting some of the millions of square feet of available office space to labs is one option to help commercial landlords to weather the downturn. As is a “conversion geared toward ‘tough tech,’ including robotics or climatetech.”
All doubtless true.
The article then briefly touched on the idea of converting the offices into housing before quickly dismissing it with a link to a 2022 BBJ story that looked at the idea in more depth.
Which is both unfortunate and supremely ironic.
Because the “20-story office tower” in question, now called “40 Thorndike,” was once the East Cambridge courthouse (plus a jail). And that long-troubled, state-owned building sat on a larger state-owned site that could have been converted into over 200 units of desperately needed public housing according to a “Community-Driven Framework” document prepared by Rep. Mike Connolly—the politician most strongly allied with the East Cambridge community groups that fought tooth-and-nail for many years to get more public housing built on the property.
But at the key moment when one vote for such a public use was held by one Cambridge city councilor (later mayor) that could have stopped developer Leggat McCall’s drive to convert the tower into yet another commercial office building in its tracks, the vote was cast in the wrong direction.
That politician is Sumbul Siddiqui, a “progressive” put into office with a hearty assist from a coalition of left-wing community organizations. And, as I chronicled in this column in 2018, she “took a dive” in one of the most grotesque displays of politics-as-usual that I have ever seen in the Bay State. Grabbing at the first offer Leggat McCall made to double the number of “fully affordable” housing units they planned to build into the refurbished courthouse to 48 without any attempt to use her power to block the deal entirely or at least get a better deal.
Multiply this sad tale hundreds of times in similar situations around the Commonwealth and one can more easily understand why state government is saying Massachusetts needs “150,000 to 200,000 more housing units to meet demand by 2030,” according to a McKinsey & Company analysis commissioned by former Gov. Charlie Baker’s office in 2021, as reported by GBH.
Capitalist developers and real estate speculators will always chase after the brass rings of projects that will generate the biggest profits at the fastest speeds. Without government legislation and regulation forcing them to build public goods like sufficient affordable housing to serve community needs (still at a handsome profit, mind you), that’s not going to change.
But we don’t have government working in the broad public interest (last week’s latest legislative debacle making that patently clear at the state level). We have government at all levels controlled by, among many other powerful interests, capitalist developers and real estate speculators. So new commercial office and lab spaces continually get built. And now there is a glut of such spaces around the Boston area. Having failed to get the profits they expected, developers cast about for any alternative options other than converting office buildings to housing. When that basically goes nowhere, they just leave the properties empty.
Which is how we arrive at the mainly commercial “40 Thorndike” coming on the market with no corporate tenants. Joining millions of square feet at other commercial developments currently lying fallow in Cambridge alone.
Enough space to provide hundreds, if not thousands, of apartments. Even as state government prepares to start throwing immigrant and other poor families out of shelters and motels who have nowhere to go but the streets (understanding that the recently reduced nine-month Mass. “right to shelter” protection is still stronger than what most other states offer the unhoused). And local governments prepare a series of excuses (some true, some not) for why they can’t handle more doomed people on their streets.
Making it seem like diminished housing coverage in the collapsing Mass. press corps is the least of our problems. But it’s something that my colleagues and I at HorizonMass and BINJ can work on improving ourselves while encouraging our counterparts at other local and regional news organizations to do the same. Which together with the increased grassroots community pressure such coverage might spark could really help turn the tide on starting to solve this critical social crisis that underpins so many other social crises.
I’m not hopeful that this will come to pass … but I’m hopeful anyway, you know what I’m saying?
Check out my entire East Cambridge courthouse series for all the depressing background on that development debacle:
- https://digboston.com/cambridge-councilors-can-stop-undemocratic-courthouse-deal/
- https://digboston.com/dont-buy-what-cambridge-mayor-mcgovern-is-selling/
- https://digboston.com/the-political-movement-to-come/
- https://digboston.com/siddiqui-takes-a-dive-joins-mayor-mcgovern-other-cambridge-councilors-in-greenlighting-backroom-courthouse-deal/
Apparent Horizon—an award-winning political column—is syndicated by the MassWire news service of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism. Jason Pramas is editor-in-chief of HorizonMass and executive director of the Boston Institute for Nonprofit Journalism.
