City officials weren’t the only ones who wanted to see more housing?neighborhood groups also pushed for it, hoping to relieve upward pressure on prices. While affordable housing units can protect low-income renters, market-rate housing in the area had become increasingly unaffordable, squeezing out those in the middle, including professors, recent grads, and middle-class families with kids. “The most vulnerable people are able to stay here, and the rich are fine, but everybody in the middle is screwed,” says Cambridge resident Julian Cassa, a leader of the Area Four Coalition, a neighborhood group.
Several of MIT’s own faculty also decried the 2011 plan, upset by its emphasis on commercial development over housing, says Jonathan King, a professor of biology, who argues that while commuting works for many academics, it’s essential for scientists to live close to the lab. “You can’t carry an electron microscope around,” he says.
In response to feedback from the city (which had commissioned its own urban planning analysis of Kendall Square in 2011), the neighborhoods, and the faculty, the Institute appointed a task force to study the development of MIT property in Kendall Square. Presenting its initial findings in October 2012, MIT’s task force flagged the need for additional housing?especially for graduate students?and recommended a housing study. (The Graduate Student Housing Working Group would eventually recommend that MIT build 500 to 600 new grad-student units now and an additional 400 over the next decade.)
In December 2012, MIT came forward with a revised plan, developed in a collaboration involving MITIMCo, senior administrators, planning staff, and the leadership of both the School of Architecture and Planning and the Department of Architecture. “We learned some lessons from this,” says MITIMCo’s Marsh. With input from that wider group, the new plan increased the space for housing to 240,000 square feet. It proposed demolishing the 201 units at the aging Eastgate graduate housing complex and building some 470 apartments in the center of Kendall Square over the T station, for a net of approximately 270 new grad-student apartments (since modified to 250). In addition, it would create 50 affordable housing units and 240 market-rate apartments wrapping around One Broadway.
In the spring of 2013, two contingents of MIT speakers?including President Reif, former chancellor Phillip Clay, Institute Professors Robert Langer and Phillip Sharp, Broad Institute founding director Eric Lander, and Koch Institute director Tyler Jacks?appeared before the city council to advocate for MIT’s rezoning petition. The council was satisfied, voting 5?3 to approve zoning for the plan in April. Some faculty still express concern that the proposed graduate housing units represent only half the short-term amount recommended by the working group. According to Gallop, the Institute plans to add more graduate housing as part of later developments elsewhere on campus, though specific plans are still in the works.
More fundamentally, some question MIT’s wisdom in building commercial real estate rather than using the parcels for controlled expansion of the academic facilities. “This is essentially MIT’s dowry, and once you give this away, you give this away,” says former MIT planning director Bob Simha, MCP ’57. “These are savings accounts for the institution.” The current plan adds some 230,000 square feet of academic space and preserves an additional 570,000 square feet for future academic developments. But some critics worry that if more space is needed, departments might have to rent it from MITIMCo or other developers, which would increase overhead and reduce their competitiveness in applying for grants. “That truly weakens MIT’s role as an international research university,” says King.
Gallop, however, puts that risk in perspective. She notes that space allocation is handled at the Institute level, and MIT could decide to build if additional space is needed. Even if departments did have to rent in the short term, she says that MIT has an agreement with the city allowing it to shift property from commercial to academic use over a four- to five-year period. Meanwhile, the Institute not only reaps financial return for the endowment but also benefits from the increased vibrancy of the campus. As part of the initiative, the MIT Museum will move to a new building next to the T station, opening out onto a park with Ping-Pong tables, fire pits in winter, public art, and other amenities.
Perhaps more important, in a deal worked out with the city, all the commercial real estate ventures will set aside 5 percent of their square footage for “innovation space”?small, affordable offices for startup companies. Already, MIT has made a down payment on that obligation by helping establish LabCentral, cofounded by CIC’s Tim Rowe, which promises to do for life-science companies what the Cambridge Innovation Center has done for tech startups. It provides lab facilities and offices for more than 100 scientists and 28 companies at 700 Main Street.