Sayonara, Tokyo
Posted on March 7, 2014 by freshpondresidents
Coming soon: A 4-story, 20-unit condo building will replace the former restaurant at 307 Fresh Pond Parkway (see developer's plans).
Once popular, the restaurant has been shuttered for many years and the owner has neglected the site, allowing windows to remain broken and weeds to grow unchecked. Snow is seldom shoveled from the sidewalk, which is heavily used by pedestrians and cyclists to access the signaled crosswalk to Fresh Pond Reservation. An ugly chain link fence surrounds the parking lot. No question, the derelict property is an eyesore and the site could be put to better use.
But is a 4-story (45') modern condo building — set only 10' feet back from the Vassal Lane sidewalk — the most appropriate addition to a neighborhood of traditional detached wood-frame homes? Twenty units is roughly the equivalent 10 two-family houses, shoehorned onto to a single 13,910 s.f. lot.
The cantilevered building will loom over the intersection where Vassal Lane and Lakeview Avenue converge and meet the parkway. At rush hour, traffic regularly backs up at the stop sign. How appealing will it be to live with the parkway as your front yard, and next door to a gas station and auto repair shed?
The Alewife T stop is an unpleasant 20-minute walk along the busy parkway, past gas stations and shopping center parking lots — the distance is beyond the 1/2-mile range deemed walkable to rail transit. Bus lines on Concord and Huron Avenue are closer but a bus-to-rail commute eats up precious time. The location practically begs people to drive through Huron Village side streets to escape the parkway traffic. Parking along Brattle Street and walking into Harvard Square is a quicker and more appealing route to the Red Line.
Is it realistic to think that 20 parking spaces for 20-40 residents (and guests) is sufficient, and that the overflow cars won't eat up the limited resident parking spots along Vassal Lane and Lakeview Avenue that are already in demand by visitors to the adjacent Tobin School and residents of other areas who frequent Fresh Pond? Not to mention customers of Cambridge Honda across the street. The parking lot takes up most of the lot's open space. The ghostly figures at right in the architect's strikingly unnatural rendering are standing where the 20 cars would be parked along the property line abutting the Tobin School's driveway. The building is not on a human scale and does not relate well to its neighborhood context. (The people in the renderings all seem quite tall, as if to make the building appear smaller. I hope the head clearance under the cantilever is more than the drawing implies.)
Might an informal family- (and dog-) friendly independent restaurant have been a more appropriate and welcome choice? A place where visitors to Fresh Pond could stop for picnic supplies to-go, a place where Tobin families and teachers could gather for coffee, lunch, or a snack, a place where Huron Village residents could dine after watching the sunset over the pond? Once again, we have missed an opportunity to create a community magnet around one of the city's finest recreational assets.
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6 thoughts on "Sayonara, Tokyo"
Nancy Menzin on March 8, 2014 at 11:38 am said:
Thank you for this well-written summary. As an Alpine Street resident I am worried about all the too-big proposals for our neighborhood. Recent years have already seen much more cut-through traffic on our small street, just at the time of an upsurge of children, often with little respect for speed limits. It is hard to see how this proposal could make sense in its present dimensions.
freshpondresidents on March 8, 2014 at 6:04 pm said:
Yes, the side streets of Huron Village will inevitably see more cut-through traffic as more drivers try to avoid the parkway and Concord Ave. For example, drivers leaving the shopping center via New Street and destined for the Huron area are shunted left at the Sozio intersection down Bay State Road and around to Garden. Then it's logical to take a right on Alpine where there's a light at Concord. Continuing straight across on Alpine to Vassal is often the quickest route to get over to Huron.
Drivers going to and from the new Tokyo project will use Lakeview and Vassal instead of the parkway.
Amy Castor on March 28, 2014 at 4:19 pm said:
Not too mention what is happening around Fresh Pond. I can't even go there anymore during the warm months. The management there has yet to put any restriction of bicycling around the pond. So you have people, some old, some with baby carriages, toddlers, runners and now bikes dodging and cutting through the pedestrian traffic. It is an accident waiting to happen. And rather then do anything preemptive, they are waiting for that big accident to occur (when someone really gets hurt) do do anything. I really don't even want to live in the area anymore.
eric on May 19, 2014 at 9:20 pm said:
The planned development looks okay to me. I sympathize with concerns over huron village cut-throughs, but I doubt 20 units will make much of a difference. If it were up to me, though, I'd put huge speedbumps in on every street in Cambridge, and shut many of them down to car traffic! As for how appealing it will be to live there, I think it looks pretty appealing. It's a great place for a bike commuter.
D. O'L on November 18, 2014 at 6:02 pm said:
Good luck to you carpetbagging nimby's… Such one-sided musings in the "article" belie a poor attempt at conjuring a meaningful stance. The facts offered there, are really just misinformed opinions. Let's hope that values of the got-mines drop further now. I, for one, am glad to be moving out of this pompous area after listening to 40+ years of whining.
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